Hi! Just popped into this forum from the main page as a man I lack the key requirement for posting here, but I may be able to add something to your discussion.

For years I sufferred from excessive sweating, particularly around the armpits and hands. This was so bad that even on cool days my underarms would be drenched, causing large sweat patches, and could feel the drips down my shirt from my armpits.

This was very embarrassing for me, and particularly at work where I have a stressful professional career, and being sealed indoors in the UK's notoriously poor air conditioning did not help.

The sweat on the hands was particularly a problem during anxious moments like an interview when dry hands really count towards a good first impression, but even when alone and calm my hands were rarely dry. At school and college my exam papers were always curled up from the heat of my hands, and in exams I had to put a ruler under my writing hand to stop smudging of the ink.

I should add that I am an otherwise healthy twentysomething, enjoy the gym, not overweight and have no other health issues, and have always been scrupulously clean with excellent personal hygeine.

Through trial and error I learned to control the sweating by cutting down on certain foods, caffeine and sugar in particular, and eating a good wholesome breakfast (the sweating was always worse in the mornings, but helped by having a full stomach), keeping in well ventilated areas, avoiding over exertion and by wearing cooling cotton shirts and linen pants/trousers.

As you can imagine, commuting on a crowded, poorly ventilated unairconditioned tube train in high summer was a horrid way for me to start and end my day.

Thankfully, I was lucky rarely to be plagued by smelly sweat, so odor was hardly ever a problem. I soon learned that there are two sorts of spray - anti perspirant and deoodorant. Though ideally you need a combination of both if your perspiration causes odor (as an aside in the uk ladies are said to "glow", men "perspire" and animals "sweat"...!) you can learn to control it by the most appropriate one, depending whether it is odor or dampness which afflicts you.

As you can imagine, staining was for me a real problem, both because the antiperspirants marked all my shirts leaving the underarms sometimes stained and brittle after a number of months use necesitating expensive new shirts on a regular basis.

I found that regular talcum powder/baby powder was actually best as a low irritant absorber of underarm dampness, but this only worked when my underarms were covered and would not work for the specific problem raised by the OP (as a man, the balck sleeveless look is not all that common..!).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I was about 22 I worked out using the nascent internet I had a condition called hyperhydrosis and having considered botox injections, beta blocking drugs, and even a radical surgery which in those days involved collapsing a lung and invasive surgery which involved entering through the rib cage, I was getting desperate. So you can see how serious I felt the problem was.

Eventually I plucked up the courage to see my doctor, waiting for an early spring day when I could visit wearing shorts and a T-shirt even though it was only 65 degrees outside. My anxiety about addressing this problem was huge, and my over active sweat was a real problem as I sat in front of my doctor and explained this issues which had plagued me since my teenage years and was getting worse.

He suggested a topical treatment called Anhydrol Forte available in the UK, and also a similar one called Perspirex both of which contain aluminium chloride hexahydrate. I think if you search for the ingredients you would find a similar product in the US.

Well, this stuff changed my life. I applied it for seven evenings straight and by the end of it all my sweating on my palms and underarms stopped. Totally stopped. To the point that I hardly even wear more than a light dusting of talc nowadays.

If you have a lot of black tops, this stuff would be ideal as it would mean you did not have to wear traditional short term anti perspirant. No staining.

I just re-apply every month or so now, more in the summer months, and it works great. It can be a little scratchy for the first few minutes of application, but it is worth it. It acts like a permanent barrier, and is basically a concentrated form of the stuff you get in regular daily application products.

Aluminium chloride may not be the healthiest stuff to have in your system, but for me the benefits have outweighed any downsides; I have a great job now (interview confidence returned once I could shake hands!) and relationships became a lot easier when I could hold hands and not constantly worry about overheating.

I have girlfriends who also swear by clear Lady Mitchum which is a traditional daily application antiperspirant.

I hope that sharing this rather personal story may be of use to others who might suffer the same problem, and also to those with the rather less annoying (but nonetheless important!) issue of stained black blouses and other garments.