Factually! with Adam Conover - The Joy of Sweat with Sarah Everts

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

This week we're talking about sweat. Yes, sweat! Science journalist Sarah Everts is on the show this week to unpack her new book, The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. You can check out her book at factuallypod.com/books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I do my favorite thing, which is talk to some incredible experts about all the amazing things that they know that I don't know and that you probably don't know either. My mind's going to be blown. Your mind is going to be blown. We're all going to have a great time together. That has been my intro for the show for the last couple of weeks. Is it getting a little rote? Are you bored of the intro? Send me an email, by the way. If you ever

want to talk to me about the show, you can always send me an email at factuallyatadamconover.net. Give me your suggestions, what you'd like to hear in the future. I always love to hear from you. But look, let's talk about this week's show. I'll be honest, as I'm recording this right now, I'm a little exhausted. I just got back from a whirlwind week of travel. I was shooting segments for my new show, The G Word, which is gonna come out on Netflix next year. It's all about how the federal government works. We interview some incredible people, go do some amazing things.

I'm under NDA, so I can't talk about any of it, but suffice it to say, I did not sleep a lot and we got some amazing footage and I cannot wait for you to see this show when it comes out, hopefully in early 2022, before too long. But look, beyond that, there's a lot of horrible stuff going on in the world right now. So let's talk about a topic that is a little bit lighter, more effervescent, a little bit moister this week. This week, we are going to talk about sweat. That's right. The salty, wet stuff that you excrete from your entire body, if you're me, at basically all times. I know it seems like an odd topic

for a podcast episode, but let me tell you something. At the end of this interview, I think you will be convinced that sweat is not just very fascinating. It is the very thing that makes us human. That's right. Not only is sweat almost unique to humans in the animal kingdom, we're one of the very few species that do it across our whole bodies, giving us an evolutionary advantage that other animals simply don't have, which we'll get into in the interview. It also conveys information about us on a staggering scale. That's right. You're worried about social media leaking your private data.

You might want to worry about your sweat doing the same thing. But look, instead of trying to explain it myself, why don't we just get to this interview? My guest today is Sarah Everts. She's an award-winning science journalist, and she's the author of a new book called The Joy of Sweat, The Strange Science of Perspiration. I think you're going to be completely fascinated by this interview. I know I was. So let's get right to it. Please welcome Sarah Everts. Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. Hey, it's great to be here. So you've written an entire book on sweat. The book, are the pages of this book moist? Is that a gross place to start. But the first thing that comes to mind, it's a book full of sweat. We're like 30 seconds in and you're already

TMI. Yeah, it's full of sweat, but like not literal, literal damp. It's not moist. The book is not moist. Okay. Well, well, tell me what brought you to write this book. I mean, what is so fascinating about sweat? Well, so I think like a lot of people, I'm a little bit mortified by my own sweat. I kind of went through life worrying that I might sweat too much. Like I'm the kind of person that, you know, when I'm doing a workout, I'm grabbing my towel during the warm up or like during hot yoga. I'm like looking around to see if anybody else is dripping on their mat when I should be focusing on my downward dog and being Zen. And yet, as a science journalist, I always knew that evolutionary biologists count sweating as one

of our superpowers, one of the things that make humans unique in the animal kingdom, along with big brains and nakedness. And so I thought, OK, I need to find some serenity rather than shame in all the sweating that I certainly do. So our superpowers are big brains, nakedness and sweat. That we are smooth, we are wet and we overthink it is that that sounds like a pretty good description of humanity to me but it's also i don't know if that's a picture that is really it really seems like all of these all of these slippery beings sort of sliding around the planes or whatever doesn't doesn't sound that evolutionary evolutionarily advantageous so why is it well that's the funny thing is because being naked is actually part and parcel to why sweating is also our superpower.

So in the animal kingdom, we are actually inordinately good at cooling down. And that's because we have millions of sweat glands between two and five. I got mine counted. I have three since we're three million, not three. You have three million sweat glands between two and five. I got mine counted. I have three since we're 3 million, not three. You have 3 million sweat glands. I have 3, 3 million. Someone went through, someone went over your whole body and counted up your sweat glands one by one. They got to 3 million. Uh, they did it in a kind of a weirder way that involves dental polymer, you know, the stuff that they use to like take impressions of teeth and mild electrocution.

But, you know, we can get to that now or later. Okay, no, that's all right. That's fine. That's enough of a description. Okay, so we sweat primarily to cool down. And that's because our body heat effectively evaporates the water that is coming out of our sweat glands and takes our heat, whisks it from our bodies into the atmosphere. And we kind of need to do this because like death by heat stroke is a terrible way to go. And we're really efficient at it in part because we're naked. So if you think about a dog, the way that they cool down is by evaporating the water out of saliva off their tongue, which is like literally the only naked part of their body, but it's a tiny little bit of real estate to cool down their whole body. Yet we have all the parts, we are naked. And so we can evaporate off of our entire body and as such are super efficient,

which gives us this sneaky trick where we can exercise and cool down simultaneously. So, we can run marathons, right? Because we don't actually have to stop running. Well, some of us do. But in the heady days of our evolution, you can imagine that, you know, most of our prey ran a lot faster than we do. They sprinted away. But ultimately, they would have to stop running in order to cool down so that they don't die this horrible death by heat stroke. Whereas we, because we've got this great super sweating strategy and a lot of nakedness to cool off of, um, we could keep running, catch up with them, force them to sprint again. And then again, and again, until they become so weakened by heat stroke that they were easy to kill or just died. And so, yeah, this is, you

know, this is the superpower part of it. We can, um, run exercise and stay cool all at the same time. So I've heard this theory before that that was the original way that humans hunted or one of the very original ways in our very early history. And I wish I can remember the name. I saw this on TikTok. Persistence hunting. Persistence hunting, is that what it's called? Persistence running, yeah. I saw on TikTok, and of course I can't remember the username,

but this guy describing it as, imagine how creepy that would be if you're like an animal, if you're a gazelle or whatever is being hunted, and you're like, oh, there's this creature with a spear. It's trying to get me. I'm going to run away. Oh, I think I got away from it. And you rest, and like, oh, wait, here it comes.

