FUN FACT Be A Sweaty Betty

Sweating is not just about B.O. and ruining white shirts. It is actually your genius-body’s way of cooling you down. What’s more, sweat is designed to improve your sex-life! There are 2 different types of sweat glands: eccrine and apocrine.

Eccrine sweat glands are all over your body and are especially concentrated in your hands, feet, and forehead. These glands flush directly through pores on the skin. Eccrine sweat glands play a huge role in cooling the body through a process called evaporative cooling. Eccrine sweat is mostly water. The heat of the skin enters the sweat water droplet. Then, when the the hot sweat droplet meets the cooler, drier surrounding air on the surface of your skin, the droplet evaporates. This results in dissipated heat. When the surrounding air is humid, there is already a lot of water vapor in the air. This makes it harder for the sweat droplet to evaporate and thus harder for the body to cool down. That's why you often hear people complain in summer, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity!" Eccrine sweat is also associated with the sympathetic nervous system (the fight of flight response). That is why many of us sweat when we are nervous or angry.

Apocrine sweat glands are located in the armpits and genital region only. These glands are connected to hair follicles and flush sweat into the hair follicle shaft. (You may have heard of people getting laser treatments to decrease sweat production in their arm pits. The laser attacks the dark pigment of the hair shaft which also damages the sweat gland.) Interestingly, apocrine sweat glands do not start secreting until a person hits puberty. This is connected to the concept of pheromones and attraction for mating. Apocrine sweat contains fatty substances and proteins. It is milky or yellowish in color. This is why it is so many of us get yellow stains in the armpits of our white t-shirts over time. Apocrine sweat is the main reason people wear deodorant. Our body is covered with healthy bacteria. The healthy bacteria eats the apocrine sweat particles, and the end product is body odor.

As you can see, sweat plays an important role in your health. The next time you are tempted to hide your sweat, remember how incredible your body is. You worked hard for that sweat. It shows that your body is healthy and working hard. Rock that sweaty shirt like a badge of honor.