Latest news with #sweat
Daily Mail
04-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Woman's crotch gets her stopped at airport security for 'weirdest' reason that can affect ANYONE
A woman who flew for the first time in 15 years has set the internet talking after sharing that her crotch got her stopped during a security scan. Writing on Reddit, the woman said: 'I flew for the first time in 15 years this week and both airports flagged my crotch at the arms up scanner. 'I don't care about the pat down, they were polite and professional and it doesn't bother me, but I'm wondering what did it.' She added that she was wearing bike shorts and normal underwear and had no medical devices or piercings. Another traveller explained that the woman might have been flagged because she was sweating. They said: 'I got searched too, the guard said something unnerving like "swamp rot" or "swamp crotch" or something similarly embarrassing.' And as weird as it sounds, a 'swamp' or sweaty crotch could be the reason the woman set the scanners off. According to Shawna Malvini Redden, an expert on airport security, sweat can cause you issues at the airport. The expert told Reader's Digest: 'Perspiration is probably the weirdest thing that can set off the scanners. 'It has to do with millimetre wave technology and how the waves bounce off water.' According to Reader's Digest, France and Germany have actually stopped using the type of airport scanner that reacts to swamp crotch, as they cause so many false alarms. That's not the case in the USA though, so if you're travelling stateside, take extra care planning your outfit. Tight and non-breathable materials are much more likely to make you sweat, so you might want to avoid them at the airport if you want to swerve the 'swamp crotch' issue. Body scanners can also be set off by thick hair in a bun, body piercings, hair clips and wire supports in bras.
CNET
24-06-2025
- Climate
- CNET
6 Fabrics That Will Keep You Fashionably Cool in the Summer Heat
This summer is predicted to be hotter than normal, so you may want to stock up on cooling clothing for when you're outdoors, sleeping or if you don't have air conditioning. Cooling clothing often has properties like temperature regulation and is made from specific cooling fabrics to help you stay sweat-free even when the sun is beating down. These items can also be helpful if you're working out in the heat. How do cooling clothes work? Your body temperature going down is what gives you the sensation of feeling cool. For clothing to be effectively cooling, the fabric must have properties that work together with the body to help dissipate heat and promote airflow. Air permeability Ventilated, flowy and breathable clothing allows for more air to pass through, and helps prevent heat or perspiration from being trapped against the skin. Less breathable fabrics like polyester or wool, on the other hand, can keep body heat confined between your body and the material and make you feel even more sweaty. Moisture-wicking Perspiration can be annoying but it's our body's way of regulating temperature. Moisture-wicking fabrics quickly absorb your body's sweat and then help it evaporate away. The secret is in hydrophilic and hydrophobic fibers. Hydrophilic fibers absorb sweat from the skin, evenly dispersing it across the fabric. Hydrophobic fibers keep out moisture and help fabric quickly dry. Temperature regulation Thermoregulation is how humans maintain their body temperature, and there are four different ways to transfer heat. If the fabric of your clothes is effective at any of these four methods, it can help keep you cooler. Thermal conductivity relates to the measure of how well materials transfer heat from one side to the other. Every material has a thermal conductivity, and the higher it is, the more cooling the material will be. relates to the measure of how well materials transfer heat from one side to the other. Every material has a thermal conductivity, and the higher it is, the more cooling the material will be. Thermal convection : Heat moves from the material with the highest temperature to the one with the lowest temp. This explains why you feel cooler when you put on silk or bamboo; your warm body heat transfers to the cooler fabric and this process helps you feel more cool. : Heat moves from the material with the highest temperature to the one with the lowest temp. This explains why you feel cooler when you put on silk or bamboo; your warm body heat transfers to the cooler fabric and this process helps you feel more cool. Radiation : Solar radiation is a major contributor to feeling hot, especially if you have to be outdoors during high temperatures. Clothing that protects you from the sun and harmful UV rays will help you stay cooler, and maintain healthier skin. : Solar radiation is a major contributor to feeling hot, especially if you have to be outdoors during high temperatures. Clothing that protects you from the sun and harmful UV rays will help you stay cooler, and maintain healthier skin. Evaporation: The best cooling clothing allows sweat to evaporate and quickly dry, keeping you feeling cooler in hot temperatures. Fabrics with poor evaporation abilities can remain damp, making you feel sticky. Cooling clothing recommendations Innovation in cooling clothes Everyone knows what it feels like to be muggy and hot in their clothes. As each summer seems to break the previous year's high-temperature record, researchers are exploring different ways to produce effective