- for Women with Excessive Underarm Perspiration -
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Fabric Snob or Slob?
3 February 2003Partially due to my HH, I have a love / hate relationship with my clothes. I love wearing vibrant colors and nice fabrics but my axillary HH puts a damper (no pun intended!) on things. For awhile I wore lots of black, which has been in vogue since, when, the Hoover administration? I hated it. Black doesn't look good on me, at least on top, and well, I'm getting tired of it. It also has the problem of showing salty stains which my armpits excel at producing. Years ago I gradually shifted into the colors I love and haven't gone back. Fabric is the other issue. Last year at a nice party a snooty neighbor said to me, "Oh, Janet, that's such a nice blouse, but I don't think I could ever wear anything like that. I only wear natural fabrics." Can you imagine? I suppose I should have "accidentally" spilled my drink on her silk dress, or whatever it was she had on, and let her try to get the stain out of it. But I'm not that kind of person. One of the ways I've learned to live with my sweaty pits is to wear fabrics that are light, ones that let the perspiration dry, and ones that are easy to launder. The fabric that does all that is the much maligned polyester. I'm too young to have first-hand memories of '70s leisure suits and the like, but I'm told today's polyester is much better than that worn in Saturday Night Fever. I simply wear it because it works for me. Cotton is a great fabric but when it gets wet, it stays wet and heavy. I'll wear cotton when I don't expect to be stressed, and therefore sweaty. I usually end up wearing a cotton shirt anyhow for outdoor activities, but the feeling of wet, heavy fabric sagging and swinging from my sweaty armpits is very unpleasant to me. At work I've learned that I sweat in pulses, that is, off and on, most likely in response to varying levels of stress. It doesn't take much stress to get my pits damp, just picking up the phone and talking is enough to do it. However, if I get absorbed in work, I can be totally dry. When I expect my day to be low-stress on average, and therefore low sweat, in the winter I might wear something like a ribbed cotton turtleneck. But if I do start pulsing perspiration, the cotton is slow to dry during the off portion of the cycle, and I dislike the constant damp feeling under my arms. More often you'll find me wearing a polyester blouse and wool skirt at work. The microfiber type polyesters dry quickly and look nice, and my perspiration stains wash out completely most of the time. OK, it will never be as luxurious as real silk, but the polyester stands up to perspiration and repeated washing better. But if you have sworn off real silk because of your HH keep reading. Until recently I thought I couldn't wear silk because it would get permanent sweat marks. When I'd wear any of the few 100% silk tops I owned, I'd resort to antiperspirant; even though I would not sweat as much, I'd still sweat some. But last year I discovered that it's not the sweat, it's the brew of sweat + antiperspirant that causes the permanent stains, at least for my body chemisty. The discovery: if I don't use antiP, I sweat more, but the stains wash out, even from silk! That's been a wonderful finding because it has opened up a new world to me. I love to wear silk. It dyes into lovely colors, it's cool in summer and warm in winter, and it dries relatively fast. For daily wear, however, polyester remains more durable to repeated washings. And, as you know all too well if you have HH, there is no shortage of laundry to be done. This is yet another reason to think twice about applying antiP. Maybe certain brands of antiP are better than others when it comes to staining your clothes, but using none at all works just fine for me. Give it try sometime. Some emails I received on the subject: From R68:
From WW:
From EG:
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