Wait, there it is. It's still coming for me. I got to keep running. It's like the zombies, right? Yeah. You know, zombies don't run very fast. Well, here it comes. Wait, there it is. It's still coming for me. I got to keep running. It's like the zombies, right? Yeah. You know, zombies don't run very fast. Well, in some movies. But they're just like constantly coming at you.

Yes, that is us. Yeah. And so, and because we have this special superpower of being able to evaporate heat in a way that almost no other animal does. That's really, that's so cool. I run distance for exercise. I like to go on long runs.

Normally I run three miles, but on a weekend I'll run, you know, seven or eight miles or something like that. But I'm very slow. I take a lot of breaks. I walk a lot. It's hot in Los Angeles. But that is, you're saying this, when I'm doing that, I'm sort of partaking in like mankind's, humankind's original advantage.

Yeah. You're totally flexing to any animals that are watching. That's so cool. Well, and that's so different than what we normally hear about human humanities, evolutionary because we normally hear about in terms of the brain, which you have mentioned, but all that we make tools and X, Y, Z, this is not sort of part of the narrative that we, that we use for here is how humanity, you know, got a leg up and took over the world. Right. Well, I mean, I think it's part and parcel, right?

Obviously, having big brains and, you know, being able to construct things that help us along the way is, you know, important. Yeah. important. But the fact that we could stay cool in really hot environments allowed us to hunt during the day when a lot of similarly sized mammals have to hide out in the shade. And it allowed us to live in almost any ecosystem, right? Because when it gets cold, we can wear the pelts of other animals, but we can handle the heat. And so, we've been able to dominate the natural world sort of for better or for worse. And, you know, what's really kind of odd is that, you know, as we like face this coming climate apocalypse, which is, you know, part and parcel to humans dominating the natural world. which is, you know, part and parcel to humans dominating the natural world. You know, as climate, you know, heats things up, we are going to need our sweating capabilities to stay cool. And so, it's kind of a little macabre or ironic that,

you know, this biological function that has allowed us in part to dominate the world is ultimately going to, you know, help us survive the apocalypse that we created ourselves. Yeah, I've actually read about and and I don't know if we're jumping ahead here at all. But I've read about the idea that there's a particular temperature that we need to worry about in climate change. I think it's called the wet bulb temperature. Is this right? Where like the danger zone is literally related to the temperature at which our sweat is able to effectively cool us or not. That some places are going to go over that temperature and our sweat will not be. Do I have that right? Yeah.

So the idea is like, I think if you've sweated in a variety of places, you know that like, you know, when you're in a desert, you don't feel as hot, even if it's like super, super hot outside. And that's because you're sweating so fast, that heat that all that water vapor close to your skin is being whisked out into the atmosphere because the air in the desert is super dry. But if you are in a very humid place, right, there is a lot of water vapor, you know, evaporated water around you. And so, when you are sweating, it's actually hard for those water molecules, even though your body's really hot, and they would normally evaporate up, there's this kind of back pressure, because

there's already a lot of water molecules in the air, kind of pushing back and making it harder for you to evaporate away your heat. And that's why, you know, humans feel worse often in a human place, because it's actually harder for us to get that heat away because, you know, it's hard, you know, physically. The physics of it is hard for those water molecules to occupy space where it's you know already very packed with watermelon fuels wow wait so i'm sorry i have to ask something very basic because i understand that we sweat so that you know the water will evaporate and that cools us but i'm realizing i don't know why does water evaporating cool us down oh great question okay yay extremely basic i probably should know this high school bio class or. You're like letting me nerd out on like some physics and biochemistry. So if you've ever been in the kitchen, right, and you have like a sauce and you're getting all fancy and you want to make a reduction, like a reduction, right?

like a reduction, right? It's balsamic glaze. Yes. You need to heat that very slowly, right, to get the water molecules out into the atmosphere and kind of like effectively reduce that down to, you know, kind of a sludge, a delicious sludge. And so the process of heat evaporation, like the process of water evaporation, sorry, is actually consuming

heat, right? You need to turn on your stove to make those water molecules leave your sauce. Okay, right. And so, the process of evaporating the water in your sweat off your body is consuming heat to do that. Like you need to consume heat to evaporate water. And so it's literally consuming the heat of your body in order to whisk that water up into the atmosphere. Oh, I get it. Okay. So it's like, there's this, so like there's, there's heat coming in. I'm out in the sun. There's heat coming in, hitting my body and the ambient temperature. And that's going to heat me up to the point where I die. But instead I've got all this water on my body

and that water is sort of like using that heat to be turned into gas. It's like a chemical reaction using up all this heat sort of before I end up internalizing it and taking it, taking it away. Yes. Like I got too much vinegar in my house. so I'll buy a whole lot of baking soda and now I'm going to have less vinegar because I've used it all to turn it. I think of every chemical reaction is baking soda and vinegar, which is very stupid of me, but I just go back to elementary school. So I would say that that strategy of like getting yourself wet with a bodily fluid is the best strategy for any animal to cool down. Humans happen to have millions of glands specifically for that purpose. Dogs use saliva, but other animals use all sorts of other bodily

fluids, right? You're talking about pee. Right. So, if you don't have millions of sweat glands to dispatch sweat to your, you have to rely on something else, namely pee or watery poop. That's what vultures do. They poop on their own legs. Seals urinate on themselves. Honeybees vomit on themselves in order to get their body wet to, you know, evaporate away their heat. So, yeah, you know, if you know that, then sweat is so much less gross right imagine you're all on the subway you know and instead of just sweating we have okay we'll just leave it there and that's what and that's also why like just getting just getting wet wet just immersing yourself in water um also works to a certain extent also the water is probably cooler than the out than the ambient

temperature but also it it evaporates in the same. That's why you feel chilly when you get out of the pool. Right. And so, folks who, there's some people who have a genetic condition where their sweat glands didn't form in utero. And so, they don't actually have sweat glands and they are miserable, even in like temperate climates. And so they spritz themselves. Typically, I've heard, you know, as a solution, you walk around with like a spray bottle and spritz yourself with water in order to achieve the same end. Wait, I want to hear more about this. It's a genetic condition. And it means you cannot, you do not sweat at all. You don't have sweat glands or you simply don't sweat?

