u/jenny_905

I thought I should write this given there's lots of people asking about this medication.

I am two weeks into using it, my HH is primarily craniofacial and has been very treatment resistant for 20+ years. I was genuinely tired of sweating so enormously in any temperature (including winter) to the point it would be dripping from my head.

On week one I started with 1mg taken 2 hours before any food, taken with water, taken at 7AM or 9AM.

Day 1 effects were noticeable, approx 2-3 hours after taking I noted my palms were very dry. Palmar HH is not my problem but it's notable that I had no clamminess at all, my hands were noticeably dry. Approx 6 hours after taking I began to get a headache which worsened through the day but felt no other side effects.

On day 2 I tried this dose again but this time I was at work. My work involves a lot of time in hot greenhouses, my HH was particularly bad when moving in and out of these spaces at very different temperatures and I would describe myself as heat intolerant. The glycopyrrolate had a very pronounced effect however: while I did sweat it was noticeably more controlled and that feeling of heat intolerance (raised heart rate, itchy skin, dizziness) was almost entirely eliminated.

Day 3-7 went very similarly, I also experimented with hiking in these days. It was very noticeable that the threshold for sweating was increased, if I had to guess the amount of physical exertion required to break a sweat was about 50% higher and crucially the amount and severity of sweating was reduced by at least 50%.

Week two I increased the dose. 2mg taken at 7AM or 9AM. By this time I had noted some things about the effect of the drug: it seems to come on very slowly, effects noticeable about 3 hours after ingestion but also something strange: food (12PM-1PM so 5-6 hours after taking a dose) seemed to suddenly activate the effect, I have not tried anything other than taking the dose on an empty stomach yet but that first meal of the day (yes, I don't eat breakfast, I know) seems to come with a sudden activation of the drug. Palms are very dry at this dosage and there's also the first signs of other side effects, eyes feel a little dry and a very slight mouth/throat dryness. Nowhere near the cottonmouth side effect other people experience though, may be dosage dependent.

At 2mg I would say my threshold for sweating is even higher, probably 75% higher and the amount I did sweat at work and during hikes was reduced by at least 75% again. The other big effect I noticed is that sweat actually becomes effective, lots of exertion particularly when hiking would make me sweat but it would actually cool me... and stop pretty quickly when resting. Almost as if it actually makes sweating work like it is supposed to. The effect seems to be stronger in other areas of the body than my head but this is where my HH primarily is so perhaps that makes sense, I do notice how dry my hands, feet and torso are however.

I am tempted to try increasing to 3-4mg next week but not sure if I really need to, while it's certainly still possible to sweat it seems like 2mg might be the amount necessarily to make my body behave mostly normally. The side effects at this dosage are certainly manageable for me as well but this will vary between people. Perhaps the worst side effect I have experienced is the headache but this has reduced to being quite mild now, it also seems to respond to ibuprofen.

Anyway, sorry for the length but I know a lot of people are looking for a solution to this condition and I would say on balance that Glycopyrrolate is probably the best I have found so far.

Seems to have become a big problem this past week. Anyone else?