cooling clothing. Clothing and other garments can utilize non-electric cooling techniques such as ice, phase-change and radiation cooling. Early cooling clothing looked like actual ice vests that absorbed a person's body heat as ice melted, causing a physically cool feel. A lot of modern cooling clothing, like those from LifeLabs, has infrared heat-blocking abilities that offer protection from the sun's harmful rays. But experts are even working out the kinks on smart cooling clothing powered by electricity. As we continue to experience high temperatures, it's fair to expect more improvements and development to come from cooling garments. The best fabrics for cooling clothing Cotton Cotton is good for dry heat because it's lightweight and breathable. mikroman6/ Getty Images Cotton is a natural fiber that's breathable, lightweight and widely accessible. Air easily passes through cotton fabric, allowing you to feel breezy and cool. It's best for dry heat, since it's absorbent but not moisture-wicking. Bamboo Bamboo is a premium natural fiber that's good at wicking away moisture. It's also even more breathable than cotton because of the "micro gaps" within bamboo fabric that promotes increased airflow. Silk Silk is a good material for summer because it's flowy, breathable and a natural thermoregulator. HUIZENG HU/ Getty Images Silk is a thermoregulator that helps you keep a comfortable body temperature. It's ultra-lightweight, soft and tends to come in flowy silhouettes. Rayon Sourced from processed wood pulp, rayon is made up of thin fibers that make it feel light and breathable. It doesn't trap heat between the fabric and your body, allowing sweat to evaporate and heat to dissipate. Viscose A type of rayon, viscose is a soft and comfortable fabric that can also help keep you cool during summer. Dmitri Kalvan/ Getty Images Viscose is a type of rayon that's considered an artificial silk. As such, it's a smooth, highly absorbent and soft fabric that's great for cooling clothing. Linen Linen is derived from the flax plant and is a well-known fabric for summer because of its lightweight and breathable feel. It has a loose weave, allowing air to easily pass through. The worst fabrics for cooling clothing Polyester and nylon Polyester and nylon are made from petroleum, essentially making them a type of plastic. They retain heat and even bad odor, and they don't absorb moisture. This means your sweat sits on their surface, trapped between your skin and the fabric. Denim We all love our jeans, but they aren't the best clothes for hot weather. The material is heavy, not very breathable and can retain moisture. If you have to wear jeans, try a looser fit and a light wash to reflect the sun. Leather Made from thick cowhide, leather is a good insulator during the winter. It's also often dyed black, a color that absorbs heat. Unless you want to be real warm, avoid leather jackets in the summer.
CNN
06-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
What Your Sweat Could Reveal About Your Health - Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta - Podcast on CNN Audio
Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:00:00 Welcome to Chasing Life and welcome to Summertime. You know, it's that time of year. Barbecues, baseball games, the beach, lounging by the pool, maybe lounging by the lake like we do in my home state of Michigan. I love summertime. But you know, summertime also means heat and for our bodies, that means sweat. We all sweat every day. Some of us more than others, yes, but nothing to be ashamed of. You certainly know that sweat is our body's natural cooling system. There's been all this research recently telling us that sweat can do a lot more than just turn down our body's temperature. Each droplet of sweat could be full of signs and signals about what's going on deep inside our bodies. Sweat could be the key to understanding not only our hydration, but also our nutrient levels, our kidney health. Sweat is a lot fascinating than you probably ever realized. And today I'm sitting down one of the scientists who's leading that research. His name is Professor John Rogers, and he is director of Northwestern's Querry Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. He is an expert on sweat, and he's gonna talk me through the basics of sweat, but also its potential, and help me understand how sweat could save a lot of lives and help us all perform at our very best. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, and this is Chasing Life. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:01:37 First of all, just some terms. What is sweat? John Rogers 00:01:40 So sweat is a fluid created by glands that exist about a millimeter below the surface of the skin. These glands connect to ducts that transport sweat generated by the glands to the surface of the skin. The density of sweat glands is highest on the fingertips about 400 glands per square centimeter. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:02:01 On your fingertips? I didn't realize that. John Rogers 00:02:04 Yeah, if you look at the sort of the magnified view of your fingertips, the sweat pores exist on the upper surfaces of the ridges of the texture of the skin of the fingertips. So quite a lot of sweat will come out of your finger tips. You get sweaty palms, you know, you feel nervous or something like that, you're exercising. But you have also sweat glands distributed across your entire body, obviously not just your fingertips. So there's pretty high density of sweat glands in your forehead. About a hundred and fifty sweat glands per square centimeter on your forearms uh... Maybe half of that on your back and your your abdomen that kind of thing so there are two classes of sweat glands one is called eccrine sweat glands uh... And those are the ones that i just referred to. There are other sweat glands that a little bit different and they involve a more complex chemistry associated with the sweat those are that apocrine glands they exist the armpits the genital regions and so on. