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What's Typical? Part 2

3 January 2009

Life has gotten in the way of me updating this site with any regularity. Recently I was talking with a few friends at a holiday party where the heat was turned up too high resulting in various degrees of sweatiness. When we compared I, of course, had the largest pit stains (oh, I'm so proud) but my friends varied from completely dry to a few small stains, one medium and my large. We started to wonder what was a "normal" level of perspiration and I remembered I had started to assemble an update on that topic for this site.

I've known for a long time that I sweat a lot, but how excessive is it? After all, everyone sweats some. Finally, an answer to my question appears at sweathelp.org.

They say, "For axillary involvement, an assessment of the sweat stains of shirts and blouses can be useful. In some cases, a sweat stain with a diameter less than 5 cm is normal. Mild hyperhidrosis can be associated with stains 5 to 10 cm in diameter and still confined to the armpit. Stains of 10 to 20 cm are seen in moderate hyperhidrosis, while stains over 20 cm reaching the waistline are common in severe hyperhidrosis."

For those of you, like me, that are stuck in the dark ages and think better in inches than centimeters, 5 cm is about 2 inches. Armed with a ruler, I headed for my closet and hamper to measure perspiration stains on clothes I had worn recently. The measurement varied quite a bit depending on the type of fabric and when I had worn the item. The smallest was 5 cm on a shirt worn at home. For blouses worn to work, where I feel more stressed, the stains were typically 14 to 18 cm across. The largest was 27 cm. OK, that puts me in the moderate to severe hyperhidrosis category, which is what I had guessed it would be. I also learned I sweat more under my right arm than the left.

Usually I sweat in bursts, with dry periods in between. I've heard this called pulse perspiration. Sometimes it is more salty than others. This combination can create multiple rings like in these pictures. All my clothes show this to some extent.

Since all those stain size numbers are difficult to visualize, I decided to try my hand at illustration. I do a fair amount of technical writing, and usually leave the artwork to the artists, but this time I tried it myself, and learned a bit about graphics editing in the process. The images below have been modified to show the four levels of hyperhidrosis, from none to severe.

Normal (how much the average person sweats):

Mild Hyperhidrosis:

Moderate Hyperhidrosis:

Severe Hyperhidrosis:

For prior stories, see the archives.