Of course you could cover them up, by:
Wearing oversized t-shirts that you carry around in super-packs and have to throw out in a week due to sweat stains
Following rather morbid practice of always wearing black and, incidentally, inviting the sun to take aim on the cramped space between your arm and chest that needs constant cooling as it is
Holding your arms away from your sides as if you have chicken wings
Keeping your arms from raising, even at the expense of the promotion worthy idea on the tip of your tongue
Taking sink showers and time under the bathroom dryer which equate to hours of lost daily productivity
Displaying generally disaffectionate behaviour, that involves keeping your distance and never welcoming anyone with 'open arms'
And, most counter-productively, using toxic antiperspirants and deoderants on your armpits as if you were icing a wedding cake, which turn the mess under your arms into a sticky, even painful and believe it or not, probably even more sweaty one (due to pore blockage).
The rest of this article, will assume for the sake of fast-tracking you past your blinder-guided focus on the effect and not the cause of your excessive underarm sweating (AKA primary axillary hyperhidrosis) problem, instilled by a lifetime of multi-million dollar anti-perspirent ads, from companies and the doctors they employ, both parties only making money if you keep 'treating' the symptoms of and never 'discovering and curing' the cause of your problem.
First of all, do make sure that you're not sweating profusely under your arms because of an underlying condition. Get checked out by a medical professional to determine that your excessive underarm sweating is in fact caused by what's called primary hyperhidrosis, which is just the fancy term for your sweat glands giving you a monsoon when a nice cool sprinkle on your skin would do to cool you off.
Next, let's not forget that your body isn't plotting against you by storming under your arms. It's acting in what it considers its (and your) best interests. The reason its best interests aren't aligned with yours, is that there is something wrong somewhere else in your body and since all your body's systems depend on one another for each others survival, it (and you) is baring the brunt of this. So, in other words, you've got health problems, maybe not serious, but problems that are causing irregular function of your sweat glands, which are run by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). I don't know about you but to me this is not something that should be allowed to continue, not just for reasons of excessive underarm sweating. As sweat researcher Rob Johnson is so poignant to pronounce in his book No Sweat!, the benefits of treating your SNS with a holistic program far exceed the normalization of your sweat response.
No Sweat! is the only body, mind and soul involving excessive sweating treatment program I've found in my research by the way and is the basis for much of my writing on the topic. Here's the link to the only site that has it anymore. (Johnson doesn't sell it but it's included as a free bonus with another far-inferior guide called Start Sweating and Start Living, which is based on one decent technique.)
So where does it hurt exactly? That answer will vary for everyone because we are all in different states of health and genetically designed to function differently. Having said that, all people with excessive underarm sweat that's not caused by an underlying condition, sweat because their SNS is acting abnormally, in the face of what would be considered normal everyday stresses and overreacting, in the face of extreme stresses. It is giving too many nod and a winks to the messenger to the sweat glands in your underarms that cause sweat: acetylcholine.
How do you get your SNS to start recognizing when you ought to be hot, bothered and therefore sweaty? Well for the answer to that you need to know who is giving your SNS its excessive daily pats on the back. It's an organ in the brain called the hypothalamus. Who cares about the hypothalamus. Your survival does. It's responsible for deciding whether or not you should cool down with a nice thin film of sweat because it reads the temperature of blood that reaches your brain. The reason you don't end up with a nice thin film of sweat under your arms is, following this line of scientific/logical thinking, that too much of the sweat messenger acetylcholine is produced as a result of overstimulation of your hypothalamus.
You can't control your sweat response (or your SNS) - it's what doctors call involuntary. What you can and must to do control your excessive underarm sweat is control its triggers. Things that heat you up in other words, namely stress, both mental and physical. To reduce the stress on your body and to get it working in harmony, is to improve the function on your SNS.
