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Diego Cervo / featurepics.com
What's the sweatiest part of your body? It's not your armpits--it's your upper back, according to a new study from the University of Loughborough. The least sweaty regions? Your hands, fingers, and feet.
Sweat may soak your tee and make you smell sour, but it's also a useful part of your body's response to exercise. When sweat evaporates, it takes heat away from the body, keeping you cool. Aside from the smell, sweat is more friend than foe. Here's how to work with it--not against it. (For more ways to improve your workout, check out the 100 Best Fitness Tips of All Time.)
1. Tuck in Your Shirt
One way to increase evaporation and thereby reduce sweat is to tuck in your shirt and allow a gap between your shirt and skin. Doing this will create a pocket of air against your skin that helps sweat evaporate and your body cool.
2. Wipe Your Brow, Not Your Body
As sweat only helps cool the body when it evaporates on the skin, it may seem like wiping it off is a bad idea. "Theoretically, it is," Ollie Jay, Ph.D., principal investigator at the Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa, tells MensHealth.com. "But picking up forehead sweat with a towel is not a big deal. The sweat produced on your forehead compared to the rest of your body is pretty minimal."
3. Step on the Scale
A good rule of thumb is to drink as much fluid as your body generates in sweat. "Typically we suggest that people who exercise a lot in the heat should look at their body weight before and after the exercise," study author George Havenith, of the University of Loughborough, tells MensHealth.com. "That is an estimate of what they lost in sweat and that is what they need to drink." (One pound is about 16 ounces of fluid.) Your body can only absorb up to 32 ounces per hour, so no need to chug gallons at a time.
4. Treat Your Pits Like Dirty Paws
Armpit and groin sweat originate in apocrine sweat glands--as opposed to eccrine sweat glands found everywhere else. Apocrine glands infuse normal sweat with proteins, and are located in the least evaporative areas of the body. This thicker sweat gathers in your pits and groin, and starts to stink. If you can't shower, try using hand sanitizer on your affected areas. It will kill the bacteria and give you a few more odor-free hours.
5. Exercise Your Sweat Glands
If your body temperature is often elevated above your resting temperature, your body will learn to be more efficient in creating sweat. Whether you're training longer or living in a hot environment, your body will adapt. Scientists haven't found a link between ethnicity and sweat response, says Jay, but they have found regional adaptations. Ready to sweat? Check out The NEW Spartacus Workout on DVD!
More from Men's Health:
Which Should You Do First: Weights or Cardio?
The 100 Fittest Men of All Time
Get Ripped and Shredded in 4 Weeks!
The Best Time of Day to Eat Carbs
Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.
Leave a Comment:
"Dumb, da-dumb ... dumb!"
And I was even more so for reading it; God (or science - whatever) help me.
What is the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your toes,
Some say your nose,
I think it's your mind.
(F. Zappa)
To bad tucking in your shirt raises body temperature by trapping that pocket of air in your shirt. If your shirt is untucked cool air can come in at the bottom (untucked part) and hot air rises out of the top (neck and arms). You would sweat much less with your shirt untucked. If you are cold you tuck it in to stop the convection currents.
The only way I cannot see it not working, is if a big belly or butt got in the way of the convection currents.
My upper back don't sweat as much as my nut sack.
This piece of filler fluff is just so, so wrong it's a joke. Tuck in your shirt? Wrong. Hands and feet least sweaty body parts? Wrong. Hey Author - when's the last time your knees and ankles were sweating more than your feet? Idiot.
Put hand sanitizer on pits and groin? That sounds all kinda wrong and stingy.
I would think powder is more effective and gentle. There are powders for athletes that will soak up sweat and keep the scent away. You don't want to get alcohol in your privates, it burns and stings!
sweatiest part of my body?..right underneath my gonads.
too much information.
@Warden, ill quietly concur with your statement....
I'm sorry i even brought it up..apologies.
put some deep heat on them bad boys...see if you can catch the turpentine cat...
Thanks for that one,plain bob! Another awesome weigh in as always! LOL ;)
Get a can of "Fresh Balls" for the boys.
Kinda like smelling moth balls. But I could never get those tiny little legs apart to find out why people complain about the scent.
Hand sanitizer on the crotchal area? Hand sanitizer is mostly rubbing alcohol. Best keep it off the mucus membranes.
Not rubbing alcohol, but ethyl alcohol - the stuff you drink. Rubbing alcohol is isopropyl alcohol, not potable.
Hmmmm raspberry scented hand sanitizer in the nether-regions. Interesting.
if somebody walks up and say's...smell my finger...don't fall for it...
