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Subscribe to RSSEverybody has a gym story about the guy on the stair climbing machine next to you who is dripping so profusely and puffing so maniacally that you’re in constant danger from flying sweat.
(Whoa! There goes a drop.)
But why is it always a guy? Are women just more conscientious about frequent toweling?
No, says a new study from researchers at Osaka International and Kobe Universities in Japan. Their experiment, published in the journal Experimental Physiology, showed that men not only sweat more than women, something previous research has shown, but are better at it.
Men have a lower perspiration threshold than women, the study said, meaning, the authors suggested, that the male thermostat will trigger sweating at a lower temperature than the female thermostat. This was true for both trained and untrained men compared to trained and untrained women.
That thermostat is located in our heads -- literally -- explained Chris Minson, professor of human exercise physiology at the University of Oregon. When body temperature rises, the brain orders up more skin blood flow and the starts the sweat glands pumping. “The thermoregulatory control centers in the hypothalamus region of the brain respond differently with training,” he said. If an untrained person might normally sweat at, say, 99.1 degrees of body temperature, with training, that threshold could drop to, say, 98.8.
The Japanese scientists suggested that male testosterone might be behind the gender difference, but Minson, who knows and respects the Japanese team, was cautious. Controlling for every parameter in such experiments is tough, he said. It could be that men sweat more profusely because they are doing more work. Even if both genders exercised at the same V02 max, most men would be bigger and weigh more and so would be using more energy and generating more watts. Plus, their extra skin surface area means more sweat.
Also, Minson said, female body temperature rises and falls throughout the menstrual cycle, which could further muddy the waters.
Whatever the answer, years of anecdotal gym experience suggest that women really do have that whole toweling thing down.
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Perhaps the fact that men have more body mass, hence more to cool might have an effect. If the study compared men and women of equal weight and height for sweat then I would be more inclined to listen.
Right on Pepe Le Phew
Anyone that thinks men have more body mass than women hasen't met my ex-girlfriend. Whole lotta woman!
Yes and cool is a square function of surface area while mass is a cube function of volume.
Yes, this article suggests some silly things that don't make sense. The plausible thing is that men are larger and they have more muscle. So this could be a side effect of the greater muscle to surface area ratio that men have versus women. Also, men have more fast twitch muscle than women do. And men can usually command more of their muscle tissue to contract at any one time than women can.
Women are made for the long haul, and to survive on as few resources as possible. Men are made to compete and win battles.
If your not sweating your not working out, period, I have seen 300 lbs woman not break a sweat and call it a workout. I am a sweater, because I intend to sweat I gage how hard I'm working by the amount of heat a produce, thus sweat, so if a little, or a lot of sweat offends you, stay home.
You might sweat a lot, but YOU'RE certainly not gifted with language skills! I can GUAGE that because you also have no clue about when to use PERIODs versus commas!
Once again, practice makes perfect.
men sweat, womyn perspire. men drip, womyn glow. muscle looks good on men while womyn look just fine toned-up.
whom wants to date a woman like Nicole bass(incredible hulk looking)?
I sweat in 50 degree weather. If we set the thermostat on 78, I immediately start sweating.
I sweat so much working on a/c units, i'm risking electrocution.Outside in the sun or up in an attic.
I hear ya! I work on appliances and sweat a bucketful. Gotta love it when working in a hot laundry room and someone decides to take a shower, causing the water heater to run nonstop.
Do any of you men go without showering for long periods of time (more than a week) my hubby hasn't showered for nearly a month. He says "washing up" is good enough,what do I do or say to convince him otherwise. Oh and now today he came up with " I need to hear whatever is going on & I cant hear in the shower".
A bucket of cold water with ice in it at 3am should solve that problem, I would risk hypothermia before I would go to bed without taking a bath or shower.
I work as a cleaner in a restaurant and school without air conditioning and shower at least twice a day. I also ride a bike to work so I'm sweating before I even start work, its a big place and I am on the clock so I can't take my time. On the plus side it saves me gym fees, I clean a two story building, a cafe and fifteen toilets in four hours. If I've cleaned it up and poured it down the drain, I don't want to sleep in it.
Heard a story once about a bloke who didn't wash for a while, he woke one morning and found a mushroom growing out from between his toes. Mushrooms on toast for breakfast any one...? guess not.
Regarding the comment about if you don't sweat you are not working out: I am very fair and heat sensitive. My northern European body will turn my skin red first to cool off (losing water and minerals in the native cold could be weakening). At the end of a workout, I am sticky from sweat but not dripping. The only time I was dripping with sweat was when my body was severly overheated, was nauseous because of it, and I nearly passed out (the ice cubes the doctors were putting on me melted on contact)