“I ain’t worried, doing me tonight. A little sweat ain’t never hurt nobody,” Beyoncé sang in her 2006 hit “Get Me Bodied.”
That may be hard to believe when you’re drenched before a big presentation or peeling off workout clothes after a cycling class, but Beyoncé is right.
Not only does a little sweat not hurt you, it’s a necessary bodily function and there’s a lot more that goes into it than you may realize.
The human body has two different types of sweat glands
1. Eccrine
These sweat glands help the body cool off by producing a clear, water sweat that evaporates and prompts heat loss. This is the perspiration pouring out of you during your cycling class. “Sweating is our body’s way of maintaining balance with our temperature, or something that is called thermal-regulation,” said Dr. Neil Gokal, a Las Vegas primary care physician in family medicine. “It helps keep our body at the right temperature, especially if we start to get overheated.”
2. Apocrine
This type of perspiration is stimulated by nerves and produces a thicker fluid that creates body odor when it reacts to bacteria on the skin. It’s brought on by being nervous and is most common in your armpits, scalp and groin.
Tips to stop the stink
• Wear breathable clothes, especially in the hotter months.
• Change out of your workout clothes after the gym.
• Reapply your deodorant or antiperspirant.
• Cut back on Ma’s garlic bread.
Where do we sweat?
All over the body but “sweating occurs most commonly in the palms of your hand, soles of your feet and underarms — that’s where most of our sweat glands are located,” Gokal said. “And it occurs daily, anytime we may have an increase or a rise in emotion, stress can do it, certain foods or drinks like alcohol or spicy foods do it.”
Can you prevent it?
Sweating is a part of the body’s nervous system and happens automatically. There’s nothing that you can do to control it, said Gokal. “The thing to remember is that sweating is very natural, normal and healthy. It’s a way that your body maintains a safe and healthy body temperature, so avoiding sweating—even though we’d all enjoy and prefer that—is probably not a good thing,” Gokal said.
Antiperspirant vs. Deodorant
Remember the apocrine glands? They’re most concentrated in your armpits and are the culprits for body odor in that region. But if you’re reaching for antiperspirants to combat the smell, you’re reaching for the wrong personal hygiene item. While many people may use them interchangeably, there is a difference between antiperspirant and deodorant. Antiperspirant stops the body from sweating, but it’s deodorant that stops the smell. Antiperspirants work by plugging the apocrine glands with chemicals like aluminum that prevent the sweat from feeding the bacteria on your skin. Deodorant works by targeting and killing the bacteria. “Sweat itself does not smell,” Gokal said. “It may be affected by what’s in and around those glands. Certain types of lotions like body lotions, perfumes, deodorizers that you have in that area can create a different smell.”
How to get sweat stains out of your favorite T-shirt
The chemical reaction between the salts in your sweat and the ingredients in your antiperspirant, most commonly aluminum, are what leads to yellow stains on your favorite white shirt. Applying a 1:1:1 mixture of baking soda, water and hydrogen peroxide directly to the stain with a toothbrush will remove it.
Another tip? Drying your whites in the sun will keep them brighter and act as nature’s bleach.
What else can your sweat tell you?
What you eat
• Pungent foods such as garlic, consumed in large quantities for an extended period of time, can affect the smell of your sweat. “It comes through the pores, not just the sweat glands,” Gokal said.
• Spicy foods can also prompt perspiration by stimulating heat receptors and tricking your brain into believing it needs to cool your body.
• Meat eaters: Men who abstained from eating meat for two weeks had a more pleasant and sexy body odor than their meat-eating counterparts, said women who participated in a study conducted by Researchers at Charles University in Prague.
Your fitness level
The more physically active you are, the more you tend to sweat, because your body is producing heat at a higher level than those who are less physically fit than you, Gokal said. You may also start sweating earlier in your workout.
Your caffeine consumption
Caffeine stimulations your nervous system, so if you’re a big coffee drinker, you may sweat more.
Your hormone levels
Hormone fluctuations, from pregnancy, imbalances or menopause, can cause you to sweat.
Fun Facts:
• A drop of sweat is 99 percent water and one percent traces of urea or natural acids found in the body like vitamin C or lactic acid.
• Sweat itself has no smell. It isn’t until the sweat interacts with bacteria present on your skin that it begins to stink.
• Nobody can sweat to death, but not sweating can be fatal.
• Each of your feet has 250,000 sweat glands.
• Often confused for sweat, hippos secrete a red fluid that acts as a water repellant to prevent them from getting waterlogged, an antibiotic to soothe dry skin or sunburn, and a moisturizer. It’s not actually considered sweat because it’s not released to cool their bodies.
This story originally appeared in the Las Vegas Weekly.