Believe it or not, there are a couple different kinds of sweat.
There’s the sweat that happens when you’re warm, or when you’re physically exerting yourself. This is “thermal” sweat.
Then there’s psychological sweat—the kind that happens when you’re about to meet your Tinder match IRL, or when you feel like you’re screwing up a job interview.
A new study tried to test out the kind of situations that trigger this behavior.
A group of young men had to sit in a room and do very, very simple math problems. The result? They all sweat nervously.
So why do we do this? Well, there are a few reasons.
We sweat during exercise as a cooling mechanism, of course. But nervous sweating is quite a bit more interesting.
When we’re nervous or anxious, our body goes into fight-or-flight mode. This is pretty commonly known. The nervous sweat? It could be because if you’re sweating, your predator was less able to grab onto you. ##MN_RESP##
It could also be seen as a quicker escape mechanism from when we had more pawlike appendages. Clammy hands could be a remnant of the sweat needed to escape up a tree.
Nervous sweating could also have been a way for our families to smell fear on us. One study found that nervous sweat smells differently from regular sweat, and that we can still tell the difference.
So how do you deal with it?
Unfortunately, the easiest way to deal with it is to tackle the actual nervousness. Your body starts sweating when you perceive a situation as embarrassing. So try assessing the situation when you’re nervous, and getting a little perspective. Once you realize that it’s probably not as big of a deal as you’re making it, you won’t feel the need to sweat.
And of course, anti-perspirants are a pretty good option.
