The article continues with average temperatures in people as it relates to sweating and the times of day. Body temperatures and menopause in women are both discussed in the begining of the second half of the article. Everyone’s inside body temperature hovers around 98.6 degrees fahrenheit with slight differences usually due to one’s genetics. The body’s temperature is set by one’s hypthalamus, which is the area in the brain that serves as one’s thermostat. People generally run a little “cooler in the morning, a little warmer in the late afternoon.”

Women run about half a degree higher after ovulation. With menopause the female thermostat becomes notoriously trigger-happy, imagining excess heat where none exists and generating unnecessary sweat.

Here the New York Times brings up the faulty inner thermostat in women at the onset of menopause that causes hyperhidrosis. Excessive sweating often does occur for women after menopause and is quite common and can add more discomfort for women in a very difficult time. But men may not have it easy as they go through the reverse of sweating symptoms.

Men may be more thermally stable, but not for long: beginning about age 60 both sexes sweat less, even if they are in good physical condition, and even if they become seriously overheated. Thus the statistics that during heat waves the elderly are at highest risk of heat stroke.

Excessive sweating is the norm with extreme heat and humid conditions and if it does not occur, it can be deadly for those with a broken and worn down inner thermostat.

Obesity and Sweating

Perspiration and weight issues are a complicated mixture according to the article’s expert, Dr. Crandall. The excess weight may of course prevent the inner organs from feeling the very hot temperatures on the skin but the reverse is also true, the sheer bulk of tissue can prevent the heat from escaping from the inner organs, causing all sorts of problems for the overweight individual.

Carrying more weight generates more metabolic heat to get rid of. That means more sweat, but research suggests that large people cannot grow more sweat glands to cope with the extra heat load. Radiation of heat from skin to air may become especially important in their heat control.

The above are small factors that usually don’t create a great difference in the amount of sweating. However, when it comes to little activities that don’t quite count as exercise, the obese tend to sweat much more than is needed. Small amounts of activity, such as walking or moving one’s arm repeatedly can generate more matabolic heat that turns into excessive sweat. The same can be said with anger, stress, nervousness and frustration which for the obese, can lead to quick bout of sweating.

Sweating, Your Emotions and Clothing

The sweatiest person on the subway platform is probably the one who just ran for a train and missed it, Dr. Crandall said.

In the above example, that person woud be stressed, hot from running and frustrated, therefore the combination of the emotional and the physical are most often the things that lead to excessive sweating bouts.

When it comes to clothing and sweating, less, more revealing clothing is not always the better choice.

In studies during World War II, researchers sat volunteers on wooden boxes in the California desert, some wearing standard olive drab military fatigues, some in light tan summer uniforms, and some “near naked.” The unclothed “soldiers” sweated about 30 percent more than the others — an indication of how much heat their unprotected skin was absorbing from the environment.

Also, dark clothing or a layored look can hide a bout of excessive sweating and may also keep you cooler. So wearing that skimpy outfit in the city won’t help your sweating, it might make you sweat even more and well, make you less safe. Vigorous fanning, pacing and/or stressing about things you
can’t control won’t help your sweating situation either.

Global Warming and Sweating

So the world’s getting hotter and well, what’s going to happen with our specie’s sweating? Well the New York Time’s experts say that our bodies will simply go into high gear to adapt and that, bacically we’ll become more efficient at distributing heat within ourselves.

The process is called heat acclimation and is routinely seen in athletes training in hot weather. At first their internal temperatures climb, they sweat profusely, lose large quantities of salt in their sweat and feel miserable. But as the days pass they sweat even more, their salt loss diminishes, both skin and internal temperatures drop, and their endurance improves.

At least in part, heat acclimation reflects bigger, juicier sweat glands: in monkeys exposed to continuous heat and humidity, individual sweat glands more than doubled in volume after only two months.

Remember that army experiment in the desert? Well the subjects in that California desert took only about a week to develop higher sweat rates, low pulse rates and low rectal temperatures. The subjects also reportedly could work more comfortably and with a better sense of “well-being” after a week in the desert excessively sweating. The subjects became “desertworthy” in the words of the scientists who ran the experiments.

Dr. Crandall points out that global warming is most likely to be a less of a change and less thermally dramatic for the individual person than say a person moving from “Canada to Florida.” Said persons who would perform such a move will eventually and most likely quickly develop larger, more efficient sweat glands and of course, slightly moister skin.

Sweating, the Future and Technology

The world will indeed become a sweatier place if nothing is done about global warming and nerds, scientists and engineers are getting prepared. A few years ago, a team of the previous, nerds, scientists and engineers at the United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado finished work on a dummy or mannequin, if you will, christend “Adam,” that actually perspires like a human and of course, can complain like one as well.

