Sweat and its Relationship with Weight loss and Calorie Burning
When it comes to sweating and exercise, a lot of us do not subscribe to science at all, we would rather believe clustered narratives or popular myths. Okay I want to ask a question; what do you attribute sweating to during exercise. It is calorie burn, hard work, or releasing of toxin or maybe relieving stress or loss of extra fat?
If you check through online stores that sell sweat waist trainers or sweat vest, they give a lot of reasons why you should buy it including cutting excess water weight (like this ridiculous), burn more calories (how would a waist trainer help burn calories just like that), back support, getting rid of toxins (like terrible), and feeling good (acceptable). You would see that they are attributing sweat to these things. While I know a lot of you believe these marketing strategy, let's break sweat down for you.
The woman who didn't go through the four corners of a school wall can say that we sweat because we are hot although she might not remember to tell you that the sweat comes out to cools the body off. So maybe we should discuss how sweating cools us off? When we exercise, our body moves and kinetic energy is converted to heat and this is heat is moves from muscles to the skin and average kinetic energy is known as heat. With exercise, the higher the kinetic energy the higher the heat, and the higher the chance of evaporation.
The function of sweat is to get rid of heat, evaporate heat, and this causes the average kinetic energy to go down thereby causing the average temperature to go down. The body is made up of water as about 60% of the body is made up of water so that means there is no part of the body that doesn't have water. When we feel heat, the water in our body finds a way to cool us off but does sweat do more than that?
A study titled "Correlations between repeated use of dry Sauna for 4 X 10 minutes, Physiological parameters, anthropometric features and body composition in young sedentary and overweight men: Health Implications", the researchers took 45 overweight men within the age of 19 and 24 years and set them in dry sauna for 40 minutes with 5 minutes break every 10 minutes. At the end of the study, the men lost an average of 1.41lbs and this loss was attributed to the loss of body water. From the study it shows that excessive sweating can play a role in weight loss but then sweating doesn't affect fat mass at all rater it affects the body water.
But when these companies sell this waist trainers and includes help to lose body water weight, I then begin to ask what that means because the body is good at regulating itself. Once the body is losing lots of water, it begins to demand for water to fill the one lost via homeostasis. The water that we do not need is actually excreted via the kidneys in urine.
Does sweating show that one is burning more calories? When the body heats up, the blood vessel experience vasodilation which gives access to water to leave the body and if this is happening and we are sweating, it doesn't mean that we are burning calories. Burning of calories is done by the mitochondria which is the power house of the cell and skeletal muscle cells do the calorie burning with exercise and not the smooth muscle cells. The smooth muscle cell mitochondria produces ATP to facilitate contraction and relaxation on its function which means the heart pumping and vessels dilating and contracting which isn't significant when looking at calorie burning.
Sweating is an essential physiological process that helps regulate body temperature. While excessive sweating can lead to temporary weight loss through water loss, it does not significantly affect fat mass or calorie burning. Marketing claims about sweat vests and waist trainers often exaggerate the benefits of sweating. Understanding the true function of sweat can help you make more informed decisions about exercise and weight loss strategies. Remember, effective calorie burning and fat loss come from consistent physical activity and a balanced diet, not from gimmicky products.
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4121645/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360547/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1351439/pdf/jphysiol01079-0200.pdf
A know a lot of people that attribute sweating to calorie burning especially some gym instructor. I was at the gym one day and the instructor kept emphasizing that if we were not sweating we were not burning calories. After the session, I had to give scenarios of people who sweat without burning calories like he thinks. Thanks a lot for this post. It came right :)
Even till date many don't know about this facts especially people from the part of the World I come from still attribute sweating during exercise as burning off calories, that's a good one. Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you for sharing this! I've always been skeptical of those sweat vests and waist trainers that claim to help with weight loss. Thanks for breaking down the science behind sweating and exercise. It's clear that sweating is just a natural response to heat and not necessarily a sign of calorie burning or fat loss.