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Could you briefly explain the mode of action of the microwave energy that you’re delivering and how that works?
Just like your microwave at home, which heats up water to make your tea, water absorbs the microwave energy because it has a di-pole molecule, one side is positive and one side is negative.
The microwave energy travels across those di-pole molecules, they flip back and forth and the rapid oscillating or flipping back and forth of the molecules creates frictional heat. If you can get that heated up, just like you would when you’re heating your water for your tea in the microwave, to a certain degree it’s going to start destroying the tissue that contains water.
Luckily the tissue that contains water is the eccrine glands or the sweat glands. They’re able (with the miraDry® device) to put this energy right at the base of the lower part of the skin, the dermis, right where it reaches the subcutaneous fat and that’s where the eccrine glands are located. So it’s basically causing some controlled heat to that area to eliminate the sweat glands.
One of the other side effects of axillary hyperhidrosis is that you can smell, and have stale body odour; is the miraDry® treatment addressing this issue too?
They have found, and they have been doing some studies, especially in Japan, where that’s a really big issue, that it does reduce or eliminate the odour.
Now part of the issue may be that there are both apocrine and eccrine glands in the same area. Apocrine glands are supposed to be the ones that create the odour, because of the bacteria that live off the gland secretions, but it seems to work (to reduce the odour) in the vast majority of people that get this treatment done to treat the eccrine or sweat glands.
Are you aware of developments that miraDry® (Miramar Labs) have in terms of either future clinical studies or maybe future generations of the device?
One complaint that a lot of people have is that they have hyperhidrosis in their hands. Their hands are a very delicate area, obviously with thinner skin and tendons and nerves that are right underneath the skin. So this poses a little bit more of a challenge (than axillae).
They’re going to look into finding out if they can create a device that can be used either fractionally on the hands, to make it safer, but to still make it work. So they’re hopefully going to be working in the development of that, I don’t have more details besides that though.
And then there’s another side effect that we often see which is that some people have a reduction in hair when they do these treatments; for women, it’s a bonus, for men, they don’t really care. So there may be an application for using this modality for hair reduction on people who have light or grey hairs, which of course are resistant to any lasers that we currently have.
Would you go as far as to say that miraDry® is a revolutionary treatment for people who suffer from hyperhidrosis?
This is absolutely revolutionary because it works!
It’s consistent in how well it works, we know that you’re really only going to take two treatments for a great result, very rarely do people need three treatments, perhaps if they have really thick skin.
It is life-changing, every patient that I have treated has been so grateful, including one of my best friends and my cousin.
It’s unbelievable the number of people who suffer from hyperhidrosis, and when they can get this treatment done, and then be fine and not have to worry about that every single day; it changes their life.