Lots of people suffer from hyperhidrosis, which is excessive sweating, generally on the palms, feet, or armpits, where sweat glands are clustered.
There have never been great treatments. There are all sorts of them, but many of them just don't work, or have horrific side effects.
Among these is a drug called glycopyrronium bromide, which is an anticholinergic. Taken orally, it absolutely cures hyperhidrosis dead in its tracks. It also has a tendency to dry up every part of your body that should naturally be lubricated in some way.
Imagine your mouth, tongue and throat so dry you can barely form the movements necessary to speak. Imagine your eyes so dry you can barely blink. Imagine your nose dry and cracking and frequently bleeding.
Lots of people would have talked to their physicians about this in the past, and lots of people would have tried options available to solve the problem, including surgical options. But all of those options were either terrible, or did little to alleviate the fundamental problem.
And then in 2018 there was a new treatment developed, qbrexza, essentially the same drug, but delivered as a topical cloth treatment. It turns out this drug is not readily absorbed into the surrounding bloodstream, and in any event doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier at all. It turns out that topical treatment works quite well for the primary purpose, with significantly reduced side effects.
But imagine you've already talked to your doctor about this problem, years ago, tried several remedies, and none of them worked. Imagine you had already given up on seeking treatment.
Then you see an advertisement on TV for your particular affliction. It sounds like a new, and promising avenue of treatment. And so you decide to go back to your doctor, and ask about this new treatment, which never existed before. And you never would have done that, probably ever, if you hadn't seen the advertisement.
How many drug advertisements do you see for old drugs? Not that many. There are some, for very common ailments like hypertension. But primarily drug advertisements are focused on new drugs.
It's not that odd to advertise a new treatment. There are still doctors that need to evaluate patients and prescribe the medication. If doctors are prescribing useless medication to patients, that seems like the primary problem to me, not the advertisements.