The Three Changes to Your Life that Change the Way You Underarm Sweat
Step 1: Diet
The first of three essential steps (as discussed in detail in No Sweat!) to control SNS triggers and thereby contol your excessive underarm sweat, is controlling your diet. I strongly encourage you to do some self discovery and find out which foods trigger your sweat problem through trial and error (and scaling way back on the variety and way forward on the quality of ingredients you consume). Having said that, there are broad recommendations that will make a difference for everyone.
First of all, avoid the following:
Refined sugar (white, brown, syrup, anything ending in 'cose': a stimulant that heats up the body, is known to cause anxiety disorders and prevents the absorption of magnesium, which is an essential nutrient for regulating the sweat response. High glucose corn syrup, in most fast and processed foods, also contains mercury, a brain damaging heavy metal. Artificial sweeteners kill brain cells among other things, so don't think they're any better.Try honey or stevia instead.
Caffeine and alcohol: these stimulants cause the production of adrenaline, which causes your body pump extra blood to your heart and major muscles and you to break an underarm sweat.
Processed foods: Anything bulked up with stuff you wouldn't gulp down on its own can't be good when you're trying to normalize your SNS (or anything else). Common fast foods also are usually genetically modified to some extent, meaning your body has to work harder to try (the key word there is 'try') to process them. They simply don't match its functions. They also include soy-based products as a filler a lot of the time, which plays the role of estrogen in your body because of its genetic modification. How normal is it to eat that when you have abnormal armpit sweat?
Anything you're allergic to or have trouble digesting: if it doesn't go down and come out smoothly, it's not helping your body run smoothly and should be cut out or limited.
Next, make sure you're getting these:
B vitamins: These are called 'the stress vitamins' and need to be replaced daily. Without them, you'll show signs of fatigue and anxiety (which cause sweat). Eat a wide assortment of unadulterated grains (like wheat), meats (like beef) and fish (especially seafood) and you should be fine.
Magnesium and Calcium: These to work together to in many nerve cells to control the nerve cells. Magnesium actually keeps nerves relaxed, which is precisely what we want to do in the SNS to prevent under arm sweating. It's found in most seeds and nuts. Calcium is found in most green vegetables, especially kale.
The second step to a naturally healthy underarm sweat response, is relaxation.
The more capable you are of relaxation the less stress you will experience and the less sweat, excessive or otherwise. The key to this is deep breathing. This triggers the parasympathetic nervous system (PSM) which is kinda like the alter-ego of the SNS since it relaxes you. For several simple methods of relaxation through deep breathing I recommend you read No Sweat! (it's a bonus to Stop Sweating Start Living) by Rob Johnson, an expert in meditation and superfluous sweat prevention, both. You'll also learn a startlingly effective full body relaxation technique.
The final step, which goes hand in hand with relaxation and diet, is exercise.
The physically fitter you are, the less you'll underarm sweat, period. You simply won't get as hot. It doesn't stop there though. You'll also be more capable of relaxation. Exercise itself if extremely relaxing because it causes you to breathe deeply and sends extra blood to the brain, the latter triggering morphine like chemicals in the brain, that give you a sense of well being.
You can now officially toss out the excessive underarm sweat crutch that is poisonous anti-perspirant because you have a complete plan for controlling the triggers of the overactive nerve impulses that are the cause of your problem. The more of these practices you apply the more confident you will become in public. And the more confident you become, the more likely you'll apply more of them...And so on. Got a big date and don't want spend the rest of your life wondering if your underarms got in between you and a kiss? Well, take control of your destiny with more of your new found underarm sweat controllers!
An Important Reminder: Everybody responds differently to different health treatments. The contents of this article are provided strictly for informational purposes, on an 'AS IS' basis, and are not a substitute for professional medical prevention, diagnosis or treatment. Consult a licensed medical professional before using any excessive sweating related plan of treatment or product product. Only a licensed medical professional is qualified to determine whether the primary cause of any sweating you deem excessive is hyperhidrosis or one of the following underlying conditions: any infection that causes a fever, Hodgkins' disease, tuberculosis, overactive thyroid, heart disease, cancer, pneumonia, malaria, liver and kidney disease, blood sugar irregularities and menopause. (Note: the preceding list may not be complete.)
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