Giving Sweat the Respect It Deserves

Not only is the humble fluid a boon for keeping humans cool, it also contains a wealth of biological information.

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If you tallied up all the sweat glands of every human currently on Earth, you’d get a number in the quadrillions, more than there are stars in the Milky Way. Like our big brains and near nakedness, the bountiful activity of these sweat glands—sprinkled across our skin like stars in the night sky—helps distinguish humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet instead of celebrating the sophisticated temperature control system embedded in our own skin, many of us contribute to the $75 billion deodorant and antiperspirant industry that aims to erase evidence of our hardworking pores.

In writing a book on the science of sweat, I surprised myself by becoming a person who gives perspiration pep talks. I guess there’s no doubt where I stand on the topic when my book is called The Joy of Sweat.

But I was not always so enamored with ...

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