Would You Get Botox to Fix Your Sweaty Edges?

Taylor Robinson lives in Washington, D.C., where, during the summer, she takes one step outside and is drenched in sweat. It had started to dictate how she maintains her hair. Between working out and just going outside to enjoy the season, the sweat was not only affecting her hair but what she wanted to do. “There are parts of my body where I don’t sweat that much, like my armpits, but for some reason, especially in the summer, I sweat so much more on my forehead and along my hairline,” she says. She’s always excessively oversweating, but she likes to straighten her hair; it’s not a good combination, especially for her 4B textured hair. When she sweats too much, her hair instantly reverts to its natural curly state.

She’s never had any hair-straightening treatments, such as perms or keratin, but she wanted to find a solution to wearing her hair how she wants it without worrying about whether she’ll sweat her hair out. This summer, she grew tired of her sweaty edges determining her hair, so she sought to fix the problem.

First, she altered her hairstyles to slick-backed styles.

Before this summer, Robinson would wear her hair in different styles to make it appear as if she wasn’t sweating. “I have natural hair and it’s very obvious when I’m sweating. My hair instantly curls up,” she says. She’d hide from the sweat by slicking her hair back or just tying it back a lot, but she never got to actually have fun with it during the summer because her curls would instantly revert back.

Verdict: It didn’t really fix the issue; it just covered it up, but she wanted a fix.

So she got Botox across her hairline and parts of her scalp.

Robinson saw a woman online go to a med spa for scalp injections to prevent sweating, so she wanted to try it. Because she works at a med spa, she’s familiar with people coming in for various treatments. One common medical condition patients are looking to fix is hyperhidrosis, excessive sweating that’s not necessarily related to heat or exercise. It can show up on any body part including armpits, the back, and the head. Botox injected into these areas is said to block nerve signals that stimulate sweat glands, resulting in a reduction of sweat produced in those areas.

Robinson went to N.M. Aesthetics and Wellness in Arlington, Virginia, and started with 30 units of Botox along her hairline and where she normally parts her hair (she’s a side-part girl). Within a couple of days, she could feel it kicking it. “My forehead got a bit tighter, and by the two-week mark, I really started to see the reduction of sweat during my day-to-day activities,” she says.

She isn’t new to injections; she’s always trying different treatments in the office and has had her fair share of preventative-aging Botox, so although this was different, she knew what to expect. “When I got it done on my hairline, it was super-painless; I’d give it a two out of ten,” she says. But the further back the injections went when they started along her part line, she felt it a bit more, mostly due to sensitivities on the crown of her head. “Six out of ten,” she says, referring to the pain, which she still says wasn’t bad or much different than getting injectables on her forehead for preventative aging.

Verdict: It’s working for her, but she wanted to get even more units, a costly endeavor.
Cost: $15 per unit. A total of $450.

Then she went back for 20 more units.

After two weeks, she went back in for 20 additional units of Botox to see if she could reduce sweat even more, and that’s when she really started to see a difference, especially on her hairline.

While the Botox is working for her sweat, she admits that humidity still affects her hair, mostly toward the back: “For D.C. weather, where it can reach up to 100 degrees, and my routine of working out, it’s still so much better. It’s not all the way perfect. I’m still natural, so my hair is affected by the humidity, but as for sweating, that has reduced a lot.”

Verdict: She’s learned that 50 units is accurate for what she needs to fully reduce sweating to maintain her hair. But she still has some sweating along the back of her head, causing her hair to curl.
Cost: $15 per unit; $300 for additional units and $750 total for 50 units.

How she plans to maintain it.

It has been three weeks since her additional 20 units and she’s more than happy with the results. She was told the treatment would last about six months, and based on how long Botox lasts on her face, that sounds accurate to her, so she’s done with injecting her scalp for this year. She plans on implementing the injections as a summer-beauty routine every year. “I really only care about it in the summer months because of the heat,” she says. The only change she would make is starting the injections in May next year instead of June, so by the time the heat really kicks in, her scalp will have been fully prepped and she can go into the summer months not having to worry about her excessive sweating at all.

As for the humidity that’s beyond her control and causing the curls at the back of her head to revert, Robinson plans on doing a keratin treatment, mostly to fight frizz. “I’ve tackled what I can from my end with the sweating of my scalp; now I’ll actually treat the hair and I’ll be in a much better place,” she says.