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:02:59 Most people hear sweat and they think... I get hot, I sweat. That helps my body cool down. Is that the primary reason we sweat? John Rogers 00:03:07 Primarily, that is the reason for thermal regulation, so maintaining thermal homeostasis. So sweating is triggered when the core body temperature rises above a certain threshold, and then the rate of sweating is determined by the external temperature and humidity level and so on. But sweating can also be induced by nervousness. There are sort of emotional cues that will cause a sweating. You're really nervous in an interview, you will start to sweat. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:03:35 Are you sweating now? John Rogers 00:03:36 Not yet, yeah. We'll see how it goes. And there are different kinds of foods that you can eat, right, that will cause sweat. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:03:43 So you mentioned three reasons that we sweat to cool the body when we may be nervous and maybe in response to certain foods. Is the sweat different depending on what the stimulus for the sweat? John Rogers 00:03:56 It's more or less the same, although the chemical composition of sweat can depend on sweat rate and the total volume of sweat that's been lost. So if you sweat very quickly, for example, at a high rate of sweating, the chloride concentration can be higher than its slow rates of sweating. So there are some dependencies there on the rate and the amount of sweat has been lost, but not so much on the mechanism by which the sweat is induced. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:04:25 Is your sweat fundamentally going to be similar to my sweat? Is there variation from human to human? John Rogers 00:04:31 So there's quite a large variation in the electrolyte level in sweat, and that's just genetically determined. It can be modulated by that, but there's sort of genetic baseline that determines your kind of average electrolyte levels. But it can be modulated by dietary habits, it can modulated be the amount of exercise you're doing, your fitness levels, that kind of thing. But for more basic biochemical species, let's say creatinine and urea, which we'll talk about in a little bit in the context of kidney health. That tends, what we're seeing in the data is that those two biochemicals species in sweat correlate very nicely with the same species in blood. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:05:15 Now I do want to take a moment here and explain a couple things. First of all, the reason sweat carries the same biomarkers as blood is because they have something in common: interstitial fluid. Interstitial fluid comes from blood as it's traveling through small blood vessels or capillaries. It's found throughout the body and its main function is to transport oxygen and other nutrients to cells and also remove waste from cells. But here's the thing: When sweat glands are activated, they are pulling from that same interstitial fluid, which then diffuses across layers of skin to become sweat. The second thing you're gonna hear us talk a lot about the concept of correlation. Specifically, whether or not certain levels of biomarkers detected in sweat could have the same medical significance if found in blood. When I went to the doctor, I got my blood drawn and everything, they're measuring basic chemistries, my sodium, my potassium, chloride, things like that. They might also measure my cholesterol and lipids and things like that. What can sweat measure? John Rogers 00:06:21 So for the things that we're looking at specifically, it's electrolyte level, electrolyte replenishment becomes very important for athletes, for workers in oil and gas manufacturing, construction, that kind of thing. Chloride for cystic fibrosis diagnostics, we published on that and we've done studies on large cohorts of infants. Kidney health is one that we think is really, really interesting. Looking at creatinine and urea concentrations in sweat, as I mentioned. We're also very interested in sweat, the nutritional biomarkers that are in sweat. So we have assays for vitamin D9, vitamin C, calcium, zinc, and iron. And we're in the process of establishing whether those species in sweat also correlate with species in blood. That's ongoing work. But I think that would be very powerful because you would be able to assess nutritional balance very quickly, right? And I think especially in lower and middle income countries. Nutritional deficiencies in pediatric patients can cause health challenges throughout an individual's life. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:24 We're going to take a quick break here, but when we come back, I'm in the hot seat. John Rogers 00:07:28 Take a look and see if you've started sweating. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:32 They say to never let them see you sweat, well for me, that's about to change. Last year I decided to go pay Professor John Rogers a visit at his lab at Northwestern. John Rogers 00:07:46 All right, welcome to our testing facility. