Some people do notice they give off an extra-foul stench when they’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Just a little background info: The purpose of sweating would be to regulate body temperature; with stress sweat, a transfer of hormones, for example adrenaline, causes the body to have a fightor-flight response that leads to excessive sweating. But there are two main kinds of sweat glands, and they produce various kinds of sweat. Whenever you exercise, you have produced sweat, consisting mainly of water and salt, from eccrine glands all over the body that open on the surface of your skin to be able to cool you down. When you are really stressed out, sweat gets produced by apocrine glands, that are situated in spots on the body which have lots of hair follicles. While all sweat is odorless, the perspiration produced in the areas where we have hair follicles, like the armpits and also the groin, smells bad when it leaves the follicles and combines with bacteria around the surface of the skin. This sweat also contains fats and proteins, which the bacteria likes to feast upon.
So, controlling stress generally could keep body odor at bay in high-anxiety moments. Have stress management techniques-some deep breathing, a fast meditation inside a quiet room at the office, you know the drill-in place that you can use, say, before a large presentation. And steer clear of overdoing it on caffeine during stress spirals; it may cause blood pressure level and heart rate to increase and may make stress symptoms even worse.
Also, if you’re concerned about stress sweat ruining a minute, try a clinical strength antiperspirant-deodorant (tons of options are available at the drugstore; we like Secret Clinical Strength) during the night, whenever your armpits are drier and also the pores will require in the product better-and reapply in the morning.
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Health’s medical editor, Roshini Rajapaksa, MD, is assistant professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine.