Yeah. So what happens is in utero is when your sweat glands are formed. And so you're born with all the sweat glands that you're going to have, although they don't get truly functional until your toddler years, but you're born with what you got. And some folks have a genetic condition where that message to make the sweat glands doesn't get heard. And so, they are born with skin, but their skin just doesn't have sweat glands in it. And so, they don't have this capacity to cool down. And it's actually a really tough life because we are actually constantly sweating. So, you know, we mostly notice it when our body kind of goes berserk, when our body temperature really rises, either because you're running, right? So, you're

creating a lot of internal heat or, you know, it's really hot outside. But at any moment of the day, right now, you are sweating, right? Your body's making incremental changes. I'm very nervous for this interview. No. And so like, it's just like releasing tiny amounts of sweat and it's evaporating before you even notice it. Wow. That's just part of homeostasis of staying the same temperature all the time. Yes. Well, I would imagine if you can't sweat, that that would be very dangerous. Like you'd have to be very aware of the temperature of the place that you're going. Like it would be hard to go on, you know, here in LA, we have a couple hundred degree days, more and more of them every year.

And you'd have to be very careful about going outside. I would imagine if you could, you could, wouldn't you be more at risk of heat stroke and things like that? Oh yeah. You're constantly at risk of heat stroke. And I would say probably there are very few people with that condition living in LA. I think you'd wanna go to more Northern climbs. Wow, that is wild.

Well, let's just talk a little bit about the shame factor that you brought up. Like we shouldn't be ashamed of sweat. It's better than other things. It's better than shitting on your legs to cool down. Although now that I know it's a strategy, I might try it next time I'm on a run. Actually, a lot of marathon runners, I think, do use that strategy.

Frankly, it is a thing that happens sometimes is people being boo on themselves. Not for that reason, but maybe that's part of why. Sorry. But I also think that like I've always felt that with bodily fluids, there's something fundamentally unnerving about them because they remind us of our animal natures. Like I've always felt one of the reasons we like, we don't like poop in addition to it being gross and smelling bad and having a revulsion to it is that it like reminds us that we're just like biological machines when we want to be so much more. And so we want to get it away from us and not think about it. You know what I mean? It like, it's, it somehow reminds us of our animal nature and sweat is kind of the same way, especially if it's our, our fundamental, you know, human

advantage. Like, I don't know, does that track for you at all? Well, I think, yeah, I think you're onto something. What's so interesting to me about sweat is that, you know, unlike some of these other bodily fluids that you mentioned, like peeing or pooping or even like burping, right? All of these things, you can control it just for a second. So you're in a social situation, right? You feel something happening and you can, you know, move out of that social situation and deal with it. But with sweat, you have absolutely and utter zero control over your body's decision to open the floodgates. And I think that that is partly why there's so much kind of discomfort and shame associated with it because it is utterly out of our control. And, you know, humanity really doesn't like it when things are not in our control. We're a little

bit micromanaging as a species. And particularly in this era of, you know, online curated personalities, like having like an image, you know, that your body, you know, goes rogue on you, you know, that your body, you know, goes rogue on you, I think is, you know, why it's very particularly a kind of shameful. Well, and for performers like myself, it can, you know, you're literally on stage, you know, and if you're perspiring in a way that is obvious to people, you have no control over it. And it's like, you know, you're in a situation where you should be controlled. And it's really unnerving whenever that happens. I've had experiences on stage where I had sudden dry mouth

or where I had heart palpitations. I had a panic attack on stage at one point. I've experienced sweating as well. And it's like really upsetting. You know, I don't know if you remember, this is very specific to me, but do you remember when Marco Rubio had to grab the glass of water? Do you remember this is very specific to me but do you remember you remember when Marco Rubio had to grab the glass of water do you remember this when he was giving

the speech he was doing the um uh the response to the state of the union and he's and he got dry mouth and he stepped off a stage off a camera really awkwardly to get it to get a drink of water and and you know it came out that he had like he had sort of a phobia of always needing water nearby because he got dry mouth all the time and a a lot of people made fun of him. And I was like, oh, I get it. I understand. I have been there, man. That is like solidarity. You are not totally in control of yourself and you need that thing nearby.

So, yeah, it's really interesting that we don't have any control over sweat specifically, though, because like, I mean, we have control over our breathing and that's the most fundamental, you know, bodily process of all. Right. That's like the most basic, you know, thing that our body is doing to maintain itself. And we can hold on to that for at least a period of time. But sweat, we can't like hold it in until we get really overheated and then it floods out. We can't hold it in whatsoever. Why is there something special about sweat that

means it works that way? Well, I think it speaks to the fact that like temperature control is like utterly important for us. So, you know, we were talking about, you know, what makes us hot, you know, what makes us need to sweat? Well, even if you're not in, you know, a really hot environment or running, you are constantly, your body's constantly doing biochemical reactions, right? It's like dividing cells, it's breaking down glucose, it's making hormones. And many of those biochemical reactions produce heat. So you just like sitting on your couch, eating a bag of chips, watching Netflix, you are actually creating a lot of body heat.

And, you know, that happens also while you're sleeping. So, your body needs to be constantly on top of your temperature. And so, I think that that like just speaks to, you know, why it's so essential and why it's so kind of amazing that humans have such a sensitive control mechanism for doing that, for controlling our temperature. Yeah, that is, we're just constantly adjusting the thermostat all of the time. All the time. But then if that's the case, people are still very sensitive to temperature, right? You know, my partner and I just had an argument the other day about the thermostat in the middle of the night because she wanted a little bit colder.

And I'm like, we're asleep. You put a fan on. You don't need the thermostat to be at the same temperature when you're asleep as when you're awake. You bump it up a couple degrees to save power. You know what I mean? That's how I was raised. I've become a thermostat dad, unfortunately. But so this is still something that people feel really, really strongly about.

