I am naked as a skinless breast of chicken, breaded head-to-toe in golden cornstarch, and about to be slipped inside an oven the size of a small shed. Robert D. Fealey, M.D., the Mayo Clinic neurologist and engineer who designed the oven, has just informed me that the cornstarch is cut with a chemical called alizarin red.
“Approved by the USDA for stamping meat,” he says, tickled by the joke. As he swivels back to his computer monitors, Dr. Fealey addresses the nurse standing beside my gurney: “Okay, you can roll him in.”
One out of six Americans think they sweat too much. I’m not sure if I do or not. Dr. Fealey is going to help me decide.
First, he will bake me like a biscuit.
You are the proud operator of up to 5 million sweat glands. Except for the odor-causing kind found in your pits, most of these exist to keep your body from boiling over. Whether you’re grunting through the reps of an upper-body workout or simply basking on the beach, your sweat glands respond to temperature spikes by drawing water from the blood in your capillaries and pumping it (along with some salt and potassium) onto your skin. As each molecule of perspiration pops out, it begins to evaporate, stealing energy–in the form of heat–from your skin and leaving you cooler in the process.
The average guy just hanging out will lose 1 to 1.5 liters of sweat per day. Play a little pickup basketball or hammer on your mountain bike, however, and you can pump out 3 liters in a single hour. My personal world record for on-the-spot sweat production was set on an airplane bound for Denver. We had just been told to shut off our cellphones when I realized I couldn’t find mine. I did a quick pat-down, rummaged through my bag, dug around in the cushions. Nothing. I felt that first low-level gut tickle and forehead prickle–same one the caveman felt when he got a whiff of sabertooth spoor.
I scuttled up the jetway for a fast, fruitless search of the gate area, then hurried back to face 175 pairs of angry eyeballs. The captain came out of the cabin and ordered a flight attendant to dial my cell number–four times–while another attendant pulled up cushions, opened bin doors, and delivered a chatty play-by-play. We finally found the phone wedged deep between the seats. By this point sweat was slicking down my neck and chest and dripping from my forehead to my lap. Today, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that human sweat contains a naturally occurring antimicrobial agent, and that I had done future residents of seat 3B a favor by sanitizing the upholstery.
Alas, the same squeegee thing happens if a grocery checkout clerk decides to deliver color commentary on the contents of my cart: “Oooh! Rutabagas! Ham hocks! And nose-hair clippers!” I feel suddenly naked and become instantly sweaty.
How weird is that?
“Actually, it’s fairly common,” says Autumn Braddock, Ph.D., codirector of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the Mayo Clinic. “You’re having a fear response during a social situation. Our bodies have been fine-tuned over the years to become intensely activated when we sense fear, and that activity generates heat, which in turn generates sweat.” She also says some scientists hypothesize that “fear sweat” is designed to make you slippery and hard to grab. Thus ends many a blind date.
Before I was dusted like a cinnamon doughnut for the thermoregulatory sweat test (TST), I tell Dr. Fealey about my tendency to sweat in the grocery line. He sits me in a swivel chair beside a black box roughly the size of a cash register and attaches moisture sensors to my palms and left forearm.
Three parallel lines–one per sensor–begin to ease across a nearby computer screen, straight and flat. “We’re going to see how you sweat in response to emotional stimuli,” says Dr. Fealey. With his graying but thick brown hair, his beard, and his herringbone suit coat, he could be a college professor. “Let’s do some simple math exercises.” I feel an instant prickle at the nape of my neck and above my brow. In my world, there are no simple math exercises. “Can you count back from 100 by sevens?” asks Dr. Fealey. “Ninety-three!” I say, triumphantly. But then I have to start carrying ones. “Eighty . . . errr . . . six?” I do math in my head as well as I do knitting with my feet. “Seventy-ummm . . . ”
Dr. Fealey and his nurse are staring at me expectantly. I flash back to the day everyone gathered in the gym to watch Dixie Fuss beat me in the sixth-grade spelling bee. I sneak a peek at the computer screen. The two flat lines that had been tracing my palm sweat are spiking upward. Dr. Fealey is grinning triumphantly. About the time I mumble, “ahhh . . . fifty-one?” he lets me off the hook.
