When you get stressed, your skin temperature can cool down, your heart rate can increase, and you can start to sweat. When this happens, you might feel what is known as a “cold sweat.” This is because your body is sweating and working to cool you down, even though you may not be over-heating. You may also notice that this sweat smells a little different than the sweat you produce when you workout. In fact, it might even stink.
What a lot of people don’t know is there are actually three causes of sweat: exercise, heat, and stress. Exercise and heat can cause the eccrine glands to activate, releasing an odourless sweat, which is made up of about 99% water and 1% electrolytes. Sweating from the eccrine gland is the body’s way to thermo-regulate. When you heat up (perhaps because you are exercising, or perhaps because it is hot outside), the body will sweat to cool you down. When this happens, you usually feel warm as your body heats up, and the eccrine glands will release sweat to cool you down.
Stress, on the other hand, can cause an additional gland to activate in order to cool you down. Both your eccrine and apocrine glands turn on. The apocrine glands release a milky-looking substance that is only about 80% water, and 20% lipids and proteins. These lipids and proteins act as nutrients for bacteria found in your underarm. The bacteria essentially “eat” the nutrients. This process also produces bad underarm odour and contributes to the stress sweat smell. You may feel cold during this period because your body does not actually need to cool down. However, the less you sweat during this type of stress response, the less cold you may feel.
Since most people want to look and smell like they’re fresh, confident, and comfortable even if they’re not, you can help avoid cold sweats by wearing a clinical strength product. Clinical strength products help to reduce your overall sweat levels with prescription strength wetness protection. A product like Secret Clinical Strength offers this type of coverage and will help to reduce the amount of sweat you produce. It will also help you avoid a “cold sweat” right before a big event.