Sweating for Fun and Profit

Greetings.  It has been six days without power and air conditioning at home and the office and we're really beginning to sweat.  Six days in which the temperature has ranged from 98 to 104 degrees.  And all because of a freak storm with a highly unusual scientific name that seemed to catch everyone by surprise.  Even Ella, our trusty canine family member, is beginning to "sweat like a dog" which is no small feat given that dogs don't actually sweat.  Fortunately, I'm not panting like a dog yet–but when I do you'll be the second to know.  And that could happen any day now given the less-than stellar track record of Pepco, our electric utility.  In fact, I can say with almost total certainty, after multiple calls to their outsourced help desk located in some distant part of America where the weather is probably cool and pleasant, that I have no idea when our power will be restored.  Though their best estimate is Sunday at 11:00 p.m. which would mean nine days without power, air conditioning and many of the other creature comforts that we tend to take for granted.

But rather than get even more overheated by writing about life in the territory of our nation's poorest performing electric company, the one that paid its CEO $18 million last year (no doubt as a reward for poor performance), I thought it might be fun to talk about science and the science of sweating–because as we all know one person's energy meltdown is another person's business opportunity.  

As it turns out, up to 20% of Americans–and presumably people in other countries around the globe–experience a condition that is known as axillary hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating.  It's a condition that affects them even when the temperature isn't 100 degrees and they have a more competent utility company than Pepco.  And it's also a condition that has attracted the attention of some very thoughtful scientific and entrepreneurial minds.  At the top of the list are the folks are Miramar Labs who have figured out a way to use microwave technology to eliminate excessive underarm sweat.  And you thought that microwave technology could only be used in the fields of radar, telecommunications, energy development and cancer treatment.

But now, for a mere $3,000–which is roughly my annual bill from Pepco–you can render your electric utility obsolete through a simple and slightly painful procedure that literally zaps the sweat right out of you by eliminating your sweat glands.  A procedure that sounds totally natural (not exactly), has been approved by the FDA and probably won't win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

We win in business and in life when we don't sweat the things we can't control.  Or when we figure out how to help people to stop sweating completely.

Cheers and stay cool!