And so we have, I don't know, it's like we have a limited degree to adjust our temperature. It's not it's not like we are. It's interesting. You said we're comfortable at like many different climates, but also we're very we have this desire to fine tune it. I don't know. Well, yeah. And, you know, we are each our own unique biological selves. Right. So, you know, I was saying kind of, you know, we put on the pelts of other animals. Right. Maybe you need two pelts and maybe your partner needs one. But I think I'm going to step away from this particular conversation because like I do not get in between couples. I, honey, just put on another pelt. Come on. I, honey, just put on another pelt. Come on. So, okay. So what exactly, I'm surprised we're 22 minutes in this interview. We haven't said this yet. What exactly is sweat? What is in it?

Yeah, it's actually really interesting. It's so much more complicated than salt and water. So all your sweat glands, when your body gets the temperature directive to cool down, it sources sweat from your blood. So sweat is actually the watery parts of blood minus the big things like blood cells and immune cells and platelets. Yeah. Sweat is blood? Yeah. Well, it's the watery parts of blood. So anytime, so what happens is, okay, you get hot, right? Yeah. And immediately, your body's like, oh, crap, we've got to get the core cool. And so, all your blood vessels push up against your skin, which is why people with lighter skin tones turn red. Because all of your vasculature, right, you've got these veins pushing up against your skin. And that's for two reasons.

One, because your sweat glands need to source sweat from somewhere. And so, they're pulling out the watery parts of blood. And two, because effectively, you're cooling the hot blood in your core. It's swooshing out to the surface of your skin, passing by your skin, where the evaporating water cools it, and then it swoops back into your core to cool you down. But the sweat actually, the reason it's salty is because, you know, we're salty oceans inside, right? Our blood is very salty and so is our sweat. But anything that's circulating in your sweat, whether it's hormones or vitamins or the drugs we consume, that also comes out in your sweat. So I went to a forensic chemist who effectively took a fingerprint of mine, because you also know that fingerprints are just sweat prints, they're inked

in sweat. And so just with the tiny little bit of sweat that I left with my index finger, she could tell me that I had had my morning coffee because she found evidence of caffeine metabolites, like caffeine, in my sweat. Now, had I topped up my coffee with a little vodka or snorted a line of cocaine as part of my morning routine, that also would come out in my sweat and be left in like the trace amounts of a fingerprint. And so yeah, when you're dripping on your yoga mat or onto, you know, whatever it is that you do, you are actually like dripping out secrets. It's not just like secrets that you're like overheated or maybe nervous talking to your special crush, but you're actually literally leaving chemicals behind that that can also say like whether you

have certain diseases and so like this kind of um kind of forensic analysis is super young right it's just being developed but um yeah they're you know the next generation of of kind of iphones and smart watches will or may include these um kind of adhesive patch add-ons where you can imagine kind of imagine a band-aid right with some electronics that are measuring your sweat and then it sends you a little push alert on your smartphone or your smartwatch saying, dude, you've had one too many at the bar. Best to take a cab home tonight instead of, you know, driving. Or athletes, you know, you can imagine a sports team. There's a coach on the sidelines watching the players in a really important game.

They are all wearing these sweat patches, which are sending, you know, information about the contents of their sweat. And, you know, the coach sees that one of the players is, you know, releasing, you know, stress hormones and thinks to them, okay, best to switch out that player. So, this is kind of what's on the horizon. So, really exciting, kind of, you know, if personal measurement is your jam, like you have a fitbit this is like the next generation of that so that's cool but it's also terrifying because you can imagine you know uh just with a fingerprint which we leave literally everywhere um an employer yeah give this to amazon to put on warehouse workers and it's a much different story. Right. Or, you know, are you in your cubicle at work showing up intoxicated and is your boss able to like lift a print and, you know, make decisions like that or health insurers? Because

you can find out, you know, certain diseases leave biomarkers in your blood, which come out in your sweat. And, you know, they could also, you know, surreptitiously sample that and, you know, make decisions about you or your coverage that, you know, may not be like in cahoots with, you know, justice. Well, it's because, look, I did a, this is wild to me because we did a whole segment on our show, Adam ruins everything a couple of years ago about how the idea of sweating out toxins is kind of bullshit. And we're going to get to that in a second. I want to ask you for your take on this, your mouthing. Thank you. I mean, yeah, we're going to get into it. But I really, you know, I still have to, I go to yoga classes and the yoga teachers still go sweat out all those toxins. Right. And it bugs me. I'm like, fine, I'm just doing the pose. I'm not

thinking about the pseudoscience. I wish instead they would say, let's sweat out all those secrets, sweat out the secrets. That is so much more evocative to think that you are releasing secrets onto your yoga mat. That like that feels spiritual to me in a way. Right. Purging those like negative things that you bottle up inside. Right. Like the emotions. But yeah. No. Oh, my gosh. that you bottle up inside, right? Like the emotions, but yeah. No, oh my gosh.

Sweating is not a detox strategy. Let's take, let us go to break on that note because we're gonna, once we get into that, we're gonna spend the next half hour really unpacking that. So if you wanna find out about why sweating out toxins is bullshit, come on right back with us after break. We'll be right back with more Sarah Everts.

I don't know anything. with us after break. We'll be right back with more Sarah Everts. Okay. We're back with Sarah Everts. Uh, and we were just getting into, you said toxins are not, or sorry, sweating is not a detox strategy. Uh, tell me what is so wrongheaded about this idea that you hear all the time that you sweat out toxins. What's the problem with that? Oh my gosh, this myth kills me because if you know anything about how the body functions, you know that this cannot be true. So remember how I said that sweat comes from the watery parts of blood, right? And so if we sweat out toxins, you would literally have to sweat out all of your blood, all the water in your blood in order to get all the nasty stuff out. Oh, true.

