Fighting the heat

by Tushar Mathur

If you are one of those people who keep sweating or have an abnormally high sensitivity towards heat then you are going to benefit from this blog. The idea is to keep your body cool and here are some tips and some science related to it.

Firstly you need to understand that hotness and high temperature are two different things. You may be feeling hot but its not always because the temperature is high. Our sensory system reacts to temperature by calculating the rate at which heat is gained or lost from the body. The following minute physics video elaborates on this concept.

Your sweat contains urea, minerals, lactate and water. When you get into a cool environment after sweating, the water effectively evaporates, not because its cooler but because now there is less perspiration compared to evaporation. So your body dries up leaving behind only the urea, minerals and lactate on the epidermis. Since they are pretty bad conductors of heat even though you are in a cool environment you still feel warm, because your sensory system is kind of insulated with these sweat residuals. Thus its a cycle- you sweat once and then you keep on sweating because you can’t feel the coolness. The solution is to try to not sweat at all in the first place or take frequent baths so that you clear up your sweat residual from the epidermis.

I know this methodology of try not to sweat and take frequent baths is banal but its effective and I have only explained the science behind it. Hope this keeps you cool this summer!