Clammy Hands and How to Prevent Them
Clammy Hands: Overview
You’re about to go on the stage for your music gig and someone extends their hand out to you to wish you good luck. Nervousness is not the only thing you’re worried about as you extend your hand towards this well-wisher. You’re worried about the apparent jitters before an important or stressful event that shows up in the form of clammy hands.
Sounds familiar? Then you’re in the right place!
Let’s face it: sweaty hands are an embarrassment. But it’s not something you should worry about. Nothing is wrong with you. It’s just how your body reacts when it’s forced into a situation it isn’t fully prepared for.
But if you’re a socially conscious person and clammy hands serve as a catalyst that makes you withdraw from social situations, then stay with me!
Related Reading: Cold Sweats: Causes, Symptoms, Treatments
What Causes Clammy Hands?
Clammy hands usually show up in stressful situations. Have you noticed how we start sweating when we are trying to face a difficult or a nerve-wracking situation?
Or how when we’re excited, our palms decide to generate gallons of sweat?
Or do you remember sitting in the examination hall for an important exam and suddenly getting hit by the realization that your palms have started sweating?
This is because eccrine sweat glands are connected to our sympathetic nervous system, which becomes active when we’re stressed.
And because eccrine sweat glands are certainly more concentrated in our hands, forehead, and feet, we might end up sweating uncontrollably and as a result get clammy hands.
However, people who sweat too much or experience sweating concentrated on their palms might be suffering from a medical condition called palmar hyperhidrosis.
It may be present at birth but usually starts acting up during the onset of adolescence.
While for some people this problem goes away, others are not so lucky and suffer their whole lives. For these people, the sweat glands don’t shut off and their palms get sweaty even when the situation doesn’t call for it.
For example, when they’re in an air conditioning room, or when they’re just sitting and reading a book. Some people even complain about sweating while in the swimming pool.
Now that we’ve discussed the causes of clammy hands, let’s discuss some of the ways to avoid them.
Natural Treatments for Clammy Hands
So we’ve talked about what a curse clammy hands are. Below are some routines you can follow and products you can use to prevent them.
1. Baby Powder
Use that baby powder lying in your drawer whenever you get the chance. Sprinkle it on your palms. It could act as a blessing for your ever sweating palms.
The same characteristics that prevent diaper rashes help prevent sweat. To make it convenient, but a pocket-sized powder bottle.
This way, whenever you feel the dread coming on, just take it out of your bag and rub some of that powder between your palms.
However, you might want to be careful and thorough while rubbing your hands together in order to avoid pale, ghostly-looking palms.
2. Pocket-Sized Hand Sanitizer
All alcohol-based products will have a drying effect on the hands. However, it is a temporary solution, but it can act like a godsend.
I mean, imagine yourself waiting to meet important people to impress before a meeting and being worried about clammy hands?
When something like this happens, the pocket-sized hand sanitizer that you might be underestimating till now could scoop in to save the day!
3. Wash Your Hands More Frequently
Some extra trips to the bathroom won’t hurt anybody! Washing your hands with water regularly could help in absorbing some of that moisture that keeps showing up at odd times. However, using soap will make your hands dry.
So unless your hands are swarming with dirt, using water would be just fine. Along with this, carrying tissue papers with you wherever you go and wiping your hands throughout the day frequently would be a great fix, too.
4. Tackle Your Stress
Controlling stress doesn’t just sound like a huge step, but it also sounds scary. If you’ve ever experienced stress, you will know how it hinders progress in daily tasks and affects one physically.
Same way, clammy hands are a common side effect of stress. The first step you could take in order to tackle stress is to identify it.
If you can recognize what’s causing you stress, then you should look for conducive ways to control that stress.
5. Relax
Clammy hands come as a side effect of stress, as discussed above. In order to avoid stress, it is very important that one stays relaxed and doesn’t get worked up too fast.
Finding something that rids you of stress, like exercising, or reading could be extremely healthy if you want to prevent yourself from breaking out in heavy sweating when you have other things to focus on.
Reading before going to bed, exercising after waking up in the morning, stretching, meditation, yoga, or just taking some time to detach yourself from the stress induced by the monotonous routine. Whatever works for you well, really!
Related Reading: How Sleeping on the Floor Benefits Your Health?
6. Use an Iontophoresis Kit
This treatment uses water to charge electric current through your body in order to keep the sweat from getting to your skin’s surface. Despite a tingling sensation, this treatment is absolutely painless.
Lifestyle Changes for Clammy Hands
While we may look to natural treatments for clammy hands, there are some daily habits that you can alter in order to avoid the embarrassment caused by them.
Here are some lifestyle changes that you can make:
1. Hot or Spicy Food
Ever heard about the delicacy that hot and spicy food is? Well, yeah, about time you start cutting on that junk because it increases the warmth in your body, and as a result, you perspire. Makes sense, huh?
Cutting down on oily and spicy food can also prevent your skin from breaking out with acne. That’s just one more incentive to let go of that spicy sandwich in your hand, and pick up an apple instead. Just every once in a while, you know?
2. Fruits and Veggies
Don’t tell me you didn’t see this one coming. Consumption of fruits and vegetables rich in nutrients and water will keep you hydrated, slim and your digestive system in good shape.
And these things keep you from sweating too much. Just what you need!
3. Water
Yep, the oldest rule of keeping healthy in the rule book.
Keeping yourself well hydrated will automatically mean that your body doesn’t have to work a lot in order to regulate the body temperature. Which means less sweat!
4. B Vitamins
When your body is being treated with things that make it healthier, it will obviously run better. B Vitamins have a way of doing that.
It regulates the metabolism of the body as well as the communication of nerves, which keeps things working and healthy.
With a lack B Vitamins, your body is going to need to work much harder, and that causes sweat. So if you want a healthy heart, and prevent your body from exhausting itself, load up on B Vitamins, or start eating healthy fruits and vegetables. Veggies all the way to a healthier and non-sweaty life, eh?
5. Olive Oil
As I mentioned earlier, the more the body is going to exhaust itself, the more it is going to sweat. Olive oil is processed and can be easily digested by the body, hence acting as a lifesaver for people who sweat too much.
Not only this, olive oil is healthy and can help in maintaining the cholesterol level in the body, preventing heart conditions and obesity. And yes, children, that means less sweat.
Related Reading: Top 10 Substitutes for Vegetable Oil
How to Prevent Clammy Hands?
By now I’m assuming you feel satisfied with all the information you just absorbed about clammy hands and how to treat them, but there are a few things that can prevent them without a lot of work.
For example, avoid:
- High amount of caffeine or alcohol, as they are big among sweat triggers.
- Wearing tight clothes.
- Stressing too much.
- Wearing gloves on clammy hands to cover them up because this will only make your palms sweat more as your skin won’t be able to breathe.
So you’ve read all about clammy hands and what causes them and now it’s time to work towards preventing them from creating an embarrassing situation for you.
Read Next:
- Why Do I Feel Chills without Fever?
- Why Does My Ear Hurt When I Swallow?
- How to Get Rid of Water in Ear?
Sources:
https://www.degreedeodorant.com/us/en/sweat-facts/sweaty-hands.html
https://www.healthambition.com/get-rid-sweaty-hands-naturally/
https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Clammy-Hands