You would literally have to sweat out every last drop of your blood to get the detox, to get the toxins out onto your skin and away. And that would leave you completely dehydrated and likely dead. Instead, our body has kidneys, which filter the blood of the nasty stuff and dispatch that out in pee. And so anything that's coming out in your sweat is incidental. And certainly some nasty stuff comes out, right? Anything that's circulating in your blood that hasn't perhaps passed through your kidneys yet can come out, things like urea or heavy metals. But at the same time, really important things are coming out like glucose. This is your body's energy molecule or vitamins or hormones. Everything that is coming out in your sweat is just happens to be coursing

through your blood, but it is not the way that your body kind of actively gets those toxins out. And you, you can't do that. Like if, if that was the way, then you would have to dehydrate yourself to death, which, you know, really not an optimal life strategy. Right. Because you're only you're only sweating out a little bit of the water. So like even if the toxin that you're worried about was able to pass through the skin and leave in that particular way rather than just a marker of it. Well, you're only sweating out what some small percentage of your blood, because otherwise you'd be dead. So you're you, all it does is indicate that there's more of it in you at its very best. Exactly. And so what's interesting about that is like sweat could be used in the future as like a strategy for identifying, oh, hey, you have maybe this

contaminant in you, right? It could be a diagnostic to say, you know, this is circulating in your blood in the same way that you can figure out, oh, you've been drinking alcohol because it's coming out in your sweat. But that's not how your body is purging those things. Your body is very clearly purging stuff that you don't want to have in your body via pee and poop. That's why pee and poop are gross. Exactly. Right. That's why, that's why I assume, oh, you're the, you're the science writer. So I'm going to assume there's an evolutionary connection with the fact that I am revolted by my poop to the fact that there's stuff in it that I don't want in my body. If I want it back in my body, it would be delicious to me and I would want to eat it, but I don't want in my body. If I want it back in my body, it would be delicious to me and I would want to eat it, but I don't want to eat it.

So therefore my body must be trying to reject that stuff, right? That's like how it, we do that already. Those classes, you're giving me such a look like this guy is really going into detail. Oh, I'm enjoying your explanations very, very much. Well, so what these class, when they're, instead of you saying,

sweat out all your toxins, they should, you know, the guru should go with you to the bathroom and say pee and poop all out all your toxins and do some like you know therapeutic peeing and pooping classes that's what we should have to get the toxins out right i i you want to go to the wellness center i love this so what's kind of like an interesting segue about this though, is right. Like when you do go to say a yoga class and sweat a lot or, you know, a workout, you do feel good, right? Like, so there is like, so what, what those yoga instructors and, and literally every spa on earth and, you know, spin instructors, all these people who kind of promote this thing,

on earth and, you know, spin instructors, all these people who kind of promote this thing, they're referring often to this like very lived experience of, wow, I feel euphoric after a workout. And what's actually happening is that when, when you sweat a lot, um, your heart, uh, you know, starts to beat really quickly. And so whether you're sweating and actually exercising or just sweating in a sauna, because your heart is pumping blood so quickly through your body in order to cool down, you're getting the release of all these happy chemicals, things like epinephrine and endorphins. And these happy hormones that, you know, come when you exercise do make you feel so happy that you are having a catharsis, right? You feel like you're getting out toxic emotions, right? And that's certainly true, but you're not actually literally getting out toxic chemicals. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, yeah, there's nothing that feels better than my favorite part of going on a run. And, you know, obviously running often is, is pain and you just wait for it to be over. And it's, it's specifically an endurance exercise. You're enduring it. But then you come home and you're all sweaty and then you take a shower and then you feel so refreshed and there's something so good about it. So, so I, this is going to be my next question, um, was even though the toxin thing isn't real, uh, the, the, you know, having a centralized way

to sweat a lot, a steam room or a sauna. I know people say sauna. My grandparents were Norwegian. They taught me to say sauna. So I say sauna and you give me, you gave me a fist in the air. So you think that's right. OK, I know. I got made fun of by kids in my high school for saying sauna, not saying sauna, because they were all Long Islanders. Oh, we got to take a sauna. I was like, no, it's sauna anyway. So this is an age old practice, right? Is people specifically going in a small hot room to sweat? There must be a purpose for it. And is that the purpose? small hot room to sweat, there must be a purpose for it. And is that the purpose?

Yeah, maybe. I mean, if you look at human history, right, from, you know, indigenous people of the Americas to like the Hamams in the Middle East, to the Jimjilbangs in Korea, to the Banyas in Russia, to the saunas in Finland and most of Western Europe, like there is this catharsis and a desire to sweat in vast quantities. And I do think it's because you get this release of happy chemicals that like also give you a sense of purpose, a sense of calm. So yeah, it's a very ancient practice. And I think, you know, we see the modern incarnations and, you know, spin classes and hot yoga. Yeah. Is it, though, actually good for you in addition to feeling good and just I feel refreshed and maybe my brain is a little clearer or something like that because I've got some some new chemicals coursing through my brain that I like? Is there a health benefit to going and intensively sweating for half an hour to an hour? benefit to going and intensively sweating for half an hour to an hour and forget exercise,

right? Just if, if you're just going in the sauna on a cold day, uh, is there a health benefit to that? Yeah. So there is, um, and it's the health benefit is to your heart. So there have been a lot of like pseudoscience claims and, oh my God, it kills me too. I love to go to a sauna or to spas like but most of the things that they claim just kill me like it does not cure cancer to go to a sauna like people okay um but what actually has done in terms of like really good science um finnish researchers did this like enormous cohort studying people over many many years and they found that if you went to the sauna very regularly, you had a lower incidence of heart attack, heart disease, death by, you know, something related to heart health. So it is good for your heart because your heart is getting exercise. When you are sweating in vast quantities, right, you have to be pushing the hot blood from your interior out to the surface of your skin, getting all that liquid to the surface of your skin.

And so your heart is booting it, right? And so your heart is a muscle and it's getting exercise. And, you know, the downstream effects of this are, you know, plaque clearing enzymes are expressed and other good things for your cardiovascular system. And so, yeah, there are some actual health benefits just to sitting in a very hot place and forcing your body to cool down. It's not time to quit your gym membership yet because, of course, you're not burning that many calories and you're not building muscle, but you are working out your heart. But, you know, the one tiny caveat is this research was done in like Finnish men. And I don't know if you've been to Finland, but there are more saunas in Finland than there are humans. And, you know, when they were doing this like very long-term study, they struggled to find anybody who didn't go to the

sauna at least one time a week. And so these health benefits that I just told you about, that's if you go like four to five times a week. So you really need to like up your game to, you know, get your heart health. But the point is, is that there are, you know, there are health benefits and, you know, maybe you're making, you're getting micro benefits if you just go to the sauna now and again. Is it now, does the humidity matter at all? You know, a lot of times in the sauna you go in and you're it's there's dry heat. There's a wet steam room, I guess. I don't know. It's supposed to variation is good.

