Why can you sweat more than other people? & bull; hello healthy

Ever wondered why some people get to work out and just drop a drop of sweat, when just 10 minutes of jogging on the treadmill makes you look like you've been splashed in the pool?

So far, the answer to excessive sweating has only focused on certain factors, such as body fat percentage (the more fat in your body makes you heat up faster) and your fitness level (the fitter you get, the less you sweat). In fact, it's not that simple.

To understand why some people sweat more than others, we must first understand why humans sweat.

Why do humans sweat?

The human body is equipped with about two to five million sweat glands that are embedded in your skin and spread throughout the body. The sweat glands secrete different amounts of sweat depending on your physiological characteristics.

For example, women have more sweat glands than men, but male sweat glands tend to be more active. This means that with the same number of activated sweat glands and the same intensity of temperature and physical activity, men naturally sweat faster and produce more sweat volume than women.

But apart from that, how much you sweat depends on a few other things outside of your body. For example, if you drink coffee, caffeine can increase sweating. Alcohol consumption and smoking also make it easier to sweat. Wearing synthetic fabrics will trap heat in your body, which will cause you to become hot and sweaty more quickly.

Increased environmental temperature and physical movement can also trigger the glands to produce sweat. Fitter people, for example, produce sweat more efficiently by sweating faster during exercise, when their body temperature is lower, while sedentary (less active) people warm up faster and may sweat more when exercising at the same intensity. In addition, people who are overweight will produce more sweat than normal weight individuals because fat acts as a heat conductor (insulator) which raises the body's core temperature.

Body size has more of a role in determining how much sweat, not how much fat

One study from the University of Sydney, reported in Men's Health, found that body size makes a difference in who tends to sweat excessively - not fitness. The research team studied 28 volunteers with varying ranges of fitness and body size, and put them through a series of 60-minute cycling tests at different intensities to measure their levels of sweat production and changes in body temperature.

As a result, two people who are the same weight and pedaling at the same speed, their bodies can heat up at the same rate, even if one of them is short and fat while the other is tall and lean.

It's important to note that these results do not outright refute the popular assumption that people with more body fat tend to sweat excessively. For example, people with diabetes who have a more body fat percentage tend to sweat more (but more slowly) than people who are fit. Their bodies take longer to cool down, but not only because of the thermal properties of the fat itself, but because of how hard the body works to transport greater body mass.

Excess sweating can be a sign of trouble

There are two conditions of "excessive sweating": one that is natural due to variations in human physiology and the environment (as described above) and the other is a medical condition, known as hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis is a condition when a person begins to sweat profusely in normal, non-stressful situations and environments, and is not associated with changes in temperature or movement. Three percent of the human population worldwide has hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis affects three main areas: the hands, feet and armpits, which sometimes involve other areas of the body.

The causes behind hyperhidrosis are still unknown, but many experts suspect the stimulation of excessive sweating stems from the activity of the response system. fight of flight in a hyperactive brain, sending distorted signals to the body's main sweat glands. That means that the part of the body that is trying to cool itself is constantly working, like a leaky faucet. There are several non-surgical treatments for hyperhidrosis, including oral medications such as pills, topical creams, Botox (injected into the hands, face or armpits multiple times), and electrical therapy.