Is Sweating Bad?

Who in this world likes sweating? We all seem to dislike sweating because it may make us sticky or sometimes itchy or even smelly! But does our sweat deserve only our hate and disgust? Rather it is one of the prime features that makes us Humans the most superior species on this planet!

What makes us dislike Sweat?

Let’s address this first. Most of the times when our body gets heated, we sweat. So our mind links or correlates sweat with heat. The heat is undesirable and may be damaging so we don’t like the heat(in most situations). But the purpose of sweating lies in Cooling the body down. But our Conscious mind mostly does not note down this parasymapthetic action and so sweating remains unthanked!

We also don’t like that after we sweat we feel Sticky. But Sweat is mostly water.(sweat can also have some sticky substance but it’s relatively negligible). The locations of sebaceous glands and sweat glands of forehead are quiet close. And we may misinterpret sebum with sweat. But actual sticky sweat can be a symptom of some serious skin diseases too.

And the most embarrassing thing about sweat can be it’s smell and that is the main reason people dislike Sweat. Now, sweat glands are of 2 types. Those in palms, soles and forehead and almost all over the body are Eccrine Sweat glands (ESG). Don’t blame ESG if your feet smell. The secretion from this gland is clear, watery fluid. The smell is due to micrococcus bacteria that grow if feet remains enclosed in shoes and socks all day. While the sweat glands in hairy areas like armpits and groin have Apocrine Sweat glands (ASG). These produce a milky, thick oily secretion that contains little fats and proteins. It does not innately smell but produces a bad odour when it reacts with the millions of bacteria that live on our skin.

Stress Sweat

While sweat is an indicator of many physical aspects of fitness, it is also greatly affected by Stress level. The Sweat produced under stress is produced by Apocrine glands and is stinkiest. It may be triggered due to tge Adrenaline rush.

Evolutionary Importance

When it comes to superiority of humans over other animals, the reason for it is generally attributed to brain and intelligence etc. But what remains neglected is sweat. The brain is not a feature unique to humans..

Early animals survived by Hunting. When a predator like tiger chased a human, a tiger could run fast but it could not run for longer than a minute or two. Because it’s body would heat up so much and it would need to stop as it did not have mechanism of sweating to cool down. Same way if a human had to chase a prey, the prey would have to stop sooner due to its inability to cool down. Thus even though Humans were Not the fastest, they had this Blessing of Sweating which helped humans become both- superior Predator and a prey. And this is what, according to ‘Survival of the Fittest’, makes humans evolutionarily superior.

Thus Sweating can save your life if you get into a situation where you need to run to save yourself!

What makes one love Sweating?!

Most people feel most fresh and energised after a session of Sweat producing Workout. The more you workout, more muscles produce heat that is to be cooled.

Exercise creates an Adrenaline rush which creates a Fight or flight response that is helpful in certain situations but what needs to be avoided is Constant Anxiety. It can be reduced by sweating out through workout. Also, exercising produces certain neurotransmitters that boost the brain and make us feel fresh.

People that Workout regularity say that Sweating Provides them the ‘Heat’ to move more Muscle and is an important Motivation to Work out.

Other Health Benefits:

Remember being instructed to get covered all over in a blanket when you got fever?! This is suggested because Sweating causes release of certain toxins (like Arscenic, mercury and lead) from the body.

Apart from this sweating revs up circulation and clears pores.

Forensic importance

It is said that a dog can identify its master from his smell! There is a common substance in the sweat produced in different regions of the body. Dogs can identify this. But there is still a lot of research going on to make methods of identification through sweat effective.

Now, what are your opinions about sweating?!Anyways it is inevitable, but anyways I would love it if I could change even one persons’s negative feelings about anything, into some positivity!

Do comment your thoughts below! It always means a lot!!

I would like to end it with a wonderful Gujarati poem on Sweat.

ક્યાંક સિધ્ધિમાં ન્હાય પરસેવો
ક્યાંક જળમાં તણાય પરસેવો

કામમાં આવી જાય પરસેવો
નવરા હો તોય થાય પરસેવો

દુનિયા ઝાકળ કહે છે એને પણ
દોસ્ત ખીલવામાં થાય પરસેવો

ફક્ત ભીનું જ હોય તો સૂકવું
બોલ તડકે મૂકાય પરસેવો?

ચમકે પરસેવાથી જ જીવન પણ
તો શું? પહેરી ફરાય પરસેવો?

આજનો કાલે કામ લાગે છે
તેથી ભેગો કરાય પરસેવો?

આપ થોડો તો પાડો પરસેવો
તો કવિનો કળાય પરસેવો

ગૌરાંગ ઠાકર