Now I'm just asking you for advice on how to take a good sauna. Sorry. Is it good when you jump in a frozen lake? That's what we used to do at my grandparents' cabin. It is glorious. Oh my gosh. And you jump in the freezing cold lake That's what we used to do at my grandparents' cabin. It is glorious. Oh my gosh. And you jump in the freezing cold lake afterwards. And then you go back in the sauna. It was great fun when I was 13 years old. Maybe I would enjoy it less now, but.

I enjoy it enormously. Yeah, that's called the heat cycle. And it's just incredible to have the contrast. It really just makes you feel glorious. It definitely ups those happy chemicals. But so much of the time, these are like, I, this actually makes me feel a little bit better because especially in LA, you know, there there's people, people are always coming up with a new treatment that is claimed to do something like a couple of years ago, the big thing in LA was, was cryotherapy where you go get in a cold chamber, you know, and it's supposed to do X, Y, Z to your body.

And my take was always like, it probably just feels good. It's just an extreme feeling, right? You go in a really cold room, you withstand it, you come out, then you feel warmer and you feel like something has happened to you. But, and I was sort of assumed that a sauna was the same way, but there actually can be like a health benefit to this, even if it's not going to cure cancer or toxins or things like that. It can be good in a subtler way. Yeah. But I think like like exercise, you have to do it regularly. Right.

So if you decide to get all super healthy and, you know, get the benefits of exercise and just go hardcore for two weeks and then never exercise again, you know, on the course of your life, it's not going to have like an ultimately great impact. But if you regularly go to the sauna and regularly give your heart, you know, this, this workout, I do think, you know, that, that is going to benefit you. And it's not for all the people who are like doing a lot of Coke and getting really drunk and doing, I'm going on a bender and then saying, now I got to go to the steam room to sweat the toxins out. That's not like the healthiest set of behavior. That's not really going to work in the way that you think it is. Okay. Well, look, we got, we got a little bit of time left and I just want to know

what other amazing shit did you learn about sweat that I don't even know to ask about that you can blow my mind with in the time that we have left? What are, what's the coolest story in your book about sweat? Oh Lord. We haven't even talked about stink, right? No. Oh, my God. We haven't talked about the fact that sweat is stinky. Holy shit. There's I really didn't think we would fill this whole interview with sweat facts and we're not even part of the way through it. So, yeah. Tell me about about stinky, stinky sweat. So, like, up until this point, we've been talking about, like, this one gland that releases like the salty floods to cool you down. But there is another. Right. And it appears at puberty, mostly anywhere where you grow hair.

And this other sweat gland, it's called the apocrine gland. It's what's responsible for morphing armpits into stink zones from the teenage years onwards. And that sweat is not salt watery at all. It's actually more like earwax. And it actually comes out not smelling bad at all. But you know, you know, you're covered in bacteria, right? Like we are a hybrid organism of human and bacteria doing stuff. And the bacteria living in your armpit eat that other kind of sweat. And it's their metabolic products, which is like a euphemism for poop in the scientific jargon. It's their microbial poop that, you know, is the stink that gives you your body odor print and me a slightly

different body odor print, but you know, that definitely gives us some body odor. So yeah. print, but you know, that definitely gives us some body odor. So yeah. It's interesting because you know, we have top notes, right? Like there are human top notes to our BO, right? The scientists have like figured out, you know, what are the things in human BO where you go into an elevator and it's super stinky and you know that it was a human in there before and not a dog right yeah um and those two top notes one is kind of like smells like a raunchy goat um it's like goatee and you know talking about this like you're a wine connoisseur it's the same science dude and then the other one is like overripe passion fruit with onions. Like those are like the two human top notes. With hints of, with hints of overripe passion. Yes. I'm getting human.

I'm getting human. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what, you know, and those are like the things that you and I probably share in common about our BO, but then, you know, there's like hundreds of other molecules that, you know, make it possible for a dog to, you know, track me versus track you based on a t-shirt that, you know, make it possible for a dog to, you know, track me versus track you based on a t-shirt that, you know, we've worn. And, and, you know, there's so many like interesting things that humans learn from one another from our BO. You know, just,

you know, we, we learn the odors of, of the people we love, like siblings can identify each other, even if they haven't seen each other for, for tears based on that BO. We can identify each other, even if they haven't seen each other for four years based on that B.O. We can identify anxiety. Right. Like I have just met you and I could tell if you're anxious or not, most likely from, you know, the sweat on your T-shirt because we sweat differently when we're anxious. But you wouldn't do this consciously. I mean, I've never been around a person that, yeah, they smell anxious. I have seen, I've been around a person and felt anxiety coming off of them. Are you saying I am sort of subconsciously or unconsciously detecting anxiety based on their smell? Really?

Yeah. So this was like an observation that first came from a law enforcement who observed that, you know, when people come in to be interrogated, they smell like themselves, whatever that is. But when they leave, they all smell the same, like anxious. And when scientists. Cops were like, yeah, the perps smell the same. You know, you've been in this business long enough. You know that all the perps smell the same. That's what a weird. Who's making this observation? Well, it's not just the perps smell this that's that's what a weird who's

making this observation well it's not just the perps we all do it's kind of super stressful to be interrogated by a cop so like like i imagine a lot of innocent people smell anxious too of course and when scientists tried to you know suss out like what the heck are they talking about they gave people t-shirts to wear and then they put them in front of movies one was like uh you know, suss out, like, what the heck are they talking about? They gave people t-shirts to wear and then they put them in front of movies. One was like, you know, a nature documentary and the other one was a really scary film and they collected the different kinds of sweat. And then they gave it to a panel of sniffers of people whose job it is to sniff things. That's a great job, by the way. And they could tell these perfect strangers just from the stink who was anxious and who wasn't. And, you know, the organization probably most interested

in doing research on this and that funds a lot of research is the American military because you can imagine that in a tank situation, right, if you've got a bunch of people working close together and one person gets super anxious and they start making this odor, it could spread the fear amongst the other people and in a combat situation could compromise that mission. And so, lots of chemists are trying to find a way to identify that top anxiety note, which they haven't been able to yet of the hundreds of molecules percolating out of our armpits that they haven't managed to pluck. But once they do, the idea is to find a way to capture it. You would capture a poison gas with a gas mask or CO2, carbon capture techniques.