Adam’s slim carbon frame is covered with 120 separate temperature-sensing and sweating zones; water seeps from an interior two-quart reservoir out through his porous skin. He is wirelessly connected to a computer whose software forms his hypothalamus. Other software based on human reactions to a range of temperatures provides estimates of his comfort in various situations.

Adam was devised to help reduce automobile fuel consumption by evaluating ways to limit air-conditioner use. Fully dressed in a car parked in the hot sun, he gets as wet on his back and rear end as any human driver, and just as irritable. Programmers can also rev up his metabolic rate to provide a good, sweaty simulation of road rage, said one of his creators, John Rugh, a senior mechanical engineer.

This expensive dummy as helped decide what clothes to put on astronauts underneath their spacesuits and devices. Adam has also helped improve the conditions of soldiers who are injured in hot or warm environments. Ironically enough, this dummy that complains, is, well, currently unemployed and “looking for other work mimicking the human experience in temperature extremes,” Mr. Rugh said.

All and all, a well written and entertaining article on sweating…

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Sweat is our interior coolant, part of a uniquely human biologic machine. The machine drips and occasionally stalls: long waits on torpid platforms can inspire glum reflections on how it will hold up as the planet heats up. But experts counsel optimism: the system is sturdy, adjustable and even reproducible by engineers working to make our future sweaty selves more comfortable.

Indeed, for those of us who have hyperhidrosis, this interior coolant seems to come from a giant, unlimited tempermental sweat reservoir inside. Excessive sweating sufferers tolerance for heat isn’t the issue, as hyperhidrosis causes the body to sweat in all circumstances accross all types of people. Overheating is only one cause among many for excessive sweating…

But we have little tolerance for even brief overheating: the brain malfunctions with six or seven degrees of fever, and an internal temperature of 110, barely a dozen degrees above normal, is often cited as the upper limit compatible with life. So a good internal air-conditioner is essential, both to dissipate the heat generated by the body’s metabolism and to relieve the heat absorbed from miserable summer weather.

The trigger for hyperhidrosis sufferers is broken and the safety lock, is unfortunately turned off. So the excessive sweating is unpredictable, however, often times it occurs during stress. The New York Times article goes further into the history of sweating and is a rather interesting read.

“It is plain old unglamorous sweat that has made humans what they are today,” writes the evolutionary anthropologist Nina G. Jablonski in her recent book “Skin.” “Without plentiful sweat glands keeping us cool with copious sweat, we would still be clad in the thick hair of our ancestors, living largely apelike lives.”

Fur inhibits sweat-induced cooling, and furry animals generally have other ways to lose heat. In humans, Dr. Jablonski argues, sweat glands evolved as body hair vanished, allowing optimal cooling of the enlarging hominid brain and an active lifestyle even in the blazing sun.

So some time after we humans oozed out of the primordial pool and started to crawl, we developed sweating after we lost our fur. Of course, unless you believe that the earth is only some 16,000 years old and we we’re all made from mud and magic, then our sweating was just designed into existence to serve us and of course, sometimes annoy us, like the new testament versus the old, rathful testament.

Humdity and Sweating

Ever notice that even though it’s not that hot but a little bit humid, but yet, you sweat a lot? If you suffer from hyperhidrosis this situation could even be worse as the humidity wil either trigger an excessive sweating bout or worsen a sweating instance.

Humidity reduces evaporation and makes everyone sweatier. A breeze enhances evaporation and makes skin cooler (unless the air is so hot the body absorbs its heat instead). Dehydration markedly reduces sweat production. So does sunburn.

Sweating Glands and Sweating

This is the interesting part that we’ve never heard of…

But individual sweat patterns still vary enormously. Age, sex, genes, weight and shape play a role, said Craig Crandall, a thermoregulation expert at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital, both in Dallas. So does nonexercise activity, and so, according to a pivotal set of sweat studies done during World War II, does clothing, although not in the way one might predict.

Some people have fewer than two million sweat glands; some have as many as four million. Heavy sweaters may have glands five times average size; their big glands are more sensitive to nerve stimuli and make more sweat.

We never heard the that heavy sweaters have larger sweat glands and possibly more sweat glands in general. So does that mean the size and the amount of sweat glands could possibly be linked to hyperhidrosis? And if it somehow is, then why hasn’t anyone heard of this fact? You’d think it’d be in Wikipedia or something. Is there any research on this? We’ve never heard of gland qualities and amounts being linked to hyperhidrosis. Inquiring excessive sweaters want to know!

We’ll continue with our analysis of the New York Times sweating article with the next post…

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