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People have been sweating for thousands of years, but only recently has it become a popular belief that doing so can actually detoxify your body.
The idea that you're getting rid of 'toxins' by sweating has even led to an entire industry built around sweat-inducing exercise (like hot yoga). However, is it really true that sweating flushes out toxins? Let's have a look.
Can You Sweat Out Toxins In Hot Yoga?
The answer to this question is a lot more complicated than a simple yes or no. In simple words, toxins have nothing to do with hot yoga or any other exercise for that matter. However, sweating during yoga is a good sign.
Sweating out toxins is a myth, though. Sweat is primarily water, sometimes with trace amounts of salts and organic compounds. You sweat when your body's internal thermostat raises its temperature to get rid of excess heat. The same process happens when you exercise or even just sit in a hot room.
When you work up a sweat, the moisture that comes out of your skin is mostly made up of water. However, it also contains some salt (sodium chloride) and other elements that may be left over from how your body processes food or medications.
While it might feel like these substances are being 'sweated out,', they were already inside your body, to begin with. Other things in sweat can include lactic acid - the substance that builds up in muscles during activity - as well as ammonia from protein breakdown.
It can also contain urea - a waste product created by liver cells and uric acid - a compound found naturally in urine but also produced after alcohol consumption.
Sweating Out Toxins During Hot Yoga Is A Myth
You may have heard that hot yoga is a great way to detoxify your body, but the truth is: Sweat does not contain toxins.
Sweat is mostly water with a few trace elements, like sodium, potassium and chloride. While these compounds come from our bodies’ cells during metabolism (and therefore are technically 'toxins'), they don’t accumulate in our sweat unless you have an electrolyte imbalance or diabetes.
Even then, your kidneys filter out any excess fluid before it reaches the sweat glands in your skin. While sweating can help regulate body temperature when we get overheated or dehydrated—like during exercise—it doesn’t actually cleanse us of anything harmful at all.
If you're thinking about sweating out toxins in a hot yoga class for any reason other than improving your workout experience, you may want to rethink your plan.
As far as hot yoga is concerned, there's no evidence showing that sweating can remove unwanted substances from your body more efficiently than drinking lots of fluids - which is what most experts recommend anyway.
You Can't Detox Through Sweating
Sweat is a byproduct of the body's efforts to cool itself, primarily through the excretion of water and salts through pores in the skin. It can be caused by exercise or hot weather, but it's not toxic. In fact, sweat contains only trace amounts of salt and organic compounds but much less than what you'd find in your blood or urine.
So if byproducts aren't being released through your sweat—where are they coming from? Well, some toxins are filtered out through the liver and kidneys—but these organs don’t start working till sweat has already formed. While some toxins may be 'sweated out; as part of this process, they're most likely being eliminated through urine or faeces instead.
Takeaway
The myth that you are sweating out toxins has been debunked over and over again. In fact, the scientific community is unanimous in its agreement that sweat is primarily water with a small amount of salts and organic compounds. While some of these compounds may be toxic, none of them would be flushed from your body while bathing in sweat during hot yoga class.
You may sweat a lot during hot yoga. However, that doesn't mean that your body is releasing toxins. If anything, it's natural and necessary for your health to sweat in extreme temperatures like those found in yoga studios or saunas.
If you're looking for a way to detoxify your body naturally without relying on myths about sweating being cleansing or purifying, try consuming foods high in fibre, like fruits and vegetables.
