Perspiration may be biologically useful, but it also tends to pour from your pores at inopportune times. We tell you how to stay dry.
The Basic Biology
"Bodily functions such as digestion and muscle movements generate heat, and we perspire constantly to keep things chilled. So while you're busy patting down your sweat 'stache, your system is on AC overdrive, sending and fielding a complex network of cooldown codes. Here's what's happening in your body:
1. In response to scorching temps or frazzled nerves, your brain fires a sweat signal down your spinal cord, triggering the release of a chemical called acetylcholine.
2. The acetylcholine shoots from your spinal cord into thousands of nerves that travel to your legs, arms, chest, face, and back.
3. The acetylcholine arrives at your 4 million eccrine glands (wedged between your fat and skin layers) and prompts them to start filtering fluid from your bloodstream to produce sweat.
4. Your eccrine glands then pump out the stuff—99 percent water, 1 percent salt—through your skin's millions of pores.
5. The released sweat helps regulate your core temperature, much like splashing yourself with cold water helps you cool off. Most sweat starts to evaporate immediately, but if your glands are working overtime, it'll pool up on your skin. Or, if you’re dressed, it’ll seep into your clothes.
Ways to Stay Dry
Even people who think they're as dry as a desert are constantly losing water, says Dee Anna Glaser, M.D., a professor of dermatology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. "Just the act of breathing makes us sweat." On average, we perspire enough each day to fill a shot glass (1.5 ounces), and that's before working out or otherwise exerting ourselves. Because the highest concentrations of sweat glands are in our armpits, forehead, soles, palms, and scalp, those tend to be our dampest parts. If you're a real drippy mess, you can thank Mom and Dad; DNA regulates the actual amount we sweat, says Glaser."
"Bodily functions such as digestion and muscle movements generate heat, and we perspire constantly to keep things chilled. So while you're busy patting down your sweat 'stache, your system is on AC overdrive, sending and fielding a complex network of cooldown codes. Here's what's happening in your body:
1. In response to scorching temps or frazzled nerves, your brain fires a sweat signal down your spinal cord, triggering the release of a chemical called acetylcholine.
2. The acetylcholine shoots from your spinal cord into thousands of nerves that travel to your legs, arms, chest, face, and back.
3. The acetylcholine arrives at your 4 million eccrine glands (wedged between your fat and skin layers) and prompts them to start filtering fluid from your bloodstream to produce sweat.
4. Your eccrine glands then pump out the stuff—99 percent water, 1 percent salt—through your skin's millions of pores.
5. The released sweat helps regulate your core temperature, much like splashing yourself with cold water helps you cool off. Most sweat starts to evaporate immediately, but if your glands are working overtime, it'll pool up on your skin. Or, if you’re dressed, it’ll seep into your clothes.
Ways to Stay Dry
Even people who think they're as dry as a desert are constantly losing water, says Dee Anna Glaser, M.D., a professor of dermatology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. "Just the act of breathing makes us sweat." On average, we perspire enough each day to fill a shot glass (1.5 ounces), and that's before working out or otherwise exerting ourselves. Because the highest concentrations of sweat glands are in our armpits, forehead, soles, palms, and scalp, those tend to be our dampest parts. If you're a real drippy mess, you can thank Mom and Dad; DNA regulates the actual amount we sweat, says Glaser."
That's it? They said they would, but they didn't tell us (me) how to stay dry! That's probably because they have no idea. Or maybe they are suggesting that I carry a shot glass around with me so I can "fill it up" after a good day of sweating. I've determined it's a plague for only some people, although it is clear by this report we all do sweat. But not all of us show it. Some people sweat quietly, lady-like and refined. But I have to sweat with a loudspeaker, like a construction worker under the hot sun.
Thank God for DNA. It proves people are either murderers or innocent, and look - it also determines how much we will end up sweating. Now that's really profound scientific knowledge. So the next time someone looks at me strange when there is water dribbling down my head and creating puddles in my neck area, I will just blame it on my parents.
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