Everything You Need to Know About a MiraDry Treatment

Everything You Need to Know About a MiraDry Treatment

I wouldn’t say I had excessive underarm sweating, but I will say that the sweat glands under my arms were active. One might even say, feisty. Every morning, after I would work out (even in the winter, mind you), I would sit down at the desk in my office and within thirty minutes, I would have profuse underarm sweat stains on my shirt. Was it excessive sweating? Hyperhidrosis? I wasn’t sure. But it was at the point where my sweat glands were causing me stress. Which only perpetuated my underarm sweat; a vicious cycle, if I’ve ever seen one.

When my friend Courtney was visiting me in LA, she told me she had tried an excessive underarm sweat treatment called MiraDry. She told me that not only did it eliminate sweat glands permanently, but it would also reduce – if not permanently eliminate – underarm sweat AND odor altogether. I was intrigued. I’d heard of botox injections, but that only temporarily reduced underarm sweating. So I did some research.

Turns out, Courtney was right. The MiraDry treatment was developed to stop excessive underarm sweating by eliminating sweat and odor glands using blasts of precisely controlled energy from microwaves that are applied to the underarm area of hyperhidrosis patients. Sounded intense. But drastic times called for drastic measures.

But I had questions:

• when you get botox, I knew the sweat traveled and expressed itself elsewhere. What about with MiraDry? With a MiraDry treatment, I read that excessive sweating under the arms gradually disappears forever – and doesn’t make the sweat glands in your back, for example, work in overdrive. The sweat just stops.
• turns out, you don’t have to sweat out of your armpits to regulate body temperature or your body’s ability to cool itself. The underarm sweat glands express moisture mostly in emotional situations.
• AND through my research, I discovered that odor glands were also destroyed, so with people who had a penchant for underarm odor, the MiraDry treatment was great for that as well. BO wasn’t my MO, thankfully, but I figured the procedure couldn’t hurt with that either.
• the last thing that intrigued me was that since MiraDry brought such a clinically-proven and dramatic reduction to embarrassing underarm sweat outbreaks, a lot of patients stopped wearing deodorant after getting MiraDry.

The MiraDry Consultation

I called up a few options of plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills who offered the MiraDry treatment to see if I was a candidate for the MiraDry procedure. After getting a few phone consultations, I ended up choosing Dr. Sheila Nazarian’s Spa26 office to permanently fry my underarm sweat glands. Spa26 collected a small deposit – I think $50 – that would be applied to my MiraDry treatment. In the vein of transparency, the total cost was $1,900.

The nurse on the phone said that after a MiraDry procedure, most patients saw a sweat reduction of up to 80%. So it wasn’t like I would never sweat again, but hopefully I wouldn’t continually sweat like a whore in church.

How Many Treatments Were Necessary?

She said some patients came in for two treatments to REALLY stop the sweat if they only saw average sweat reduction after the first time. So, I had options.

I set my appointment and was getting excited.

The MiraDry Treatment Preparation

A couple days before my MiraDry appointment, Dr. Sheila Nazarian’s office called and told me a few more details. They instructed me to:

• shave underarms prior to coming in
• there would be minimal-to-no-downtime
• it was a non-invasive treatment, which meant MiraDry treatments did not involve surgery (or surgical incisions of any kind)
• instead of incisions, they used microwave energy to kill underarm sweat glands and odor
• and that MiraDry was FDA approved.

So, I took a razor to my pits (which was the first time I had ever attempted such a feat) and held a vigil for my underarm sweat and odor glands.

The MiraDry Treatment

The morning of my MiraDry procedure, I walked into Dr. Sheila Nazarian’s Spa26 office and was greeted by a very kind receptionist. I filled out some paperwork and was led into a room where a cute, nice girl with a camera took pictures of my armpits. It was funny and she had a great sense of humor at the awkwardness of the MiraDry system. She made me feel comfortable.

I was then led into a room and a Physician Assistant came in and explained more about the MiraDry system. She explained:

• After the MiraDry procedure I would see sweat reduction by about 40%-50% and that many people came back for a second treatment. This fact alarmed me because on Dr. Nazarian’s website and in the consultation, it was advertised that most patients saw up to 80% sweat reduction after the first treatment. To be honest, I considered leaving because I felt I had been a little tricked.
• She also informed me that some of the hair follicles under my arms would be destroyed, so hair growth would cease and the reduction of underarm hair was a byproduct of the treatment. I didn’t love that idea either, because I already felt awkwardly prepubescent sitting there with bare pits. I was becoming more nervous and dubious of Dr. Nazarian’s Spa26.
• The PA also told me that I would be receiving lidocaine injections (a local anesthesia) to my underarm area to numb me for the medical procedure. She assured me that MiraDry was an FDA cleared treatment that delivers precisely controlled energy where sweat glands reside to permanently destroy them.
• She told me afterward I would experience localized soreness and maybe mild bruising, but putting ice packs under my arms would help. She said full results would be visible after a few weeks.

My Hesitation

I signed some more paperwork and the nurse got to work! I was a little annoyed and I felt like I had been deceived a bit by Dr. Sheila Nazarian’s marketing, but I figured a 40% reduction was better than nothing. I’m sure the number of patients who walked out of Spa26 after having different news broken to them after their armpit photoshoot was probably minimal. Was it a lead-generation tactic to get clients in the door? Maybe.

Numbing for the MiraDry Procedure

I have to tell you though, the nurse who did my MiraDry procedure was absolutely a DELIGHT. We talked the whole time and she made me feel so at ease; she was personable, energetic, enthusiastic about her work, and really kind.

She first injected four shots of a numbing agent into each armpit (so 8 injections in total). Then she injected an ENORMOUS bag of numbing fluid into my armpit. The local anesthesia fluid further numbed my underarm area so I wouldn’t be able to feel the extremely hot MiraDry microwave flashes. The fluid was the weirdest part. I was numb from the first set of needles, but once the fluid was pumped in, I could feel my armpits swelling and expanding, kind of the way I would imagine a water balloon feels as it’s being filled. Surreal.

Once I was twice numbed in my left armpit, the nurse broke out the MiraDry machine and started blasting the microwave rays into my underarms. I felt nothing at all. She really got the numbing down. After my first armpit was done, she moved on to the second. The whole procedure took about two hours.

The MiraDry Procedure Aftermath

The first day, I was SORE. SO, SO, SO, SO SORE. The icepacks were a wonderful saving grace, but there was real pain. And I whined a lot. The aches dissipated fully after about a week. And after a few weeks, I started to see less sweat. I would say that it is about half the amount of sweat I had before. But it’s not gone entirely.

I also noticed that my armpit hair follicles eventually did regrow, though slowly at first. Because of this, I was not 100% satisfied with the treatment, but maybe 60% satisfied; I just wish my expectations were managed a bit more with how much was initially told to me on the sweat reduction I could expect. Most of the entire staff was very pleasant, which I was very grateful for and happy about.

Overall, would I go in for another MiraDry treatment? I think I would. And I would send anyone this article to share my experience; I wish I had something like this to read before I went in.

Hope this helps!