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.
Starting to sweat get’s you stressed, which means you could sweat even more!
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:
- wearing extra layers under your shirt or overalls
- sneaking off to the washroom to dry your sweat patches with the dryer
- putting a coat or a jumper on in the office, even though it’s the middle of summer
- changing your shirt or blouse during the day
- putting on more anti-perspirant throughout the day
Spending all this time worrying about your excessive sweating and finding any number of ways to hide it from your work-mates can mean that you’re not doing what you should be doing, focusing on your work.
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.
The IHHS also found that people who were affected by hyperhidrosis in the workplace were limited to carrying out physical duties 25% of the time. They were also limited 20% of the time in carrying out mental and interpersonal tasks, 17% of the time in time-management and 11% of the time for overal work output.
So not only is hyperhidrosis affecting how you feel at work, its also effecting how you perform at work and the chances are you probably hadnt even noticed.
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.