Eccrine sweat, the sweat we’re talking about here, is the salty kind sourced from the watery parts of blood and is released from the 2 to 5 million eccrine sweat glands across your skin’s surface. “This is the stuff that floods out when our body temperature rises to help cool us down,” notes Sarah Everts, a science journalist and journalism professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and author of the new book, The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. (The other kind of sweat is produced in the armpits from sweat glands that become active at puberty.) While the ability to keep your body temp in check is impressive, it isn’t the only natural and healthy benefit of eccrine sweat. Here are four other research-backed ways that this salt-based fluid can benefit you. Despite its benefits, leaving your skin drenched in sweat for a long time can have a detrimental effect. “Allowing excess sweat to sit on the skin, or worse, on the skin and [blocked] by sweaty clothing; can cause acne breakouts, encourage infection, and worsen folliculitis or inflammation of the hair follicles,” Dr. Hartman says. “Skin bacteria love a warm, wet environment, and thrive when your skin is hot and wet. These bacteria then accumulate in hair follicles and can cause pus bumps and inflammation that can be itchy, irritating, and lead to hyperpigmentation if not treated aggressively.” Long story short, sweating is good for skin, but be sure to wash your face and body as soon as you can post-sweat to avoid breakouts and other skin irritation. Your sweaty self can also make those around you feel happier, too. In a 2015 study, men watched video clips intended to induce fear, happiness, or a neutral emotional state. They collected sweat samples afterward, and then exposed women to them. The result: “happy sweat” sniffers exhibited traits of happiness, such as a genuine or Duchenne smile, which is marked by the upward turn of the corners of the mouth, the lifting of the cheeks, and the crinkling of the skin around the eyes in a way that creates crow’s feet. Those who sniffed the fear-soaked sweat pads exhibited facial characteristics associated with terror. Here’s why: A 20-year Finnish study published in Jama Internal Medicine found that people who sweated it out regularly in a sauna (think four times a week) not only had lower sudden cardiac death, but lower fatal coronary heart disease, fatal cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. Bonus benefit: A study in the Journal of Human Hypertension revealed that as little as 30 minutes spent in the sauna was also linked to a decrease in blood pressure. A PLOS ONE study confirms this. When researchers evaluated a group of long-distance runners along with sedentary folks by having them engage in cycling sessions, the runners in the bunch not only got sweatier sooner, but they also activated more sweat glands, resulting in a more profuse outpouring than their nonactive counterparts.
