Sweatology+CC

Sweatology Article or Skin the largest organ (Thanks Kat)

(1) Why is sweat like your personal air-conditioner and why is that important? Sweat is like your own personal air-conditioner because it helps to balance out your internal temperature. This is so important because in order to remain healthy we must not go more than 6 or 7 degrees over the normal internal human body temperature, and not much more than 10 degrees below the normal. Sweat helps to cool the body down when it is beginning to over heat, and also heat the body up when it is too hot.

(2) The human body can tolerate cooling. How much? Give examples. The internal body can tolerate a drop of up to about 20 degree's, and still recover. For example, if someone through ice in to water, they may end up with hypothermia. The body can still deal with over cooling though and warm itself back up.

(3) The human body can not tolerate over heating. How much? Give examples. The Internal body cannot tolerate much over heating at all. Even 6 or 7 degrees over the normal can severely damage someone, causing brain malfunctions. We can easily over heat when the weather is very hot and we are running around outside, or if we are locking in a small area in the sun; for example, if you were locked in a car you could easily get overheated.

(4) Why do we think humans evolved sweat glands? Give examples. As hair decreased sweat glands increased in humans. They were critical for evolution, allowing us to be more active in the heat and good cooling for the brain.

(5) Describe some of the variation in the amount of sweat glands. Give examples. Some people only have 2 million sweat glands, and some people have up to 4 million sweat glands. Each person is different depending on their age, gender, size, activity level, and many other factors. Different people also have different sized sweat glands, the bigger glands producing more sweat and the smaller producing less sweat.

(6) What happens during menopause with respect to sweat? Give examples. Women's brains tell them they have excess heat, and that there body must produce more sweat to cool them off. This results in people going through menopause sweating a lot at what seems like random times.

(7) What happens as we age? Why is that dangerous? Give examples. As we age we begin to sweat less. This begins occuring around the age of 60, even if someone is in good physical condition. This is threatening because it is harder for these elderly to cool off. Heat strokes become more common at this age because of the lack of sweat and lack of the ability to cool off.

(8) Is clothing good or bad when it comes to sweat? Why? Give examples. Sweat is either. In a study of people during WW2, the men wearing nearly no clothes ended up sweating about 30 percent more than the men wearing more clothes because their skin absorbed the heat, since it wasn't protected much by layers of clothes.

(9) Describe what happens during heat acclimation. Give examples. During heat acclimation the internal temperatures increase and the person sweats much more than usual. They lose a large amount of salt from their sweat, and begin feeling very sick and all around miserable. As days go by their bodies become used to this change, and they sweat even more, and their salt loss diminished. At this point both the internal and skin temperatures job, and this is when endurance improves. This is common among athlete, ecspecially those training in hot weather.

(10) Who is "Adam"? Why is he being used for scientific experimentation? Adam is a mannequin that scientists use to test internal temperature and sweat. He has 120 different temperature sensing and sweating cones. He is connected to a computer. He has helped to create clothes for astronauts to where under their suits and clothes and cloths for injured soldiers.