Sweatology+Article+AG

Allie Gruber Human Bio Field Period 1 September 18, 2008

Sweatology Article

(1) Why is sweat like your personal air-conditioner and why is that important? Sweat serves as a cooling system to the interior of the human body. Much like air-conditioning, our sweat perpetrates in our body allowing the system to cool off when we are over-heating.

(2) The human body can tolerate cooling. How much? Give examples. The human body can tolerate overcooling, routinely recovering from long periods of hypothermia with body temperatures driving 20 or more degrees below normal.

(3) The human body can’t tolerate over heating. How much? Give examples. When the human body begins over heating, the brain malfunctions with six or seven degrees over the normal fever temperature. When the internal temperature is 110, the fever becomes life threatening. Having a good internal heating and cooling system is essential to stay healthy and alive, especially in the seasons of intensely hot weather. (4) Why do we think humans evolved sweat glands? Give examples. Nina G. Jablonski believes that humans have evolved the sweat glands that we are born with today from our ancestors which allows us to cool with copious sweat. She argues that as humans evolved from being hairy creatures, we also evolved our sweat glands to keep cool in the sun. The evaporation of the water from skin cells adds as extra cooling. For example, when in the hot sun or exercising, the muscles generate too much heat for the air to absorb.

(5) Describe some of the variation in the amount of sweat glands. Give examples. Humidity is the cause for the evaporation process which makes people sweatier. A breeze is what cools the skin when enhancing the evaporation. When people get dehydrated or sunburned, it reduces the sweat production forcing the hot air to be absorbed in the body.

(6) What happens during menopause with respect to sweat? Give examples. With the average temperature staying around 98.6 on a regularly daily basis, women tend to run a little bit higher after ovulation. During menopause women go through processes of random excess heating and unnecessary sweating.

(7) What happens as we age? Why is that dangerous? Give examples. Beginning at the age of 60, both sexes sweat less, regardless of their physical condition, therefore having a higher risk of heat stroke.

(8) Is clothing good or bad when it comes to sweat? Why? Give examples. In terms of clothing, researchers concluded that less is not always better due to the skin that is unprotected and is absorbing heat from the environment. Workers working outside that take off their shirts often feel that they are making themselves cooler, when in fact they are only exposing their skin to the heat even more so than if they had their shirt on.

(9) Describe what happens during heat acclimation. Give examples. Experts prove that due to heat acclimation, the body adjusts to the climate it is in over time. Beginning with excess sweating in a hot climate eventually leads to adjustment and less sweating of the glands and salt loss diminishes. Both skin and internal temperatures drop as well. Heat acclimation reflects bigger, juicier sweat glands such as in monkeys who are exposed in continuous heat and humidity but whose sweat glands more than doubled in volume over a span of 2 months.

(10) Who is "Adam"? Why is he being used for scientific experimentation? Adam was the selected mannequin by the United States Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. Adam was covered in 120 separate temperature-sensing sweating zones and is wirelessly set up to a computer to record the data. Adam was set up to sit in a parked car in the hot sun and sweat on his back and rear end just as a human would. This experiment took place to mimic the human experiences and answer scientists questions on the human body and the sweating process.