We have already established that waist trainers, wraps, sauna suits, or hot pants do not help with fat loss. Yet, there is still a persisting idea that the more you sweat the more fat that seeps out of your sweat glands. We do have some 2 to 4 million of these so-called eccrine glands, so that could be a lot of fat lost.
But, back when Tone Loc was rocking Funky Cold Medina, some researchers were scraping funky hot sweat from men’s chest to test for fat content.1
They found that, “… the total lipid content of scraped sweat samples was 0.3 to 1 µg/ml, which was 4-10 times more than in clean sweat samples.”
But, we are interested in the “clean sweat” that was not contaminated by skin cells. Using a polyethylene film on the skin to increase sweat (much like a wrap would do), they found that this “clean sweat” contains only very small, trace amounts of fatty acids – as little as 0.01 µg/ml.
So, the idea that you can sweat out fat is, busted.
References
- Takemura, T., Wertz, P. W., & Sato, K. (1989). Free fatty acids and sterols in human eccrine sweat. British Journal of Dermatology, 120(1), 43-47.