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:49 He had one goal for me. John Rogers 00:07:50 So we have a portable sauna here. It's going to replicate the environment that you would. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:07:54 And that's right, in the lab was a portable sauna. Picture of this small tent where your entire body is zipped in, except for your head. And then the temperature inside that tent is cranked up to a cozy about 135 degrees Fahrenheit. And the whole point is to get me to sweat, which you can probably see that I'm starting to do, having been in here for about 15 minutes. Now, while I was in the sauna, Professor Rogers had me wear this small patch that he and his team had designed. This patch sticks straight onto your skin. And then on the backside there are these reservoir channels. If you're looking at it, it basically looks like a semiconductor. Now when a person sweats, or in this case when I sweat, the channels fill with that sweat and turns the patch different colors to correlate with different levels of biomarkers in your body. What is interesting though, is that they're basically trying to measure sweat on my arms here. And you can tell on this one, for example, that I've started to sweat. You can see some sweat on my arm. This is measuring all these different things, ketones, chloride, All these things that you'd normally get tested with a blood draw by sticking a needle in your arm. Now, you don't need to be in... John Rogers 00:09:07 Let's take a look and see if. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:09 I'm starting to feel it a little bit, about 12 minutes. John Rogers 00:09:13 Not much yet on that side, why don't we check the other device. So it's started to fill. There's chloride assays over here, so you're seeing a slight pink color, which means probably chloride concentration around 10 millimolar, 15, something that range. Great job. Thank you. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:30 I sat here and did nothing, literally. John Rogers 00:09:32 Yeah, yeah. Well, your sweat glands did something. They're working. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:09:39 Finding a way to actually collect the sweat, that has been the key in studying it. You know, I think it's sort of fascinating. I remember thinking this before I met you, but then sort of reflecting on it afterwards, this idea that we study blood, we have all sorts of different ways of imaging the body. Why weren't we studying sweat all along? It seems like an easy one to sort of study. John Rogers 00:10:05 I think probably the reason why it hasn't sort of taken off earlier is it's just difficult to collect pristine uncontaminated volumes of sweat. In the early days, you'd use like a device to kind of scrape along the surface of the skin, sort of collect enough sweat that you can get it into a pipette or a syringe or a vial or something like that. The other way to do it is you have like an absorbent pad and a layer of tape on top of it and you kind of put it down and then you peel it off bring the sweat out of the pad, but kind of clumsy approaches overall. So I think that was kind of a missing element, kind of an engineering mechanism for collecting volumes of sweat in a very reliable, reproducible way. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:10:48 'Was it just the, as you call it, the clumsiness that led to this sort of being under-studied, or do you think there was just so much inertia around blood and urine and things like that? John Rogers 00:11:00 'Well, probably a combination of both. I do think there was sort of this missing capacity for collecting tiny volumes of sweat and manipulating those. There's no question that that did not exist prior to maybe 2016 or so. So that was definitely a shift. The other thing may be a broader societal change where there's a greater and greater appreciation of sort of continuous health monitoring using non-invasive sort of wearable devices, you know, whether that's a you know, a watch type device that goes on your wrist or something that goes on your finger or what we've been interested in, sort of soft skin adherent patches, essentially, be placed on anatomically relevant locations of the body for measuring different conditions associated with patient care. And so maybe in that context, it just makes a lot more sense to think about sweat and the ability to kind of capture that biochemical information and sort of a continuous wearable sort of platform. You put it on, sweat enters in. The color develops, you take a smartphone camera, you snap a picture of the device, it does automated color extraction, and the color then calibrates to a specific concentration of those species. So that's the way our devices work. Very simple, sort of single use device construction is the way we have it set up. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:12:21 So it's not a binary thing because it's not just color changing. You're actually then quantifying what that color means it sounds like. John Rogers 00:12:28 Yeah, that's right. The vibrancy of that color, the depth of that color correlates directly to a specific concentration level in a continuous manner. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:12:38 Is the real secret sauce here, this figuring out of the microfluidics, is that what you're alluding to? Yeah. John Rogers 00:12:44 Yeah, from an engineering standpoint, that's it. But as you've pointed out, really establishing through sort of medical research, what are the correlations between sweat chemistry and blood chemistry? And that's a little bit kind of outside of the domain of the microfluidic device itself, because you can in principle study those correlations with any kind of collection vehicle. I think the microfluentics allows that kind of reproducibility and precision in collecting pristine volumes of samples. Of sweat, but that's more kind of in a biology domain, figuring out those correlations. But then the engineering piece, I think it's already in place. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:13:18 Well, so when it comes to sweat, then where do you think this is going to go? I mean, are you going to get better if you look at lots and lots of data, for example, blood data and sweat data, and you have these huge machine learning models now, will we get better correlating sweat with blood so that sweat becomes more meaningful? Where is this heading,? John Rogers 00:13:42 Well, that's a great point. I would say, you know, this kind of machine learning models are gonna be important in really getting a very deep understanding of one's health condition from a combination of biophysical sensor outputs, as well as some of this biochemical information that we're capturing through sweat. And you collect it all together. I think it's gonna be a really powerful opportunity. So I think is a really exciting area for the future. The other thing is a lot of these species just correlate in a very natural way. It doesn't really even require machine learning. Like creatinine and urea we were just talking about, caffeine, alcohol. I think what we will find, we haven't completely proven this, there are a lot micronutrients in sweat. Vitamin C, for example, a number of different essential minerals for a healthy diet appear in sweat as well. We're very interested in pediatric health in that context. You put on a patch, you do kind of almost a full panel analysis of species relevant to a healthy nutrition. But I think there are enough reasons to be interested in sweat, again, biased perspective, that we're plenty motivated. We're gonna continue no matter what. And I think it's a great discovery area in terms of the biology. And there are some immediate applications here that don't even require these correlations to be established. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:14:56 What about lipids? Could lipids potentially be measured through sweat like cholesterol or triglycerides or triglycerides? John Rogers 00:15:01 That's a good question. We're hoping for cholesterol. We haven't found substantial amounts of it. Cortisol is an interesting one, and we just submitted a new paper on sweat cortisol. As you mentioned, there's a correlation there. The concentrations are super low. I mean, some of the challenge just is related to the very minute concentrations of some of these. More of a kind of an engineering challenge, I guess. Sweat's 99% water. It's only 1% of all of these different chemicals, you know, collected together, so they're very minute in terms of their presence. But amino acids are there, we can capture those. I think it's a really interesting discovery space, like we started talking about. There just hasn't been a lot of work on sweat, but I think a lot of the pieces are there and we're pretty excited about it. John Rogers 00:15:50 So how has it been going? Are people using it for these purposes? John Rogers 00:15:56 'Well, so great question. So full disclosure, I'm involved in a startup company that has kind of spun out of the academic work that we do kind of in our university lab environment here. I don't have any day-to-day role. I don't have a consulting relationship, anything like that, but I am the board. So it's good to kind of disclose that. But the company is called Epicore Biosystems. And so they have a couple of large sort of customers and business relationships in sports and athletics. And in worker safety. So in those cases, you don't have to worry about correlations to blood because you're tracking sweat loss as a mechanism for determining how much water you've lost as a result of an athletic competition, a training, or if you're in the oil and gas industry, you're working in a hot human environment, you're just sweating. And it also measures electrolyte loss via that same mechanism. And that's important for sports performance because it's well known that poor hydration can lead to cramping and injury and decreased levels of performance. And so the idea is these devices can provide a precise way to determine how much body water you've lost as a result of sweating. And you can use that information to hydrate at appropriate levels. So avoid over hydrating or under hydrating. And by similar token, you can determine how much electrolyte supplement salt tablets you need to take in order to get back to where you were before you lost electrolytes by sweating. And so they have a joint product offering with Gatorade. I don't want to pitch products, but you ask. And so I think they've done about 3 million of these Gatorade, GX patches and There's an app that goes along with the patch. It works exactly the same way that I was just describing. It's a sticker, you put it on, you know, and the channels fill with sweat. You can determine the extent of filling, and then there's a colorimetric reagent. In this case, it responds to chloride concentration, which is pretty much electrostatically balanced with sodium, so it's a good indicator of overall electrolyte concentration. And with the electrolyte consideration, you determine electrolyte loss. And so that guides replenishment. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:09 But if I wanted to buy one, could I buy one? John Rogers 00:18:11 Yeah, you can buy them at Dick's Sporting Goods. You can order them off of the Gatorade website. They're bundled in many cases with the GX bottles and the pods and that whole thing. So I think they're about $10 for a pack of two kind of in that. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:27 Well, you know, I just got to say again, when I first heard about your work, it made so much intuitive sense to me that you have sweat as a biofluid, from which we can learn a lot of things about someone's health. And it seems like you've just taken it further and further. It's fascinating to me. It seems to me that it'll just continue to grow. John Rogers 00:18:49 I appreciate your interest and appreciate you having me on your podcast. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:53 Absolutely. Have a great summer professor. Dr. Sanjay Gupta 00:18:56 That was Professor John Rogers, Director of Northwestern's Querry Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Eryn Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, Lori Galloretta, Jesse Remedios, Sofia Sanchez, and Kyra Daring. Andrea Kane is our medical writer, our senior producer is Dan Bloom, Amanda Seely is our showrunner, Dan Dzula is our technical director, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. With support from Jamis Andrest, John Dianora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, Leni Steinhardt, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namarow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker and Nadia Kunang of CNN Health and Katie Hinman.
Medical News Today
30-05-2025
- Health
- Medical News Today
What can cause sweat to appear yellow?
Different factors can cause a person's sweat to change color. Typically, if a person's sweat appears yellow, it may be due to a substance in the sweat or the sweat reacting with a substance on the skin. Sweat is a bodily fluid that the sweat glands in the skin excrete. The primary function of sweat is to help regulate body temperature by cooling the skin as it evaporates. This is why people often perspire in hot weather or when exercising. Sweat mostly consists of water, but also contains other substances. In many cases, sweat may be colorless. However, if there is a high level of certain substances in sweat or on the skin, then sweat may appear different colors, such as yellow. skynesher/Getty Images A few different factors can cause a person's sweat to appear yellow or a different color. Typically, this occurs when a pigment is present in sweat and causes discoloration, or something interacts with sweat on the skin and causes it to appear a different color. For example, lipofuscin is a yellow-brown pigment that the body naturally produces. It is the byproduct of the oxidation process of unsaturated fatty acids. When a person has a higher concentration of lipofuscin in their sweat glands, or lipofuscin that is in a higher state of oxidation, it can cause sweat to appear a different color. In other cases, ingesting water-soluble dyes, heavy metals, and certain chemicals or having these substances present on the skin can cause sweat to appear yellow. Possible causes of yellow sweat may include: The apocrine sweat glands are present in areas of the body that possess many hair follicles, such as the armpit or groin. They produce a thicker sweat, which can be responsible for the smell that people associate with sweat. The eccrine glands are present all over the body and secrete a thin, watery sweat that helps to cool the skin. Certain situations can stimulate apocrine chromhidrosis due to higher levels of lipofuscin. This can include skin friction, hot showers, or certain stimuli such as anxiety or sexual arousal. Eccrine chromhidrosis may occur after a person ingests water-soluble dyes, which are common in medications, heavy metals, such as copper, or certain food colorings. For example, some medications may have a coating that contains tartrazine, which is a yellow dye. Other causes of eccrine chromhidrosis may include underlying health conditions. For example, hyperbilirubinemia describes high levels of the yellow pigment bilirubin in the blood. This can result in jaundice and yellow sweat. Pseudochromhidrosis is more common than chromhidrosis. It instead occurs after secreting sweat as it comes into contact with dyes, chemicals, or bacteria that produce pigments. For example, a person may notice yellow sweat around the armpits on pale clothing after using antiperspirants that contain aluminium. Hematohidrosis, or blood sweat, describes a rare condition where a person's sweat contains blood. Although the exact cause is unknown, it likely occurs due to tiny blood vessels rupturing near the sweat glands. However, this is unlikely to produce yellow sweat and instead cause sweat that is red in appearance. Lipofuscin is usually a yellow-brown pigment . Depending on the levels and state of lipofuscin in the apocrine sweat glands, it can cause sweat to appear as different colors. According to the International Hyperhidrosis Society, lipofuscin can cause sweat to be the following colors: yellow green blue brown black Yellow sweat may