The Joy of Sweat

This is the time of year that tests the mettle of those who live in Florida. We are in the throes of our never-ending summer. So my pal Wynn and his wife decided to ditch Orlando for a couple of weeks and take one of those cruises in Alaska.

"I want to go an entire day without sweating," Wynn told me before the two of them traveled clear across the continent to sit on a slow boat with strangers, eat buffet food and gaze at glaciers. For this they are paying several thousands dollars—a major allocation just to avoid perspiration.

True, a Florida summer can be trying. A Florida summer, inconsiderate houseguest that it is, arrives in early April and by October has officially changed its name to fall. But it's still sitting there on the couch, hogging the remote control, refusing to change the channel. I have brothers-in-law with better manners.

Lacking the wherewithal to subsidize distant voyages to cooler climes or buy a house in North Carolina, I will combat the prickly wet glove of summer the only way I know how—by going outside and wallowing in it. With all due respect to Descartes: Perspiro ergo sum. I sweat, therefore I am . a Floridian.

Besides, it's time that someone defended sweat. And girding up for that battle, I took it upon myself to research sweat, learning many interesting things that I'm now prepared to share with you, whether you like it or not.

For instance, I learned that the average person has 2.6 million sweat glands that are located everywhere on the human body except the lips and two other places that I can't mention because of the high-minded nature of this column. But trust me, these are not places where we need to sweat.

Here is something else I learned, something that speaks directly to people who move down to Florida from places that are, uh, humidity-challenged:

If you aren't accustomed to a hot climate, the maximum amount of sweat you can produce is about one quart per hour. However, once you become acclimated, you're transformed into a veritable artesian well of sweat, capable of producing as much as three quarts an hour. Which is all the justification I need for drinking more fluids, especially beer.

Another thing: Sweat does not stink. The smell mistakenly associated with sweat really comes from tiny organisms that live on our skin and produce an unpleasant odor when they feed on the proteins contained in sweat. Deodorant kills these tiny little organisms.

Finally, although they probably don't know it and would surely deny it even if they did, women find male sweat arousing. This was the finding of a recent scientific study in which a group of women actually volunteered to sit in a room for six hours and smell swatches of cloth containing the chemicals found in male sweat. The result—it relaxed them.

"This probably traces back to our busy hunter-gatherer days, when the males were often away from home for long periods of time," said the scientist who conducted the sweat study. "The female reproductive system may have evolved to be ready for her man by shifting hormonal levels in response to his scent when he returned. The scent relaxed her. And a relaxed woman is more likely to be responsive to a man."

Which caused me to consider my pal Wynn, sitting on the cruise ship in Alaska with the lovely Mrs. Wynn, gazing at glaciers and not sweating. As for me, I think I'll take a quick walk in the sexy Florida midday sun—and then hurry back home to my wife.

Orlando Homebuyer contributing editor Bob Morris is a Central Florida native. His new novel, Bahamarama published by St. Martins Press is now in bookstores.