SweatIt is one of those August days when you just step outside and you can hardly breathe because of the heat plus the humidity. Your body sweats profusely but it doesn't help cool you down because the air is too full of moisture already to take on any more. Everyone knows the purpose of sweating is to cool the body down through evaporation of the moisture - but we usually don't appreciate this gift of sweating when the environmental humidity sabotages the outcome. There are also consequences of even successful sweating: body odor being #1. You can curse the nanobugs for that human situation. The main contributor is Corynebacterium acnes - one of the Diphtheroids - also Staph aureus and Staph epi. These nanobugs hang out in the hair follicles and the creases in the skin (especially the underarms and groin). Sweat itself is basically odorless - certainly not offensive (unless you have been eating foods with strong odors - like garlic and onions). However, unpleasant or offensive odors develop when bacteria on the skin are allowed to multiply and break down the sweat into odor-causing by-products. Bacteria grow best in a warm, dark, moist environment and so hot sweaty skin enhances their multiplication and will eventually produce a strong odor. What's the solution? Your unison response is probably: anti-perspirants!! Many choose this strategy - to stop the sweat (in their armpits) - thus eliminating the culture media that sweat provides. Most anti-perspirants contain aluminum chloride and work by plugging the sweat glands and limiting production of the sweat. Deodorants work to slow the multiplication of bacteria and the production of those stinky by-products. Ingredients like tea tree oil, lemongrass and oriental cypress are natural ingredients that help to control odors. But the most common strategy is the use of a combination of deodorant and anti-perspirant. Because it is not practical or wise to apply those chemicals to our entire skin surface, a good bath of shower once a day (or twice daily in this hot weather) will eliminate a lot of the nanobugs and slow down the multiplication of those that are still there after bathing. Remember - usually you don't have to kill bacteria, just wash them off of your skin and out of your clothes and send them down the drain. Antibacterial soaps are not really necessary and the chemicals used in these formulations can be irritating to the skin. Good mechanical cleansing with soap (to decrease surface tension and help release the bacteria) and thorough rinsing is an effective and economical strategy. Some people sweat excessively even when it is not a hot humid summer day. Check out this link: Can't Stop Sweating the Big Stuff to learn some tactics for dealing with this aggravation from Dr. Susan Taylor, a noted dermatologist. You may be surprised, like I was, to learn that one strategy is to inject Botox into the problem areas to paralyze the sweat glands so they are not triggered to produce sweat. Don't get me started on that again - utilizing the neurotoxin from Clostidium botulinum to stop sweating. Course, I have never personally had to deal with this excessive sweating problem other than the occasional hot flashes I experience these days.
This entry was posted on August 6th, 2007 at 5:52 pm. RSS
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