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A lot of people hate sweating and on the other side, some people embrace it. But do you know that sweating has a great potential to benefit you in getting better health?
If you are willing to know about what are the benefits of sweating, this is the perfect place for you. Here we have covered every essential thing that you should know about sweating. Let’s get started with the most basic concept.
Why Do We Really Sweat?
Sweating is a completely natural process that helps our body to cool down. The physical therapist John Gallucci Jr., ATC, DPT, CEO of JAG-ONE physical therapy says that sweat gets released through the glands on the skin, and then it gets evaporated into the air which helps in cooling down the skin and the body.
Our body contains two types of glands:
1. Eccrine Sweat Glands – These are are the glands that are located all over the body and mostly found on the palms of your hands, forehead, and soles of your feet. They are also known as thermoregulation. Their main purpose is to keep regulating the body temperature. These glands expose directly to the skin’s surface, generate odorless and lightweight sweat.
2. Apocrine Sweat Glands – These are the sweat glands found in the areas which include lots of hair follicles such as the scalp, groin region, and armpit. All these sweat glands are meant to produce more concentrated sweat secretion and this is the type of sweat that mostly links with the odor of the body. These glands open into the hair follicles which leads to the skin’s surface.
Amazing Benefits Of Sweating
We are assuming that you are already aware of all the embarrassing parts of sweating. So here we are going to explore the most amazing benefits of sweating, which you may don’t know yet:
Benefits Of Sweating While Working out
When you perform physical exercise, your heart rate increases and your body produces heat. This leads you to sweat and when the sweat evaporates your body starts getting cool down. That’s the only benefit that you get from sweating during exercise. It keeps you away from overheating while performing the exercise. So, in simple words, sweating is a great thing throughout the exercise.
What If You Sweat Too little During Work Out?
Dehydration is the biggest reason why you are sweating too little during the workout. If you lack hydration before a workout that means you are lacking in fluids. And as you know that sweat is mainly formed of water, not having enough water in your body means your body will be unable to sweat.
If you are well hydrated and still unable to sweat then you might have a condition of hypohidrosis. In this case, you should talk to your doctor.
You can consider hypohidrosis as an inability that stops you from sweating normally. It means that your body is unable to cool itself down and it can lead to overheating. When your body is unable to regulate its temperature, it can lead to some very serious conditions. Overheating in the body can cause serious issues such as heat strokes or heat exhaustion which can be very dangerous for an individual’s life.
What if you are sweating more than normal during the workout?
It is not uncommon to sweat too much during a workout. People may sweat more than usual because of their exertion level, indoor or outdoor temperature, and the type of clothing they wear can also be a big reason.
But there are a lot of people who sweat excessively because of a condition known as hyperhidrosis.
A quick introduction to hyperhidrosis: Hyperhidrosis is a term that is used for excessive sweating or sweating more than normal. Those who have this condition, they don’t have more sweat gland than others. The sympathetic nerve which does the work of controlling sweat is oversensitive which causes sweating more than usual. Hyperhidrosis can be further divided into two parts:
- Primary Focal Hyperhidrosis: Primary hyperhidrosis is usually inherited. This has been noticed that up to 2-3 people with this condition have family records of excessive sweating. Sweating probably starts in childhood and mostly occurs on the feet, hands, underarms, head, and face.
- Secondary Hyperhidrosis: In the case of secondary hyperhidrosis, there is some other reason that causes sweating. It normally starts when a person is in adulthood. Sweating can cause in only one area of your body or all over your body.
Some conditions can lead to excessive sweating, including nervous system disorder, low level of blood sugar, thyroid problems, gout, and menopause hot flashes.
In fact, there are some other factors too that can affect how much you sweat during a workout, including:
- Gender. Men used to sweat more than women.
- Age is also a major factor. Younger people used to sweat more than adults.
- Genetics
- Humidity Level
- Body Weight
- The type of exercises you are engaging in.
In the last section of this article, we have mentioned the treatments that can help you in dealing with excessive sweating.
What Are The Benefits Of Sweating When You Are unwell?
Sweating is quite common when you are sick. It is very beneficial for regulating the temperature of your body, which can help to resist fever. But that doesn’t mean you should run to the sauna and ignore the medicine prescribed by the doctor.
Sweating is just helping you in getting recovered from the disease faster. It is helping you in getting rid of all those germs and bacteria that made you sick.
What Are The Benefits Of Sweating On Your Hair And Skin?
It might be a surprise for you but yes benefits of sweating on your hair and skin are just tremendous.
How sweat benefits your hair – When you sweat, it helps in cleaning up your hair follicles and making up the room for the new hair to grow up. It is also very helpful in opening up the pores of the scalp, clearing all the buildup inside of the pores which might be an obstacle in the growth of your hairs.
Keep in mind that sweating helps you in opening up your hair follicles to give room for the growth of the new hairs but the build-up of salty sweat is not good for your hair at all. Because that salty sweat build-up contains the lactic acid and when it gets associated with the keratin in your hair, it can produce damage.
It is an essential thing to take participate in any type of physical activity so that your scalp sweat and washing your hair after that is equally important so that any type of excess sweat doesn’t stay on your hair for a long time.
How sweat benefits your skin – Sweating is super beneficial for your skin. When you are sweating, it helps you in opening up all the pores and eliminates all the gunk that built up right under your skin. And you know what, this is the same build-up that oftentimes causes pimples on your skin.
So, in simple words, we can say that sweating naturally cleans your pores which helps you not getting ugly pimples on your fresh skin.
What Are The Benefits Of Sweating In Weight Loss?
See, sweating doesn’t help you in burning fat. It just simply help you in regulating the temperature of your body. The weight you will lose through sweating is just that water weight. When you will rehydrate yourself, the weight loss from sweating will definitely visit you again.
If you want to lose weight, you must focus on burning more calories than you are consuming. That’s why exercise plays a major role in weight loss because it is very effective for burning calories.
Are There Any Benefits Of sweating In Hot Yoga Too?
Well, it is a very big misconception that doing hot yoga or any other kind of Hot exercise assist you in burning more calories. But that is not true at all. Doing any kind of “hot” workout won’t help you in burning more calories. Doing hot yoga can be very helpful in losing your muscles and make you more flexible during the session, that’s it.
How Can You Sweat Daily And Get The Benefits Of It?
One of the best ways to sweat daily and get the benefits from it is doing exercise every day. When you will engage in physical exercise, you will sweat, simple as that. Exercising regularly will also help you in reducing anxiety and stress.
Here is another way that can also help you in sweating daily. The more time you will spend outdoors in the warm weather, the more sweat your body tends to produce. So, you should definitely try to add some outdoor activities that you can perform occasionally. Here it doesn’t mean that you have to start taking part in extreme outdoor sports. You can just easily spend some quality time in the sun to get exposed to healthy sweating.
Treatments That Can Help You IF You Are Sweating Excessively
When you are sweating excessively daily, it can be a very embarrassing thing for you. In this case, the benefits of sweating can easily be ignored. Also, it can easily ruin your social life, confidence, and career. So, if you think that sweating is becoming a problem for you, here are a few treatments that can help you:
- Weight loss and Exercise
- Meditation and Relaxation
- Botox Injections
- Nerve Blocking Medication
- Miradry Treatment
- Iontophoresis
Conclusion
Sweating is just a natural process that our body uses to cool down itself and provides tremendous benefits to us. If you notice that you are sweating more than usual or too little, you must visit your doctor.
Any queries regarding sweating? Don’t forget to mention them in the comment section.
