What Is Our Perspiration Due To?

Our body is like a permanent furnace. The food is used as a fuel and gets burnt up in the body. About 2500 calories, in the process are used up daily. We admit, it is quite a bit of heat. It is enough to boil about five litres of water. What is the disposal of this heat. But, for the temperature controls in our body we could think ourselves as “hot stuff”. We also know, unless sick, the heat in cur body does not go up. Our body heat remains at an average temperature of 37 degrees centigrade.

To keep our body furnace at a nice normal temperature, perspiration is one of the ways. In fact our body temperature is con-trolled by a ‘temperature centre’ in our brain. It is comprised of a control centre, a heating centre and a cooling centre.

In the event our blood temperature rises for some reason, the cooling centre goes to work. The oxidation, or burning up of fuel is slowed. Another important thing happens, the vessels in the skin are dilated, or opened, so that the extra heat can radiate away and also to help our perspiration to evaporate, and thus cause cooling of our body.

Suppose the temperature of our body drops for some reason. The heating centre goes to work and certain things begin to happen. Special glands give out more chemical substances to burn, the muscles and the liver use up more ‘fuel’ and soon our internal temperature rises.

Perspiration is like a shower which washes the body from within. The fluid flows out through millions of body pores in the skin, in the form of microscopic drops. These drops can evaporate quickly and cool the body when necessary. When a liquid evaporates it take away head as we feel cold after a bath because the water that remains in contact with our warm skin is evaporating rapidly and causing cooling. It is exactly similar to the case of our sweating body.

On humid days, we suffer because the water on our skin cannot evaporate easily. So the use of fans to carry away the moist air to help the evaporation of our perspiration.