Latest news with #sweat
Medical News Today
3 days ago
- Health
- Medical News Today
What can cause sweat to appear yellow?
Different factors can cause a person's sweat to change color. Typically, if a person's sweat appears yellow, it may be due to a substance in the sweat or the sweat reacting with a substance on the skin. Sweat is a bodily fluid that the sweat glands in the skin excrete. The primary function of sweat is to help regulate body temperature by cooling the skin as it evaporates. This is why people often perspire in hot weather or when exercising. Sweat mostly consists of water, but also contains other substances. In many cases, sweat may be colorless. However, if there is a high level of certain substances in sweat or on the skin, then sweat may appear different colors, such as yellow. skynesher/Getty Images A few different factors can cause a person's sweat to appear yellow or a different color. Typically, this occurs when a pigment is present in sweat and causes discoloration, or something interacts with sweat on the skin and causes it to appear a different color. For example, lipofuscin is a yellow-brown pigment that the body naturally produces. It is the byproduct of the oxidation process of unsaturated fatty acids. When a person has a higher concentration of lipofuscin in their sweat glands, or lipofuscin that is in a higher state of oxidation, it can cause sweat to appear a different color. In other cases, ingesting water-soluble dyes, heavy metals, and certain chemicals or having these substances present on the skin can cause sweat to appear yellow. Possible causes of yellow sweat may include: The apocrine sweat glands are present in areas of the body that possess many hair follicles, such as the armpit or groin. They produce a thicker sweat, which can be responsible for the smell that people associate with sweat. The eccrine glands are present all over the body and secrete a thin, watery sweat that helps to cool the skin. Certain situations can stimulate apocrine chromhidrosis due to higher levels of lipofuscin. This can include skin friction, hot showers, or certain stimuli such as anxiety or sexual arousal. Eccrine chromhidrosis may occur after a person ingests water-soluble dyes, which are common in medications, heavy metals, such as copper, or certain food colorings. For example, some medications may have a coating that contains tartrazine, which is a yellow dye. Other causes of eccrine chromhidrosis may include underlying health conditions. For example, hyperbilirubinemia describes high levels of the yellow pigment bilirubin in the blood. This can result in jaundice and yellow sweat. Pseudochromhidrosis is more common than chromhidrosis. It instead occurs after secreting sweat as it comes into contact with dyes, chemicals, or bacteria that produce pigments. For example, a person may notice yellow sweat around the armpits on pale clothing after using antiperspirants that contain aluminium. Hematohidrosis, or blood sweat, describes a rare condition where a person's sweat contains blood. Although the exact cause is unknown, it likely occurs due to tiny blood vessels rupturing near the sweat glands. However, this is unlikely to produce yellow sweat and instead cause sweat that is red in appearance. Lipofuscin is usually a yellow-brown pigment . Depending on the levels and state of lipofuscin in the apocrine sweat glands, it can cause sweat to appear as different colors. According to the International Hyperhidrosis Society, lipofuscin can cause sweat to be the following colors: yellow green blue brown black Yellow sweat may appear in different areas of the body depending on the underlying cause. For example, apocrine chromhidrosis will present with yellow sweat in areas where the apocrine sweat glands are present. This includes the armpits, areolas, and groin. Eccrine chromhidrosis can affect skin anywhere on the body, but is more likely to appear in areas with more eccrine glands, such as the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. Pseudochromhidrosis can also affect any part of the skin, but is more common on the face, neck, and palms. Treatment for yellow sweat will also depend on the underlying cause. For eccrine chromhidrosis, a person will need to avoid the causative agent or treat the underlying cause of yellow sweat. With pseudochromhidrosis, a person can either avoid the causative dye or chemical or use an antiseptic soap or antibiotics to treat the bacteria causing discoloration of their sweat. Sweat may appear yellow if a person has high levels of certain substances in their sweat, such as lipofuscin or bilirubin. In other cases, sweat may turn yellow if it reacts with certain dyes or chemicals, such as antiperspirants, or if they have bacteria that produce pigments on their skin. Treatment for yellow sweat will depend on the underlying cause. Options may include treatments to reduce sweating, antiseptic soaps, or avoiding the causative agent. 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Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Do You Know The Best Way To Tell How Moist The Air Is? Believe It Or Not, "Humidity" Isn't The Answer
There are multiple ways to describe how wet the air is (yes, pretty much all air is wet). What I mean by that is there are water molecules tucked in between the gases like nitrogen and oxygen that make up the air around us. How much water is in the air is important to human comfort and safety, largely because it impacts your body's natural cooling system: sweat. But not all methods of communicating how moist the air is are created equal. The two most commonly used measurements are the relative humidity and the dew point. While you may be more used to hearing about the relative humidity, the dew point is actually a much more useful number. That is because the dew point is a measure of how much water vapor is in the air and relative humidity is a measure of how much water vapor is in the air relative to how much water vapor could be in the air. That sentence was pretty long and hard to follow, so let's break it down. Dew point is an absolute measure of moisture content in the air: A higher dew point directly means that there is more water vapor in the air. This matters for how comfortable the air is outside because it impacts your body's ability to use sweat as a method of self-cooling. Sweat cools your body through evaporation. When you sweat, small water droplets collect on your skin. As those droplets evaporate, they take energy from your body, cooling you, and from the air directly above your skin, keeping you more comfortable. (MORE: The Good And The Bad About Sweat On The Skin) But when there is a higher dew point (meaning there is more water vapor already in the air), that evaporation process slows down. The body can't cool itself as efficiently anymore, making you hotter and potentially a little more miserable. Technically speaking, the dew point is the temperature at which air would be saturated (meaning it has a 100% relative humidity). When air is saturated, the water vapor condenses into droplets and you get features like clouds and fog. Relative humidity is a relative measure of moisture content in the air: Relative humidity is a measure of how much moisture is in the air relative to how much there could be based on the temperature. Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, so as the temperature changes, the relative humidity does as well, even if the actual moisture content in the atmosphere isn't changing. This is a very common trend for daily relative humidity cycles. On a typical day (barring any fun weather phenomena like cold fronts and the like), temperatures go from cool in the morning to warm in the afternoon, then back to cool at night. Relative humidity has an opposite trend (again, making an assumption that the moisture content in the atmosphere is changing very little or not at all). It starts high in the morning, drops in the afternoon and then rises again at night as things cool off. Often, it will feel most humid during the afternoon when the relative humidity is the lowest. When it comes to the physiological processes that keep you cool, knowing how much moisture is in the air is much more important than how much moisture the air could have. Climate snapshot: High humidity on a hot day is more than just uncomfortable - it can be deadly. And days like that are increasing in frequency across the country. Climate Central warns that high humid heat days more than doubled in frequency for most of the regions in the country from 1980 to 2020. Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with and has a bachelor's and a master's degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences along with a master's degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.