So yeah, that's just one of the little tidbits of information coming out of our body odor and moving from me to you. That's wild. of the little tidbits of information coming out of our, our body odor and, you know, moving from me to you. That's wild. Wait. So I always, you know, I used to hear about pheromones as being a thing and I think we're moving that way, but it was, and it's always like buy this vial of pheromones and put them on and you'll attract women and whatnot.

Yeah. And that's even like, I mean, even like Axe body spray had like a whole ad campaign basically about scent is going to, you know, attract women to you and stuff like that. It always seemed like bullshit, but that sounds to me like what you're describing. If I can, if I'm able to sense something subtly, if, if, if someone's smell that is not even consciously detectable to me is causing is influencing my opinion of them. It sounds like we're halfway to pheromones being real. Are pheromones real?

You have a sneaky expression on your face. Well, I am a person who does buy a pheromone clone on the Internet for funsies. Because you think it works or because you're like, no, what the hell is this? Because you think it works or because you're like, what the hell is this? Well, I can tell you because I was doing an experiment in the outskirts of Berlin with some horny boars, like wild pigs. We can talk about that later. But anyway, so because our body odor appears at puberty is also when we become sexually mature, you know, it is a logical progression that, oh, perhaps there's something in our BO that is helping us find a mate. And, you know, probably the best evidence found to this effect in humans was done by a guy named Klaus Vedekin.

And so he took a bunch of T-shirts, gave them to men to wear. And most of these kinds of studies have been done in like heterosexual men to heterosexual women. Like a lot of science has ignored the, you know, greater diversity that's out there in humans. But OK, so sadly. So in this case, though, these men had their stink on different T-shirts and the women were told to rank them for attractiveness. Meanwhile, everybody's giving blood samples. And what the scientists found was that women found men to be most attractive when any combined progeny would have immune systems that were really strong, right? So, you know, this makes sense if you, you know, think about humans in an evolutionary context.

For most of our history, it's been microbial pathogens that have been our greatest foe, whether it's a plague or a pandemic or just an infection. So, it behooves us to pick a partner to mate with that, you know, will produce progeny that can, you know, survive. But, you know, that's not very sexy, right? It kind of comes into like a contrast with, you know, our pop culture notion that, you know, I put on this pheromone cologne and you become my sex automaton, right? And that, you know, is not true, thank the Lord, because the dating scene already is pretty dystopian. But that kind of chemical does exist in the animal kingdom. So, like a moth, the silkworm moths make this molecule called bombacol and a female will

release it. And literally every male within sniffing distance makes a beeline towards her. It is like the ultimate definition of a booty call. Wow. Or wild pigs, wild hogs. They make a pheromone. The men, the male make a pheromone in their saliva. And when they breathe heavily on a female in heat, she will like swing around and lift her rump to present it to the male for mounting. that scientists have found in human body odor. And they have been looking for literally decades. And, you know, there hasn't, you know, it's been a pretty impotent search, for lack of a better word. And, you know, but that doesn't mean that there aren't kind of cues in our BO. And so, for even that T-shirt study where, you know, women were finding men like attractive if they were, you know, had complementary immune systems, like scientists have done that state, but they haven't figured out like what's the component of body odor? Like what's the actual chemical that's causing that reaction? of these online entrepreneurs that sell pheromone kilone, what they're actually putting in is that boar pheromone, you know, that one, that one, which like will make the female boar lift her

and spin. And they put that in because it has been found, those molecules are called androstenone and androstenol. They have been found in human sweat, but they've been found in both biological sexes. And the strict definition of a sex pheromone is that one sex makes it to attract the other. So like, it's just not like a human pheromone clone, but it is a human pheromone, but it is a boar pheromone. All the dude bros out there who are buying these clones on the internet and spritzing them on their bodies, they will attract a female female but it will not be a human female it will be a wild pick female and i am not a person who's judgy so like go for it that was such a long and wonderful

explanation so and so what you're saying is is that we do communicate with each other with our sweat to some extent. We are passing information back and forth. But and maybe some of that is related to sex in as much as sex is part of who we are. And there's probably something going on, but it's very complex and it's not something you can you can buy in a bottle. something going on but it's very complex and it's not something you can you can buy in a bottle um and also we don't we clearly don't have a sexual behavior with each other where men just go i want a woman to present herself somehow chemically and then women do it because that just doesn't fucking happen nobody that's not how that's not how it works at all it works and might work in hogs that way but we just simply don't have that set of behaviors, but we may be communicating with each other. We are communicating with each other somehow using chemicals excreted through our skin.

Yeah. And you know, we're also sniffing each other constantly, right? Most human greetings. No. Yeah. Okay. Until COVID-19, most human greetings involved a moment of proximity, you know, like whether you do a cheek kiss or a hug or you bow or a handshake is a literal hands-on collection of somebody else's BO. And, you know, actually this really great study was done where these scientists surreptitiously filmed people meeting for the first time and shaking each other's hand. And they found that, you know, within moments of like that handshake, the people like sniff their hands afterwards, like they lift up their in an unconscious sniffing of the handshake hand. Wow. And, you know, it was so shocking to the participants that many of them accused the scientists of like deep faking the videos like

I didn't do that because it is so unconscious and so we are sniffing each other and you know we are certainly gathering information and and smell is important to us I mean we have so much nostalgia associated with odor you know when you go to you know, the house of a loved one or, you know, when you, like every time I land in Berlin, which is, you know, it has a certain smell, the air, this is like my, my house. Smells like, smells like bore chemicals in Berlin to you. Anyway, so we have the, like, we are, we are influenced and emotionally impacted by odors. And so, yeah, certainly we smell our partner. And actually, that's the premise of, you know, smell dating. Like I went to a smell dating event

in Moscow where, you know, you pick a partner or you're matched based on BO. Like the premise being that, you know, in this digital era where we're like swiping right and left, you know, at some point you're going to smell the body odor of your partner and it will be a make or break moment and so why not skip to the chase or actually entirely skip the chase and just like you know do that first level triage on bo instead of you know say looks or a shared love of taxidermy or whatever hobbies you have did you try this you smelled some i did you smelled somes. They're presenting you with what, vials or dirty t-shirts or what? No, what happens is,

so you get a group of people together and the first thing that you do is you get a wet wipe and you wipe off any products that you've been wearing. And then they take you through some high intensity intervals, some exercise to work up a sweat.

