Health & Fitness Without Sweat...I Don't Think So!

With all the anti-perspirant ads one might think that the natural act of sweating was to be avoided at all costs. This mis-information has contributed to an aversion to sweat even when it is clearly in your best interests to do so.

This website will attempt to dispell the myth created by the cosmetics and 'personal grooming' industry that sweating is to be avoided at all cost. Of course the key word here is cost...the cost of billions of dollars spent every year by consumers trying to stop a perfectly normal bodily function.

Sweating is as essential to our health as eating and breathing. It accomplishes three important things: rids the body of wastes, regulates the critical temperature of the body at 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F), and helps keep the skin clean and pliant.

The oldest know medical document, the Ayurveda, appeared in Sanskrit in 568 BC and considered sweating so important to health that it prescribed the sweat bath and thirteen other methods of inducing sweat.

Throughout history physicians have extolled the medicinal value of the sweat bath in its various forms such as the Finnish sauna, Russian banai, Islamic hammam, or the American Indian sweatlodge. In Finland where the sauna has been a mainstay for over 1,000 years it is estimated that there is one sauna for every seven people!

Sitting in the heat of the sun, working out at the gym, giving a presentation at work - all of these activities can make you sweat. It's both natural and healthy to sweat under these conditions. Another important benefit of dry saunas is that they have been shown to lower blood pressure over time as well.

In fact, when you're exposed to heat, exercising strenuously or under extreme emotional stress, you may lose several quarts of fluid in perspiration. A pea-sized bead of sweat can cool nearly 1 liter (about 1 quart) of blood 1 degree Fahrenheit.

Sometimes, however, the complex mechanism of perspiration goes awry, resulting in either excessive perspiration (hyperhidrosis) or little or no perspiration (anhidrosis). Excessive sweating can be embarrassing and may sometimes signal a more serious health problem. Anhidrosis is potentially life-threatening.

Yet for most people, sweating is simply a minor nuisance. The odor that sometimes occurs when you sweat is probably more upsetting. Although perspiration is basically odorless, it can take on an unpleasant smell when it comes into contact with bacteria on your skin.

If you find this offensive, you're not alone - people worldwide go to great lengths trying to avoid the embarassement of body order. Clean skin does not need chemical deodorants. Sweat is crucial to clean skin.

Sweat also has the function of being a judicious garbage collector. During a 15-minute sauna, sweating can perform the heavy metal excretion that would take the kidneys 24 working hours. Ninety-nine percent of what sweat brings to the surface of the skin is water, but the remaining one percent is mostly undesirable wastes.

Excessive salt carried by sweat is generally believed to be beneficial for cases of mild hypertension. Some mental hospitals use saunas in their rehabilitation programs to pacify patients.

A metabolic by-product, urea, if not disposed of regularly, can cause headaches, nausea and, in extreme cases, vomiting, coma and even death. Sweating is such an effective de-toxifier that some physicians recommend home saunas to supplement kidney machines.

Sweat also draws out lactic acid which causes stiff muscles and contributes to general fatigue. Sweat flushes out toxic metals such as copper, lead, zinc and mercury which the body absorbs in polluted environments.

Because it eliminates, the skin is sometimes called the "third kidney." It is far more complex than the kidney or any other organ except the brain. It is composed of blood vessels, nerve endings, vessels for carrying lymph, pigmentation, oil glands, hair follicles, cells that waterproof and deny entry to bacteria and, of course, the tubular, coiled sweat glands.

It is so important that death by accumulated poisons occurs in a matter of hours if the skin, and its sweat passages, are smothered.