Sweat had a bad name, and only a few of us see it for what it is: one of the most important defense mechanisms of our body. Sweating, also known as perspiration, is the cooling and detoxifying system that keeps us safe.
Sweat’s composition is mostly water. But it is mixed with minerals such as sodium, calcium, and magnesium, and also with urea and lactic acid. This is why, in the summer or when we exercise, because we abundantly perspire it is recommended to consume not just water, but also fruits and vegetables. They help maintain the balance of minerals we lose through sweat.
Cool sweat
Our body has up to two million sweat glands spread all over it. As they secrete the liquid, we call sweat through the skin, the body temperature, and the exterior environment help it to evaporate. Then, due to the evaporative cooling effect, the blood in the vessels close to the skin cools down.
The cooled blood then runs to the rest of the body and thermoregulates it. Humans and horses are the two mammals that produce the highest amounts of sweat to cool down.
Sweat and toxin elimination
The detoxifying mechanism of sweat is a bit more complicated, and it has subsidiary systems.
One of them is responsible for skin flora. Through perspiration, the skin gets the necessary compounds, bacteria among them, to keep its flora healthy and to metabolize the body odor.
Although we think we don’t need that anymore, because we’ve passed the stage of sniffing, we’d be surprised to know that we still instinctively act on smell and that it still has a saying in our sexuality.
Another subsidiary system of perspiration is losing the harmful compounds of the body. Bad bacteria and even artificial toxicity with mixtures such as polychlorinated biphenyls, Bisphenol A, and heavy metals can be reduced with the help of sweat.
When it comes to the pathogens that the body needs to evacuate, the sweating acts like a dreamcatcher. The molecule attaches to the sweat and lets it carry it in the outside world.
The significance of sweating
Polychlorinated biphenyls are banned organic chlorine compounds due to their environmental toxicity, and persistency in organic pollution. Through use and disposal, polychlorinated biphenyls have polluted all the systems of the biosphere and the human body, resulting in diseases such as endocrine disruption, melanoma, hypertension, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Bisphenol A is an organic synthetic compound known as the precursor of plastics. It is also known for migrating from its artificial environment into the human body, as it was discovered late in the 1990s. The results of Bisphenol A intoxication are fetal chromosome anomalies, endocrine disruption, cytokine release, epigenetic modification, and oxidative stress.
Heavy metals are metals with atomic numbers such as mercury, lead, bismuth. Manganese, cobalt and nickel, copper, zinc, selenium, silver, antimony, and thallium. When intoxicated with them, the body is exposed to central nervous system damage, carcinogens, endocrine disruption, congenital disorders, degenerative neurological processes akin to Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.
When it comes to getting yourself free form toxins, induced sweat is highly recommended. Either in a sauna or a gym, sweat it out of your system!
