You’re in your weekly yoga class, inverted and stretching out your body as piped-in sitar music plinks soothingly in the background. Concentrating, you ease further into the position. A drop of sweat slides down the bridge of your nose and pools on your yoga mat. The instructor croons, “That’s right, sweat out all of those toxins.” Obligingly, your pores dilate and your skin is soon slick with perspiration. You work through the rest of the routine and leave feeling lighter. Cleansed, even. Surely some of that euphoria is due to your body’s newly toxin-free state, right?
Er, one problem with that notion: Your skin isn’t actually an excretory organ. Yoga, like all exercise, is inarguably good for you if practiced correctly. Indeed, vigorous activity does help the body rid itself of toxins by increasing the circulation of lymph fluid and blood, which are filtered by the lymph nodes and kidneys respectively. (Any toxins filtered out by the lymph nodes are redeposited in the bloodstream and eliminated by the kidneys.) The liver also filters out some waste products, which are released into the intestine in bile.
The fact is, though, the end of the road for these poisons—both metabolic and environmental—is covered by most bathing suits. The purpose of sweating is not to purge the body of toxins but to cool it down through evaporation. Sweat from eccrine sweat glands—those covering most of the body—is 99% water and contains only very small amounts of salts, urea, and carbohydrates, all of which are natural by-products of bodily processes. Apocrine sweat glands, associated with hair follicles in the axillary and groin regions, release some fats along with water. When broken down by skin bacteria, these substances account for the characteristic ripe smell of someone who is stressed or has strenuously exercised. The fats may contain incidental amounts of fat-soluble toxins, but apocrine sweat glands are not a major route for removing them from the body. Any harmful substances that may have been collected by your body’s filters are, to put it delicately, percolating downward inside you, not drenching your yoga togs. So, the next time an instructor parrots that pseudoscientific canard about poisonous sweat, perhaps you can point to a physiology textbook (or this post) and shed a little enlightenment of your own.
