A recent article in CNN Health wrote about “Who is Better at Sweating: Men or Women?”
Just to be on the same page, allow me to explain what “sweat” is. Yes, it can smell sometimes, but there are a lot of benefits to it. There are a few types of sweat. Perspiration is made up of water, salt, and a small amount of electrolytes. The purpose of it is to regulate the fluid balance in your body. One type of sweat cools the body because it evaporates on the surface of the skin. This type of sweat develops from the eccrine glands and the eccrine glads are stimulated by the automatic nervous system when the body temperature goes up. The other type of sweat comes from the apocrine glands. This sweat typically comes with an accompanying odor that comes from the bacteria that breaks it down and is associated with emotional stress.
The study intends to look into the effectiveness of different kinds of sweat and then examine how the sweating response relates to reproductive hormones.
A Japanese study was done that found that the reason why women “glow” and men “sweat” is because women have to work harder than men while they are exercising in order to start sweating. The study only involved 37 people (20 females and 17 males). During the study the participants cycled at 35, 50, and 65 percent of their maximal uptake of oxygen for an hour with a relative humidity of 45 percent. Ten of the females were characterized as “untrained” and these females had to work harder and/or have a higher body temperature in order to reach the maximal activated sweat gland response.
Between the trained males and females, the researchers from the study found that the sweat gland’s response to physical training was higher among the men. This study did not measure testosterone levels, but the researchers believe that the reason why the men’s sweat gland’s response was much better was because they have more testosterone. They believe that it is the testosterone that may enhance the sweating response.
Perhaps the most important aspect of sweating that the researchers found was that men are more efficient at sweating. They also found that men benefited more from their training experience in their sweat production than the women do.
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