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Energy Systems of The Body

The body is a unique and complex system. Did you know there are two seperate energy systems of the body?

We explore the Aerobic System and Anaerobic System and explain what they are and how they relate to your health and your fitness.

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Why We Sweat

How many times have you found yourself sweating profusely during a workout or any other strenuous activity? As you reach out for a towel to dry your hands get a better grip of the weights or the cycle handlebar, have you found yourself wondering why exactly do we sweat? Most of us have the general idea that it cools down our bodies after a workout but do we really understand how this helps us?

How Our Body Regulates Temperature
The process is actually an equal partnership between our bodies and physics. Heat is constantly produced in our body because our muscles are always in use. Add this to the nerve stimulation and the exothermic chemical reactions occurring in the body that are required for metabolism (the process that helps us turn food into fuel) to occur and this causes us to perspire.

Perspiration is the body's main means of disposing of extra heat to keep the body cool. If we didn’t sweat we could end up dehydrated or overheated. When we do any activity, our bodies heat up; causing us to perspire. The combination of heat and liquid leads to vaporization, which lowers the temperature of our bodies. Some of the fluid (sweat) is evaporated into the air while the rest pools and drips from our skin.

What is Sweat and Where Does it Come From?
The fluid we produce when we perspire is made up several different elements. Sweat contains the chemical methylphenol, as well as a small amount of urea and various dissolved solids and minerals such as calcium and potassium) though mostly it is water and salt. The sweat glands are coiled bits in the skin that produce perspiration and are one of two types:

• Eccrine glands, which are in the palms of your hands, forehead and the soles of your feet, produce the most sweat (in this case the watery non-protein variety) and have been working to help you perspire since birth.
• Apocrine glands, which are largely in the armpits, and genital/anal area, only become active after puberty and produce a thicker, yellowish sweat comprised of proteins and fatty acids.

Did You Know…We Are Always Perspiring!
Though we may not always be aware of it, our bodies are always in the process of perspiring, regulating our body temp with varying amounts of sweat. In fact emotional response plays just as big a part as physical response and fever. This is why we might find ourselves sweating during a stressful situation like a job interview. A part of our brain called the hypothalamus regulates perspiration levels based on what skin receptors in the skin tell it about the environment around us. How much we sweat is regulated by sympathetic nervous system (cholinergic) fibers that cause the sweat glands to function. Other factors that affect this are:

• Rate of physical activity
• Stress
• Environmental temperature
• Humidity

In fact the highest volume of sweat that can be produced by the human body is approximately 3 liters an hour. This generally only occurs in the hottest of climates such as a desert (the highest level in normal temps is actually 1 liter an hour). Our bodies are constantly working to regulate body temperature, shifting the amount of perspiration we need too cool as our level of activity and the environment we’re in change. However, not everyone’s body is able to regulate how much they sweat properly.

Here are a few conditions that can impede the body’s ability to sweat:

• Diophoresis: excessive sweating most commonly associated with hypothyroidism and shock.
• Hyperhidrosis: increased sweating which is made worse by stress.
• Anhidrosis: the lack of sweating which is associated with underactivity of or damage to the sympathetic nervous system.

If it were not for perspiration we couldn’t regulate our body temp to fight illnesses, sweat out impurities and better acclimate to various environments and physical and emotional activity. It is a key part of our survival.