What I heard at the campus gym the other day

[ElPietro]

Sweating is genetic and doesn't really mean all that much. Wearing a sweat shirt is ok when you are working out just to keep your body warm, so your body doesn't need to divert as much energy to keeping you warm. If you take long breaks during your workout sessions this can be advantageous...but trying to sweat for the purposes of weight loss is pointless as Iron has said, and can be dangerous, as you can dehydrate/overheat and pass out.

I sweat pretty easily so it's not a problem, but I've seen other guys that need to get prescribed medication to induce sweating. Your glands (pituitary I believe) is what controls sweating, and is genetically determined.

[Serpent]

However, sweating can be good in as much as it helps to remove toxins from the body, hence the sauna and its benefits. Combining the sauna principle with working out strikes me as bloody strange though.

[IronFist]

Originally posted by Serpent
However, sweating can be good in as much as it helps to remove toxins from the body, hence the sauna and its benefits.

Hmmm...

IronFist

[rubthebuddha]

iron?

you disagree?

i've always thought that the body had three ways to release toxins -- bathroom duties, breathing and sweating.

wanna hear more on this.

[Serpent]

Originally posted by IronFist


Hmmm...

IronFist

Yeah, Mr Vague Bugger, what rubthebudha said. What's your point?

I don't mind being wrong, if you think I am.

[IronFist]

Hmmm...

Well, I could be wrong, but I don't think the purpose of sweating is to release toxins. Perhaps toxins are released, as the armpits of some of my old workout shirts are rather yellow, but I don't think that having toxins in the body causes sweating. The yellow could also be caused by the salt in the sweat attracting bacteria. I'm pretty confident this is why you smell when you sweat. As far as I know, the sweat itself doesn't stink, but bacteria is either attracted to it, or it gets stuck in it, or something. That's what smells.

I am 99% sure that the only reason the body sweats is to help it cool down. When you get hot from exercising, you sweat. When it's hot outside you sweat. When you get a fever, you sweat.

If it's freezing, and you're full of toxins, you do not sweat.

I've never really studied sweating tho, so maybe someone here has more info.

I've also been told that sweating in a sauna doesn't purify you or anything, just makes you dehydrated.

IronFist

[KC Elbows]

In relation to another thread, and not to be gross, but when I smoked, my sweat stank completely differently than when I didn't, and it wasn't contact with the smoke. I would take a shower, work out, not have any cigarrettes, and stink kind of like chemicals, which was weird.

The same with some pops, especially the brown ones. I don't drink them, as whenever I have them, my skin gets particularly oily and my hair gets dull looking from the oils.

However, I recognize that this is completely anecdotal, and I'm not trying to say that releasing toxins is the purpose of sweating. At the same time, water tends to move stuff when it is moving, and I would imagine this includes when we sweat.

And if you want in depth discussions of BM, just call.

[DelicateSound]

KC is right. Same applies for booze somehow.

[rubthebuddha]

iron,

i wholly agree with the cooling thing, but i don't believe that's all of it. and no one was saying that toxin excretion was the sole reason for sweating. sweating is multi-purpose. in the old days, it also was a determining factor in lots of things. we could tell who was aroused, afraid, etc. with the invention of speed stick, that's less of an issue.

but cooling and toxins are the biggest reasons. think on this: compare a fat ******* who just works out. his dorito- and pabst-ridden body will usually smell far worse than the healthy-eating bugger on the treadmill next to him.

of course, this assumes that both people are regular showerers. hippies eat healthy, but good god, the hygiene.

[popsider]

Yes the smell from sweat is caused by bacteria breaking down/eating the sweat - probably the waste products produced by that process.

Of course it is possible that you would smell because your body gets rid of toxis too - not sure about how important the role of sweating is in getting rid of toxins but it does have some role. Primarily it is for temperature control though. Dogs can't sweat and that is why they pant with their tongue out.

Excessive sweating can be linked to blushing - I know some people that really suffer can have an op to cure it - they cut some nerve or something.

[ElPietro]

While I readily admit that I honestly have no clue on how toxins may be eliminated from the body through actions of sweat glands, I can recall that in the past for many near-lethal poisons, such as tarantula bites, it's recommended in some older text that you dance and work up a sweat to either neutralize or expunge the poison from the body.

This may or may not be based on fact, but I believe it was an encyclopedia I red this in when I was a kid. I think there's even a dance called the tarantula designed to work up a sweat in case of being bitten.

Again, this could be all BS but thought I'd add it in as a point of interest.

[premier]

I think you're supposed to do the exact opposite after being bitten. Getting your hart rate and metabolism up will only help the poison to spread and kill you faster. Off topic =)

btw. I read that some toxins are released in tears too. But I think that all bodily fluids are important in getting rid of toxins. Sweat, urine, tears, sperm and maybe even tallow. Remember that most of the drugs show on urine samples, because the body excretes those chemicals that way. So why not sweat too?


premier

[IronFist]

Tarantulas bite?

IronFist

[ElPietro]

Pfft! Yes tarantulas bite.

And just to prove I wasn't making that crap up here is a excerpt from a site. It was only a custom...not necessarily science. But I did read it ****it, so I am not going crazy!

Read:

Now the story. The earliest recorded case of tarentism occurred in 1370. Today we would call it an attack of acute hysteria, but down through the centuries it was seen as uncontrollable behavior resulting from the bite of a tarantula (wolf spider). The idea was that a frenzied dance, the tarentella, would produce enough perspiration to drive out the spider's poison. After hours of leaping around to the tune of exhausted musicians, the victim would collapse in a heap and wake up cured. Some years ago a writer explained the phenomenon by describing the dancers as "exact copies of the ancient priestesses of Bacchus. When the introduction of Christianity put a stop to the public exhibition of heathen rites, the Bacchantes continued their profitable profession but were obliged to offer some irrelevant explanation. The local spider best supplied their need." The unfortunate Italian wolf spider got an undeserved evil reputation a long time ago.

Tarentism, like Salem witchcraft, was psychologically contagious and spread throughout Italy for 300 years, then leaped over to Spain for a couple hundred more years, vanishing only after onlookers became suspicious that the "victims" were charlatans. Books were written about the supposed affliction, the bite itself, efficacious drugs (there weren't any), the curative nature of the dance, what happened to the spider afterward, and so on. After being bitten, it was said, one couldn't get drunk, no matter how much alcohol was imbibed. A major book on the subject, published in Paris in 1866, told it all. One description reads:

"When one is bitten.he is seized with a sort of insanity. He weeps, he dances, he trembles, cries, skips about, breaks forth into grotesque and unnatural gestures, assumes the most extravagant postures, and if he is not duly assisted and relieved after a few days of torment, will sometimes expire. If he survives, at the return of the season in which he was bitten, his madness returns."