Working Up A Sweat
Matthew Johnson on Jul 6th 2009
Excessive sweating, or hyperhidrosis, can rule the lives of some of the millions of people it affects across the world. If you’re one of those people, it can dictate what you do, where you go, even which clothes you wear.
This can be especially true when you go to work. It doesn’t matter what job you do, excessive sweating can make your worklife a misery, leaving you feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable and causing increased stress levels.
No matter what you’re doing, working in an office in a thin shirt or down in the warehouse in some overalls, if you start to worry about your excessive sweating, the chances are it’s going to happen at some point during the day.
Whats doesnt help is that when you do feel yourself overheating and starting to sweat you begin to get stressed, which can make it even worse!
You can spend most of your time worrying about your sweating, which takes your mind off what you should be thinking about. And you probably feel really uncomfortable being around your colleagues in case they notice. Each day you are at work you could be spending most of your time worrying about your problem.
Just to get through the day you might have tried all sorts of methods to cover up your problem:
- t-shirts or extra layers under your work clothes
- disappearing to the toilets to try and dry your sweat patches
- keeping your suit jacket on in the office even when its 90 degrees
- keeping a spare set of work clothes to change into
- re-applying your deoderant during the day
So you probably spend more time worrying about your problem and trying to hide it from your colleagues, than you do focusing on your job and getting your work done.
You probably hadn’t realised how much time you spend worrying about your problem but it can take over your whole day.
A study by the International Hyperhidrosis Society found that in a recent survey of adults, 62 percent find that job-related issues, such as confronting a boss or going on an interview, makes them sweat more than any other circumstances.
In another of their studies they also found that people who suffered from excessive sweating in the workplace were limited in performing physically demanding tasks 25% of the time, in mental and interpersonal tasks 20% of the time, in time management 17% of the time, and in work output 11% of the time.
So excessive sweating is not only affecting your attitude at work but also your performance. Most sufferers have probably never considered the impact their problem was having.
The study went on to say that whilst probably not recognised as such, excessive sweating is a problem that can cause limitations of performance in the workplace similar to those experienced by workers suffering from depression, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.
You could always turn the air-conditioning up or try and avoid any manual labour, or try any number of methods to cover up the problem. But wouldn’t it be great to go to work confident in the knowledge that you didn’t have a problem, because it had been cured, naturally and permanently?
Hyperhidrosis doesn’t have a particularly high profile and the IHHS is working to change this. If you are affected, there are options open to you, you can find out more about one of these below.
Filed in career