Excessive Sweating Treatment Blog

After a long recess, which we apologize for, we’re continuing our New York Times sweaty article analysis.

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…

Comments(4)