A KNOW SWEAT

A recent national news story on perspiration –(from the Latin, funkus amongus) contained a quote from a sweat expert on the faculty of Mississippi State University. Say what? “Sweat expert?”

It seems that Ole Miss faculty are contacted for quotes on history and literature while State is the goto hub for sweat and cheese. But I digress.

What’s the hottest you’ve ever been? The North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic? The Neshoba County Fair? Fourth of July fireworks in the Grove?

I recall an Ole Miss football game in Memphis one year, maybe on August 31st, at the Liberty Bowl, which was more like a wok. I sought shelter from the searing sun underneath the portal, only to find half the stadium already there. A hot beer sauna.

Ponder the sheer power of heat. Here is a phenomenon that can actually induce involuntary secretions from the human body. Not just secretions, mind you, but stinky secretions. (There’s a rock band name for you).

The body is such a marvel that when the temperatures begin to resemble IQ scores, the body takes matters into its own hands and pours on the coolant, i.e. sweat.

People say, “I sweated my @#! off,” but what if you really could? We’d all be walking around without our caboose.

“Kiss my hand” just isn’t the same, unsavory suggestion.

Scientists tell us that early man was a short furry creature covered in hair to ward off cold temperatures. As the earth warmed and dried over centuries, humans did a 180 (as we are wont to do) and evolved our bodies to include sweat glands – by the millions.

These glands deliver water from your body to the body’s surface and thus ring-around-the-collar was born.

But where does the funk come from? Why does sweat, for lack of a better word, stink? (I emailed Mississippi State, but haven’t heard back).

Dr Google, professor emeritus of Funk and Arm Pits, allows this: “Our skin is naturally covered with bacteria. When we sweat, the water, salt and fat mix with these bacteria and can cause odor.”

It gets stickier: “You may be more prone to body odor if you are overweight, eat certain foods, have certain health conditions, or are under stress.”

In other words, everyone alive over age five.

Excuse me while I go buy stock in Right Guard Roll On.

What if you’re totally stressed out and enjoy a diet generous in garlic? I can answer that one: Best not to share elevators.

If only we could harness this world of odor and bottle our national ocean of sweat and convert both into raw power. If wind and sun can power small cities, why not a Hoover Dam for sweat and nuclear power plants repurposed to convert the methane from 500 million armpits into jet fuel?

Snicker if you will. They laughed at Thomas Edison too. All he did was have the aha moment and bright idea for the light bulb. And then of course there’s Mississippi bluesman, Muddy Waters, who invented electricity.

None of this even considers James Brown’s, “Cold Sweat,” which seems oxymoronic but is actually regular sweat on algebra.

There are also sub categories such as flop sweat and the kingpin of sweat disorders, hyperhidrosis. According to The New York Times, quoting a Dr. Mark Ferguson, those with hyperhidrosis endure “sweating so intense that they must change clothes multiple times a day. If their hands sweat, they may have trouble using touch screens, computer mice and steering wheels unless they wear heavy gloves.

“If their feet sweat,” he said, “you can imagine how quickly they go through a pair of shoes, because they’re constantly wet and start to get smelly and start to fall apart.”

Who among us hasn’t started to get smelly and started to fall apart?

With this trauma as a backdrop, one turns to TV weathercasts to check on the numbers, to see just how much sweat to expect. Unfortunately, TV weather has chosen to hype the harm by insisting on telling us not only how incredibly hot it is, but how much hotter it’s going to “feel like,” the so-called “Misery Index.”

An index is for books. Don’t tell me what I’m gonna feel like. After all, I’m a miracle being that can make myself rain if it gets too hot. I don’t need your stinking Misery Index. I can stink on my own.

The best way to cope with all this nonsense is to stay indoors with a large frosty mug and toast Mr. Willis Carrier, the inventor of the modern-day airconditioner.

As for the sweat experts at Mississippi State, they can… chill too.