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Is Sweating Necessarily for Losing Weight?

By Gergana Ganeva

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 16Jun2009
Word count: 530
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Sweating is a physiological process, which all people want to have a control over. In everyday life, sweating is perceived as embarrassing and unhygienic, but in the fitness world it is perceived as a positive health factor.

Sweating as a chemical reaction

Let's briefly go back in time when we had our chemistry classes and try to determine what kind of a chemical reaction sweating is. Sweat is a liquid with a specific smell, which is separated from the sweat glands of the skin. We all have more than 2.5 million sweat glands and they are located all over the body. Although sweat contains 98%-99% water, this is not its only ingredient. Sweat is extremely rich in minerals - sodium, chlorine, potassium, calcium, iron, zinc, and etc. The smell of your sweat is due to the urea in it. Urea is, in essence, a waste product that is found in the urine. A small amount of urea is extracted in sweat. That is why our sweat has such a specific unpleasant smell.

Sweating is a physiological process

Sweating has two major functions' it acts as an excretory and thermostatic system. Excretory Function- During abundant sweating our body could separate up to 4 liters (around 1 U.S gallon) of sweat per hour. This fast speed of action makes this process particularly useful for organisms which need cleansing. The thermostatic function is also of a big importance. When 1 liter (0.3 U.S gallons) of sweat evaporates from our body, we tend to lose around 585 kcal, this equals to 20% of our daily heat exchange. This helps for maintaining our constant body temperature.

Therefore sweat helps us reduce body fat, clears our skin pores, and makes the skin smooth.

However, sweating has also negative effects on the body because it leads to the loss of energy and water. That is why we get tired and dehydrated. Stress and hormonal disorders also lead to intensively increased sweating, and warm and dry climate increase sweating as well.

Abundant sweating is less of a problem comparing to not sweating at all. If you tend to not sweat you are at a bigger risk to get a heatstroke, dehydration or some skin diseases. The lack of sweat might exist due to some nervous or hormonal disturbances. However, the most important is that you drink a lot of water every day. The more water you drink every day, the more hydrated you are, and therefore you will be at lower risk to get any kind of diseases.

Sweating and fitness

One of the biggest delusions of fitness maniacs is that abundant sweating is the key to successful workout. The truth is that intensive sweating does not guarantee anything. For some it is ineffective if they sweat a lot. We all should remember that body fat is not lost through abundant sweating because sweat is mostly water, and fat does not contain any water. However, when we exercise we not only tend to sweat, but also to burn calories. This is what we should focus on while working out, BURNING CALORIES but not on how much we sweat. Now, let's get to the gym and have a nice workout.

Good luck!

My name is Gergana Ganeva and I am the owner of website called Healthy Body Exercises. I have been intensively involved in sports for 18 years now. A few years ago I ended my professional career as a tennis player and since then I have been working with people who want to lose weight by exercising . My main goal is to teach you how to stay healthy and lose some extra weight the healthy way.

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