Hate feeling sweaty and think it's gross?

Think again!

"It could have been so much worse," says Sarah Everts, the author of a new book called The Joy of Sweat, a book entirely on the science of sweating. Turns out, human sweat is our body's version of air conditioning. Dogs drool to stay cool, (and while vultures will poop on their legs and seals urinate on their feet) we simply sweat to stay cool. "We effectively dispatch water to our skin, and as it evaporates, it whisks heat away from our bodies," she says.

In Everts' book, she points out that this 'superpower' of ours, helps us to thrive and dominate across the globe as a human species. "Sweating allowed us to forage out in the sun without overheating, while our predators were relegated to the shade for survival," she writes, and it's advantageous for us to be able to adapt to many new environments. This enables us to basically be able to survive almost anywhere.

How much you sweat is affected by both nature and nurture. In Everts’ book, she states that our sweat contains so much more than just.... water.

Here's an excerpt from an interview that she recently did on NPR.

“Oh, yeah! So this was the thing that really blew my mind. When you think about sweat, it took me a long time until I was writing this book to be like: Where is it really coming from? It’s effectively the liquidy parts of blood, minus the big stuff like red blood cells and platelets and immune cells.And so if you open up a body, you’re very wet inside. Right. You have this thing called interstitial fluid that’s keeping all your organs damp and moist. And that liquid is sourced from blood. And when your body gets the cool-down directive, then your sweat glands source sweat from that interstitial fluid. So literally anything that’s in your blood that’s small can percolate out.So, evidence of my morning coffee comes out in my sweat. When I have a drink of gin and tonic on a hot day — definitely the alcohol comes out. Evidence of the food we eat, evidence of our health, or even how we’re exercising.”

— Author Sarah Everts

Here's what she has to say about body odor changes, the content of your sweat, and the mix of bacteria that are metabolizing the sweat...

“Exactly. And so we all have a unique body odor print, right? We all have our own smell. And that is effectively the mix of waxy molecules coming out of those apocrine glands, plus the unique-to-you ecosystem of bacteria living in your armpit. And so that combination is what gives you your unique odor print and mine. And allows dogs, for example, to track humans based on having sniffed something that they’ve worn.”