Discover the fun, fascinating, funky truth about all things sweaty.
If you totaled up Christopher Bergland’s athletic achievements, they would be the equivalent of running around the world four times, biking to the moon and back, and swimming across the Atlantic and home again.
The tenacious endurance athlete holds a Guinness World Record for running — 153.76 miles on a treadmill in a single day — and is a three-time Triple Ironman champion, completing the über-demanding 7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike ride, and 78.6-mile run in a record-breaking time of 38 hours and 46 minutes.
Needless to say, Bergland knows a thing or two about sweat. “When I finished the Triple Ironman, I felt like I’d sweated out every last electrolyte,” he says. Fortunately, Bergland, author of The Athlete’s Way: Sweat and The Biology of Bliss, gets inspiration from perspiration.
“I love to sweat,” says Bergland. “In my mind, sweat equals bliss.”
Sweat is a common partner to exercise, whether it’s the rivulets of sweat that accompany an intense weightlifting circuit or the droplets of perspiration that pitter-patter onto our yoga mats during downward dog.
But outside of the gym, we rarely celebrate perspiration as a positive or desirable thing.
If we think of sweat at all, we consider it an embarrassing bodily function, a sometimes-stinky annoyance, a socially undesirable bit of physiology.
On an exciting first date, palms can get sweaty just as that special someone reaches for your hand. At a job interview, underarms can get swampy from the first tough question. Even in the context of a great workout, sweating buckets can be less than comfortable.
If it weren’t for sweat cooling our bodies down and flushing our toxins out, we’d all perish much sooner.
“Breaking a sweat can create some inconvenience,” acknowledges Bergland, “but the payback is always going to be worth it.”
Why? Because sweat serves a purpose — as a barometer of effort, as an indicator of stress, as a measure of health, and also as a literal lifesaver: If it weren’t for sweat cooling our bodies down and flushing our toxins out, we’d all perish much sooner.
Sweat is a near-universal experience. But how many of us really understand how perspiration works, and why? Here are the fascinating essentials you need to know — the cut-and-dried facts about all things sweaty.
Why do we sweat?
Like it or not, we can’t live without sweat. Perspiration keeps the body from overheating and short-circuiting. When your core temperature rises much higher than 98.6 degrees F, the hypothalamus — your brain’s thermostat — signals the exocrine system’s sweat glands to activate. Perspiration rises to the skin’s surface through pores and evaporates when it hits the air, keeping you cool.
We often sweat during exercise, but plenty of other things can prompt sweating, like a hot summer day or situations that make us feel anxious, embarrassed, or mad.
What is sweat, anyway?
You’ve no doubt noticed that sweat can taste salty. Perspiration is mostly water, with small amounts of fat and electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and calcium. Its makeup differs depending on which kind of sweat gland it comes from: eccrine or apocrine.
Eccrine glands are found all over the body but are most highly concentrated on the forehead, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet. These glands produce a clear, watery fluid when you exercise or are too toasty.
If your feet are stinky, it may be due to an overgrowth of the micrococcus sedentarius bacteria, which grow when feet are enclosed all day.
Don’t blame eccrine sweat for body odor though — this type of perspiration doesn’t smell. If your feet are stinky, it may be due to an overgrowth of the micrococcus sedentarius bacteria, which grow when feet are enclosed in socks and shoes all day.
Apocrine glands, on the other hand, produce a milky fluid that is responsible for B.O. They are found primarily in areas abundant in hair follicles — such as the underarms and genital area — and expel a thick, oily fluid containing fats and proteins. Apocrine sweat doesn’t innately smell bad, but when it interacts with the millions of bacterial organisms (such as staphylococci or corynebacteria) that live on the skin’s surface, it produces a telltale odor.
How much do we sweat?
More than you might think: According to the National Institutes of Health, an average adult can produce up to a quart of sweat per day. Children don’t start reaching those levels until puberty.
How many sweat glands do we have?
We are born with between 2 million and 4 million sweat glands located all over our bodies — except a few places like our lips and ear canals.
Why do some people sweat excessively?
About 3 percent of the world’s population has hyperhidrosis, which causes someone to sweat a lot — four to five times as much as the average person.
“Primary hyperhidrosis, while not life threatening, is certainly life altering,” says Lisa Pieretti, executive director and cofounder of the International Hyperhidrosis Society. “The extreme embarrassment as well as actual functional impairment can be devastating. But thankfully, we see great improvement in the treatments being offered and the awareness of both the public and medical communities.”
While primary hyperhidrosis appears to have a genetic component, secondary hyperhidrosis can result from an underlying condition, such as lymphoma, hyperthyroidism, or diabetes, or as a side effect of medication. Treatments include Botox injections, iontophoresis, and even surgery, though some doctors suggest that hyperhidrosis can be vastly improved with food-intolerance testing and by the removal of any offending foods from the diet.
What are the health benefits of sweating?
Aside from its temperature-regulating effect, sweating has been shown in recent studies to excrete toxins, including arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium, as well as rev up circulation and clear the pores.
Researchers have found that exercise is not the only way to reap these rewards — saunas can be a part of your sweat-inducing regimen. Infrared saunas, in particular, which heat the body without warming the surrounding air, can provide such benefits as improved circulation and pain relief. Scientists are exploring the use of this therapy in treating health issues like rheumatoid arthritis and high blood pressure.
Still, many experts contend that perspiration’s key benefit is preventing overheating — not ridding our bodies of unwanted pollution — noting that sweat’s detoxification powers are mild compared with that of our kidneys and livers.
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