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How to Deal with Excessive Sweating

©Flickr,Ryan Hyde

I’m gonna go on the record here: I sweat a lot. Probably too much, but what can I do about it?

Turns out there actually are some steps I can take to try to prevent over sweating. That’ll teach me to give up!

One easy thing you can try is to put on an antiperspirant before you go to bed at night. You should also try to avoid certain foods and drinks during your daily routine—for instance too much coffee can have an effect on your central nervous system and cause you to sweat more than usual. Drinking hot coffee might even make it worse because the heat of the drink increases your body temperature, which might make you sweat even more.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Other foods you might want to avoid: spicy foods. This one is tough for me because I love Indian food, Mexican food, and Vietnamese food, but if this is the price of less sweat, I suppose I can manage.

As Scientific American explains:

“Spicy foods excite the receptors in the skin that normally respond to heat. Those receptors are pain fibers, technically known as polymodal nociceptors… The central nervous system can be confused or fooled when these pain fibers are stimulated by a chemical, like that in chili peppers, which triggers an ambiguous neural response. The central nervous system reacts to whatever the sensory system tells it is going on. Therefore, the pattern of activity from pain and warm nerve fibers triggers both the sensations and the physical reactions of heat, including vasodilation, sweating and flushing”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

If your excessive sweat results in body odor, there are other things you can do to try to keep that under control. Besides using deodorant, you should avoid foods that cause people to stink, like cabbage, broccoli, onions, garlic, and cauliflower. Alcohol also smells when you sweat it out, so you might want to cut down on the booze (that’s really not a bad idea for any person).

If you’ve tried everything, but you still sweat all the time, you can wear certain colors to hide your sweat (it’s not idea, we know). Very dark clothes and very light clothes hide sweat pretty well, so you can wear black, dark blue, and even white. You should avoid grays and bright colors if you’re gonna be out in the sun or somewhere you know you’ll be sweating because those colors practically highlight sweat stains. You could also consider wearing more athleisure, as it tends to be made from sweat-wicking textiles.

Try these tips out and see if they do the trick for you. If all else fails, go see your doctor. There are some genuine medical issues associated with excess sweating, although they are rare.

Good luck out there and stay cool!