It turns out that night sweats can be provoked by a ton of different things that might surprise you. Night sweats are considered severe episodes of excessive sweating that are repeated and tied to an underlying medical condition.
According to the Mayo Clinic, a medical condition is responsible for night sweats, not an outside factor like a sleeping environment that’s too warm. The treatment for your night excessive sweating can differ depending on the cause. Therefore, you and your healthcare provider need to start by identifying the underlying problem. Let’s look at five possible causes of night sweats.
Possible reasons why you keep having night sweats
1. Hyperhidrosis
Hyperhidrosis can be in two forms: primary and secondary. Primary hyperhidrosis is a specific medical problem and its causes are still unknown. Secondary hyperhidrosis is when excessive sweating occurs due to underlying health conditions.
Primary and secondary hyperhidrosis differ. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, primary hyperhidrosis is characterized by excessive sweating on the forehead, armpits, and the palms of your hand and soles of your feet. Secondary hyperhidrosis involves sweating over much larger portions of your body, or even all of it.
2. Hyperthyroidism
Hyperthyroidism is when your thyroid gland, which essentially is responsible for body energy usage, starts to produce too much of the hormone called thyroxine. That can disrupt your body’s processes and cause night sweats, unintentional weight loss, an increased appetite, arrhythmia, anxiety, etc.
To recognize hyperthyroidism, you need to run a blood test to see if you have too high thyroxine levels and lower thyroid-stimulating hormone levels. There are a lot of thyroid dysfunction treatments to choose from like drugs that stop the thyroid gland from producing too high a level of thyroxine, beta-blockers that can slow a racing heartbeat, and more.
3. Medications
There are a lot of medications that can cause night sweats. These include certain antidepressants, drugs to treat diabetes, and cancer drugs. Before you stop taking medications you suspect are causing night sweats, you should consult your doctor.
4. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis occurs when bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis enter, attack your body, and cause an infection. The symptoms of tuberculosis depend on which part of your body the bacteria are attacking. However, this condition has common symptoms including a fever that provokes night sweats and chills, weight loss, loss of appetite, and a cough that lasts three weeks or more.
The infection passes from person to person through microscopic particles in the air. To get rid of this illness once and for all, you need to take antibiotics for six to nine months which can vary based on your case.
5. HIV/AIDS
According to the CDC 1,018,356 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with HIV. HIV is a virus that spreads through bodily fluids (blood, semen, vaginal and rectal fluids, and breast milk) and attacks a person’s immune system by damaging T cells that are essential for fighting infection.
If left unmanaged, it can develop into AIDS which makes a person incredibly vulnerable to opportunistic infections like tuberculosis and pneumonia that can be lethal.
People with HIV may have flu-like symptoms for a few weeks such as fever, rash, muscle aches, headache, swollen lymph glands, and night sweats. However, there are some stunning advancements available for reducing the power of HIV and AIDS.
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