And then you're given a cotton pad where you dab in all the places. And then that pad is put into a glass jar and the jar has a number and you know the number of yourself and the organizers know your number. And then there's a table and all the glass jars are put on the table and you sniff through them. And your job is to pick your top five. And at the end, you submit your top five. And if I picked your B.O. and you picked my B.O., this being Moscow, we would get a VIP bracelet to an all you can drink vodka cocktail to find out whether the optics and hobbies also match.

You get to go to, you can go to a house rave in a warehouse by the docks. That wasn't a Russian accent, sorry. I couldn't summon it that quickly, but okay. And how, when you smelled these BOs, was it, first of all, A, was it stinky? And B, was it something that you had a conscious? Because so much of what you're talking about is unconscious.

Like, I would imagine myself going, sitting there going like, I don't know, is, do I like one or two better? Like, I don't know, you know? So you do. So I remember, you know, some of the B.O.s, you're just like, holy hell no. Right. Like I remember this one, it smelled like adolescent boy, like just, but like, no, like I didn't ever want to smell that again. And, you know, I also smelled a whole bunch that were like familiar. Like I can't even explain it. It just was like, oh, that smells like human and a likable human.

Maybe somebody that I maybe liked when you're like, like there, it was more of that nostalgic feeling. And then, um, I, I remember the number, uh, his number 15 and like I sniff it and I'm just like, yes, like, yes. Um, yes. Yes. Uh, it was like, you know, it didn't send me into like some, you know, you know, insane, like spitting, like I, you know, needed to bed somebody immediately, but it reminded me that, oh my God, there's this like very enjoyable thing called sex. And I certainly would be interested in finding out if I could do that very enjoyable

activity with this number 15. Wow. Number 15 didn't pick me. So it just goes to say that like, God, in even in smell dating, you know, your heart is freaking broken. I mean, I just want to end on this question. Like, is it do you have any thought on why so much of this is unconscious that's the that is the thing that is like coming back to it because we could talk about food and the other half of food which is pooping right and both those things i do consciously i know when i'm eating i know when i'm pooping i can decide not to do it to up to a point right um and uh but but sweat we tend to think about it less. We have no control over it. We are releasing all these things without realizing it. We're picking up on what other

people release without realizing it until you make the decision as you did to pay conscious attention to it. It's a much more invisible layer, but it also seems really powerful. Like, why is that? And what effect does that have over our understanding of it? I think it kind of speaks to our evolutionary history. If you look at other mammals, they are very driven by olfaction, by their noses. They make all sorts of decisions. Take the laboratory mouse. They make all sorts of like decisions, like, you know, take the laboratory mouse.

Mice like will literally smell each other's pee, like dip their noses in it to learn, you know, the virginity status of other animals, whether, you know, the like whether they've had baby, like all sorts of identifying features they are learning. Now we've evolved, you know, we still, you know, do smell each other. And I think that there's this like primordial, like this, like, you know, vestigial thing happened, like it's there, but, you know, we developed language, which is very useful for communicating subtle ideas. And so I think it's kind of still there and I think it's influencing. But, you know, we also have free will and we do have control over our bodies, whether it's, you know, motivated by a sense of decency or laws. And so I think it kind of speaks to our evolutionary history. And, you know, what's interesting to me is that, you know, for the last 100 years, we've been really masking our body odors by, you know, using deodorants and antiperspirants. And we, you know, we are constantly putting these products on and, you know, is that, how is that, you know, affecting, you know, the, you know, background information that you get from me and I get from you and we meet each other that goes along with these other subtle things, you know, bodily cues

or looks or turns of phrases that give me an idea of who you are and you an idea of who I am. So it's like this, you know, we have this constant tension between, you know, between our understanding of ourselves as biological and as social organisms, you know, that we've built this thing on top of our, on top of our biology with our big ass brains, right. That using language, we've built this whole other layer of existence of sociality, of culture, of language, of all the things that we mainly dwell in that make us human. Then there's this other biological layer that we only sometimes interact with. Sometimes we interact with it too much. Sometimes people say, you know, the idea that, you know, all human behavior can be reduced to evolutionary explanations, clearly not true, but also some can be in like a really complex,

weird way. And that seems to really be what is a part of this. complex, weird way. And that seems to really be what is a part of this. Yeah. I mean, I think it's inordinately complicated and, and it's very hubristic for, for humans to think that we're like above all this, right. Um, above our biological history. Um, no, I think that that stays with us and, you know, I, I kind of want to lean into it. I, it's partly why I wrote the book. Yeah. Well, I hope folks check out the book. It's called The Joy of Sweat.

You can get it, just as a reminder, everybody, at our special bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books if you want to support the show and your local bookshop or walk down to your local bookshop or local library and get a copy. Sarah, this conversation has been so fascinating. Thank you so much. And I hope you'll come back on next time you're exploring another weird and disgusting and mind-blowing part of the human body or human experience. It'd be a pleasure. It was great talking to you. Well, thank you once again to Sarah Everts for coming on the show. If you want to buy her book,

The Joy of Sweat, please go to factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books to buy at our special bookshop. That is it for us this week here on Factually. I want to thank our producers, Chelsea Jacobson and Sam Roudman, our engineer, Ryan Connor, Andrew WK for our theme song, The Fine Folks at Falcon Northwest, for building me the incredible custom gaming PC that I'm recording this very episode for you on. You can find me online at adamconover.net or at adamconover, wherever you get your podcasts.

And hey, thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week on Factually. That was a HeadGum Podcast.