There are a number of individuals on this planet, like me, who suffer from insanely sweaty palms and feet. This phenomenon, if we can call it that, creates so much inconveniences such as:
- not being able to wear stilettos/slippers since your feet will always slide forward;
- wearing footwear without socks can cause blisters since your sweat will cause you to slide to and from in it;
- having a difficult time filling out forms, exams, etc, since your palms soak up the paper;
- feeling embarrassed to shake hands since your hands are so "icky" and wet;
- looking tense when your not, since sweat is an indicator of looking tense;
- smelly feet...for those who like wearing closed shoes and therefore you get worried about removing your shoes in times that you have to and you didn't expect to;
- limit of job opportunities...e.g.....it's pretty dangerous to be an electrician....and....what if it's your dream to be a casino card dealer?!;
- you'll often have butter fingers in sports; and
- more, which you can feel free to tell me and I will ad to this list.
How can we stop this? The most common advices are to wear cotton socks/gloves, carry and handkerchief with you all the time, change footwear every now and then, always have clean footwear, avoid wearing rubber footwear, stick to rubber footwear. How boring!!! This limits ones choice of footwear! Besides, who has find nice, pretty, and sexy looking leather stilettos? I haven't yet. If one knows of a shop that makes them....please....inform me. That will be extremely fantastic. Also, why would one want to wear gloves all the time? You wouldn't want to look like a mime everyday!!! I've heard of a simple household remedy that can solve such a phenomenon. This is through the use of tea that many individuals enjoy drinking everyday. Below is the procedure:
1. Boil five tea bags (black tea preferably) in a quart of water for at least 10 minutes, or longer than you would normally if you were to drink the tea. This is to extract all of the tannic in the tea.
2. Pour the solution into a 2 containers. One should fit both your feet. The other should fit both your hands.
3. When the solution s cool enough for you to stick you feet and hands in, keep them in there for at least 30 minutes at least once everyday for two weeks. You can do this while watching TV so that time will fly by.
4. Dry your hands and feet in a clean towel. Make sure you remove the stains that can be caused by the tea. You wouldn't want to have feet and hand color that is different to the rest of your body. This might be a worse problem than the sweaty feet and hands.
5. After 2 weeks, you can do this every other day, until you wouldn't have to do it as frequently anymore.
Why tea? Well, tea contains tannic acid, which is responsible for its antiperspirant action (The People's Pharmacy 1999) , can even help prevent blisters (Wikipedia 2008), and even remove the stink.
References
Sally aka Fixpert (2006) Pound: The Sweaty Palm Handshake, Available from: http://www.fixpert.com/artwork/sweaty-foosball-palms/, [Accessed 13 June 2008].
The People's Pharmacy (1999) Tea For Sweaty Palms and Soles, Available from: http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/archives/home_remedies/tea_for_sweaty_palms_and_soles.php, [Accessed 1 June 2008].
Wikipedia (2008) Tannic Acid, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannic_acid, [Accessed 1 June 2008].