appear in different areas of the body depending on the underlying cause. For example, apocrine chromhidrosis will present with yellow sweat in areas where the apocrine sweat glands are present. This includes the armpits, areolas, and groin. Eccrine chromhidrosis can affect skin anywhere on the body, but is more likely to appear in areas with more eccrine glands, such as the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. Pseudochromhidrosis can also affect any part of the skin, but is more common on the face, neck, and palms. Treatment for yellow sweat will also depend on the underlying cause. For eccrine chromhidrosis, a person will need to avoid the causative agent or treat the underlying cause of yellow sweat. With pseudochromhidrosis, a person can either avoid the causative dye or chemical or use an antiseptic soap or antibiotics to treat the bacteria causing discoloration of their sweat. Sweat may appear yellow if a person has high levels of certain substances in their sweat, such as lipofuscin or bilirubin. In other cases, sweat may turn yellow if it reacts with certain dyes or chemicals, such as antiperspirants, or if they have bacteria that produce pigments on their skin. Treatment for yellow sweat will depend on the underlying cause. Options may include treatments to reduce sweating, antiseptic soaps, or avoiding the causative agent. Medical News Today has strict sourcing guidelines and relies on peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions, and medical journals and associations. We only use quality, credible sources to ensure content accuracy and integrity. You can learn more about how we ensure our content is accurate and current by reading our editorial policy.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Do You Know The Best Way To Tell How Moist The Air Is? Believe It Or Not, "Humidity" Isn't The Answer
There are multiple ways to describe how wet the air is (yes, pretty much all air is wet). What I mean by that is there are water molecules tucked in between the gases like nitrogen and oxygen that make up the air around us. How much water is in the air is important to human comfort and safety, largely because it impacts your body's natural cooling system: sweat. But not all methods of communicating how moist the air is are created equal. The two most commonly used measurements are the relative humidity and the dew point. While you may be more used to hearing about the relative humidity, the dew point is actually a much more useful number. That is because the dew point is a measure of how much water vapor is in the air and relative humidity is a measure of how much water vapor is in the air relative to how much water vapor could be in the air. That sentence was pretty long and hard to follow, so let's break it down. Dew point is an absolute measure of moisture content in the air: A higher dew point directly means that there is more water vapor in the air. This matters for how comfortable the air is outside because it impacts your body's ability to use sweat as a method of self-cooling. Sweat cools your body through evaporation. When you sweat, small water droplets collect on your skin. As those droplets evaporate, they take energy from your body, cooling you, and from the air directly above your skin, keeping you more comfortable. (MORE: The Good And The Bad About Sweat On The Skin) But when there is a higher dew point (meaning there is more water vapor already in the air), that evaporation process slows down. The body can't cool itself as efficiently anymore, making you hotter and potentially a little more miserable. Technically speaking, the dew point is the temperature at which air would be saturated (meaning it has a 100% relative humidity). When air is saturated, the water vapor condenses into droplets and you get features like clouds and fog. Relative humidity is a relative measure of moisture content in the air: Relative humidity is a measure of how much moisture is in the air relative to how much there could be based on the temperature. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so as the temperature changes, the relative humidity does as well, even if the actual moisture content in the atmosphere isn't changing. This is a very common trend for daily relative humidity cycles. On a typical day (barring any fun weather phenomena like cold fronts and the like), temperatures go from cool in the morning to warm in the afternoon, then back to cool at night. Relative humidity has an opposite trend (again, making an assumption that the moisture content in the atmosphere is changing very little or not at all). It starts high in the morning, drops in the afternoon and then rises again at night as things cool off. Often, it will feel most humid during the afternoon when the relative humidity is the lowest. When it comes to the physiological processes that keep you cool, knowing how much moisture is in the air is much more important than how much moisture the air could have. Climate snapshot: High humidity on a hot day is more than just uncomfortable - it can be deadly. And days like that are increasing in frequency across the country. Climate Central warns that high humid heat days more than doubled in frequency for most of the regions in the country from 1980 to 2020. Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with and has a bachelor's and a master's degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences along with a master's degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.
