Under Pressure: Can Stress Make You Sweat?
Can stress make you sweat? The answer is a definite yes—here’s why.
College should be a time to explore academic interests, make new friendships, and enjoy newfound independence. Sure, high-stakes midterms or late night cram sessions can be stressful, but it should be a time of growth overall. One SweatRx community member, however, experienced stress for an unexpected reason: Sweating too much in class. Their sweat meant they avoided raising their hand or participating for fear of drawing attention to sweat stains.
If you’ve ever been in a high-stakes situation, such as a hard class, job interview, or first date, it may have caused you to sweat (literally). These situations often make us ask, “Can stress make you sweat?” The answer is an unequivocal yes, and here’s why.
Stress: The Root of the Problem
All of us have experienced stress at one point or another. For many, it manifests as a flutter of negative emotions that often feels like the jitters or your stomach somersaulting. While stress feels not-so-great, it actually evolved to protect our ancestors. In the olden days (think: caveman times), stress evolved to serve as an emotional cue for the body to trigger our fight or flight response. Originally, this response kept us safe from predators and reminded us to hunt and gather when our food supply ran low.
What Exactly Is Stress?
Today, stress gets a bad rep—mainly because that fight or flight response is more useful if a lion is chasing us than when we get a phone notification. Even today, stress isn’t all bad. Oftentimes, stress is an emotional response to a one-time situation, a phenomenon known as acute stress. In moderation, acute stress can motivate and inspire. When I signed up for my first marathon, for example, stress was part of the reason why I showed up for training runs.
That said, a bad reaction to acute stress can leave us frozen. If my stress was so bad I couldn’t cross the marathon start line, it would have been a different story. Stress is also a concern when it becomes chronic, meaning anxiety continues even after the event or thing causing the stress disappears.
What Does Stress Do to Your Body?
We’ve established that stress activates the fight or flight response, but what exactly does that mean? The flight or fight response is a nervous system response to stressful situations. It results in cascading effects throughout the body, including:
Muscle tension
Difficulty sleeping
Appetite changes
Headaches
Body pains
Rashes
Sweating
Difficulty concentrating
Over time, these effects can worsen pre-existing medical conditions or even trigger new ones, including an overactive thyroid, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. It also weakens the immune system, meaning you may get sick more often.
Why Stress and Sweat Go Hand in Hand
While most of us are probably aware of nervous sweating, you may not be familiar with why psychological sweating happens in the first place. To understand, we need to go back to biology 101, specifically how sweat ducts work.
Each of us have two to four million sweat glands. Most fall into two main types: eccrine sweat glands, which regulate body temperature, or apocrine sweat glands, which help regulate emotions. Apocrine glands are more closely related to anxiety sweating than eccrine glands.
When stress triggers the autonomic nervous system or the sympathetic nervous system, it triggers apocrine gland activity. The sweat serves as a reminder to the body to fight or flee whatever the stressor is. While useful in a life-or-death situation, this is more annoying than functional if the stress was triggered by a disruption to our daily routine, like an unexpected text or a road closure on the way home.
When Does Stress Sweat Hit the Hardest?
Call it Murphy’s law, but stress sweat often hits the hardest in the moments that matter: job interviews, big work presentations, first dates, and important social events. However, stress sweating can be triggered by anything that makes you nervous, from reading the news to meeting new people at a new job and everything in-between.
For most people, nervous sweating looks like regular sweat—annoying and present, but manageable. For those with hyperhidrosis, a medical condition marked by excessive sweating, a stressful situation can bring on excessive sweating.
Why Does Stress Sweat Smell…Different?
Remember how we mentioned there are two types of sweat glands? Turns out these glands produce sweat that looks and smells different. Eccrine glands produce sweat made primarily of salt and water that evaporates quickly. Thanks to its quick exit, this sweat doesn’t typically contribute to odor.
Apocrine glands, however, are a different story—and these are the ones that respond to stress. Apocrine glands produce sweat full of proteins and lipids. While they don’t produce a body odor on their own, they can smell when they interact with bacteria on the skin, increasing the emotional distress of psychological sweating.
Most apocrine glands are concentrated in the area around the nipples, armpits, or groin. As a result, stress sweat may be closely linked to focal hyperhidrosis, a type of excessive sweating that’s concentrated in one or a few body parts.
How To Keep Stress Sweat Under Control
75% of people with hyperhidrosis report emotional distress, social anxiety, or stress from sweating. And if that made you pause and think, “Wait, didn’t you just say stress causes sweat?” You’re right. We did. But hyperhidrosis can also trigger sweating, which is why it’s important to tackle both issues hand-in-hand.
Over-the-Counter Solutions
For those with occasional sweaty palms, cold sweats, or mild hyperhidrosis, there are plenty of effective over-the-counter solutions. OTC solutions can be bought without a prescription, meaning you can walk into a drugstore or buy them online immediately after reading this article, no prescription required.
That said, not all of these treatments are equally effective or work for all cases. A board-certified dermatologist can walk you through treatment options and choose the best for you. Going into that appointment, here are the OTC solutions you might want to discuss:
Clinical strength antiperspirants: These topical products contain aluminum salts that slow sweat gland activity.
Natural treatments: Natural solutions like magnesium or sage may reduce sweat activity.
Supplements: Some supplements can stop sweat gland activity.
Underarm sweat pads: These pads stick to your clothes or skin and absorb sweat.
Deodorants: These common products can help with the smell of stress sweat, but won’t stop the sweat itself.
Medical Interventions
For more severe hyperhidrosis cases, you may need a prescription or medical treatment to stop overactive sweat glands. A healthcare provider who has experience treating hyperhidrosis can help you find the right medical intervention.
The most commonly recommended interventions are listed in the table below, including everything you need to know about the financials, effectiveness, and side effects.
Note: Many also find it useful to work with a therapist on addressing the stress directly. Cognitive-behavioral therapy in particular has been linked to a reduction in emotional and physical stress symptoms—and sweat definitely falls into the latter.
Lifestyle Modifications
Alongside more formal treatments, there are some lifestyle changes to prevent excessive perspiration. The most common include avoiding sweat triggers. These vary from individual to individual, but the most common are caffeine, alcohol, spicy food, and tight fitting clothing.
Since stress is the root cause, lifestyle modifications should also focus on stress management. Some accessible techniques to manage stress levels (with links to free guided exercises) include:
Focus on What You Can Control
Remember that SweatRx member who experienced non-stop sweating during college? Their friend gave them a piece of advice they’ll never forget: “You can’t control that you sweat, but you can control how you talk to yourself about it.” Control comes in many forms, including finding products that stop stress sweating and practicing stress management techniques.
For help with perspiration, check out SweatRx. We pair folks who experience nervous sweating with board-certified dermatologists who have experience treating hyperhidrosis. These providers recommend the right treatment plan for your situation—and SweatRx delivers those treatments right to your doorstep.