I had a KATUSA soldier in Korea that did not sweat and Koreans as a whole are not a very sweaty people. After a 5 mile run in the middle of August, he had silver dollar sized pit stains in his shirt and I was completely drenched. Either I am just a sweaty dude, or there may be an ethnic component.
Sweat doesn't have much odor- it's the breakdown of the dead bacteria that causes the funk. Since it takes almost 24 hours for that bacteria to die, you've got a while to de-funk your body with a shower. And please, toss those sweaty work-out clothes in the laundry after one wearing because they're going to start smelling, too.
@california nurse,
24 Hours, I recently moved from a new England area to a tropical area n another country, It only takes 3 hours for the sweat to stink. I shower daily, so explain your 24 hour theory please... I would like to know how not to offend my co workers by lunch.
Cal Nurse, if I go for a run and sweat I have about five minutes before I start to smell funky. No way it's anywhere NEAR 24 hours.
I don't think they mean to rub hand sanitizer on your genitals. They said groin.
Dude, my genitals are in my groin! Where are yours?
ain't had none in so long... he forgot...which arm it was under...
Well, I'm obviously bas-ackwards because my hands and feet sweat more than any other part of my body! I will turn bright red and pass out before I sweat enough to compensate for exercise on a hot day. I can sit in the shade in 100* heat and be fine. But I can't play 18 holes of golf if it's bright sun and in the high 80's...in PA!! One would think that not sweating much would be a good thing...it's NOT!!
Right there with you on hands and feet sweat. I can go through 3 pairs of socks on some days.
Another 1-size-fits-all declaration that is just plain wrong.
Sweat will pour off my scalp to the point that the salt gets in my eyes and screws up my vision. My feet used to sweat so much that I once tanned the suede insole of a pair of sandals in a matter of weeks. But my back? Never gets more than a bit damp. . . if that.
yeah, so I'm calling foul on the play.
Groin and genitalia with all of that warm, secretion, and involuntary leakage isn't a close 2nd? Whatever man. This paper during Peer Review is going to get shredded to pieces.
Involuntary? What are yours up to?
Obviously, the author of this article sweats in one place, but I sweat in other places. I can't figure out why somebody puts everybody into neat little boxes and thinks that everybody does things the same way. If that were the case, we would all be robots. They didn't even mention where I sweat the most and I won't either.
The biggest problem is that this study was done in the UK. The English don't sweat, they perspire.
Alcohol based sanitizer in the twig and berries region? Yeah, those won't be tears of joy cause the from unda is gone. You should actually try what you advise because you would certainly not give this gem out.
Is there not more important/interesting news to report?
Well, now you know what University to NOT attend. Where do you find these so called "scholars"?
Yeah, you have to wonder just who would commission a study on this. And some post grad probably did a doctoral thesis on it! Education just isn't what it used to be.
The smell of my pits is what lets you know your alive.
It may make others think your walking dead.
It's true that hand sanitizer could cause a stinging sensation in your groin region if you've recently shaved that area (or have open wounds resulting from infections, stab wounds, bite marks, etc.). Otherwise, not an issue. The author isn't suggesting that it become a daily routine or that you slather it on by the gallon. It evaporates quickly and poses little to no risk to mucous membranes and genitalia if used correctly.
bite marks.....lol
clone stings anytime I spray the stuff there, weather or not being shaved, get a clue...
What's clone?
Clone is a sheep named Dolly. Now, I understand that there are things like super-maxi pads, but this is getting ridiculous. Baaa.
Stab wounds??? What do you submit your nether regions to?
Red necks do not use hand santizer--or any of that sweet-smelling crap--honor my Confederate shirt
Leave the Duck Butter alone !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Johnson's corn starch baby powder or Dollar General generic copy will keep you dry. I found Gold Bond powder actually caused a rash due to some ingredient in it.
what about my schwetty balls?
HAHAHAHA, too funny !
Best way to mask your odor at the gym,,Let out a nice stinky Fart (hopefully a dry one)
Just don't Roker in your sweat pants ! LMFAO
HA! Gross.
Again, journalism's collective eye is blackened by another inept journalist. A question was asked and not answered. The anecdotal susbstitute for real information was in keeping with the practices of the discipline. How will these soulless people explain their willful stupidity to their grandchildren?
What a pc article. Anyone ever hear of the taint? The taint holds the worlds record for sweat produced, followed closely by his smelly friend, the bean bag.
Putting my two cents in on this amazingly revealing news item!
My upper back is NOT the sweatiest part of my body
To be blunt my sweatiest area is my testicular/groinal region. My wife would agree but she's busy trying not to become vomituous at the very notionation of it.