August 2, 2011 • 24 mins
A condition known as chromhidrosis can be jarring: The sufferer excretes colored sweat from the eccrine or the apocrine sweat glands. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore this somewhat understood, but still bafflingly mysterious medical condition.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, you welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant flying by the seat of our pants, right, Chuckers.
(00:24):
Speaking of flying, you're like, let's go, let's go. I
gotta go to New York. Yeah, it's your birthday tomorrow.
It is happy birthday. This will be after the fact,
of course. I can't believe you're bringing this up. So
you got a little birthday trip plan. That's very nice.
You mistake me to New York. Nothing like a weekend
in New York that they're celebrating anything. I'm very excited
about it. Cool, I'm giddy. What you should be. Yeah,
(00:47):
and we were just in New York. But it wasn't
quite the same. You didn't come with did she? No? No, no, Um,
we're staying at a friend's place. Fortunately. Um, we have
some friends in Brooklyn. Well, should you say his name? Adams? Yeah, yeah,
I will Adam and Serena's now, Oh, it's a lot
(01:08):
of info. Might as well give out their address, so
security number, that kind of thing, um chuck, which probably
gets started right. Yeah, let's do it. You enjoy a
good sweat that has been determined. You know, you know
about sweating. Actually I hate a good I hate a
good sweat. Do you plagues me? I wouldn't call it plague.
(01:28):
I think you have it under control. Yeah, I mean,
if I'm in the steam room, I love a good
sweat or the sauna. Yes, that's when you're supposed to sweat.
I like it too. I don't like it. I don't
like it either. I'm totally with you. Like this summer
has been particularly hot here in Atlanta, I don't know
if you noticed, And like I'm at this point. There's
this boiling point I guess that I've been hovering around
(01:51):
for like the last four weeks, where like if I
think about it, I can make sweat just like burst
out from under my my um my pecks. It's so awful,
like all over my stomach. There's like a sweat trail,
a horizontal one that I constantly have getting like skin
tags probably and then if you get the nerves, you
get both kinds of sweat, which we'll talk about. Yeah,
(02:13):
because there's two different kinds of sweat glands. You want
to just talk about sweating first and then go into this.
Let's let's do that, Chuck. There's you know, the average
person has like four million sweat glands all over their body.
You have like eight by that, right, and they're they're
divided into two types, acrine and porcine, clothes, acorne and
(02:35):
apocrine yea ecrinee krone and apricrine. You say, you know, yeah,
I don't say that. So the the the are both
sweat glands. And you would think that you'd have, you know,
like they'd all provide one function. They don't. You would
be wrong, that's right. So ekrone sweat glands I think
(02:57):
are more predominant. I think there's more of them. They
cool you down, Yes, that's there. That's what they're charged
with this. They don't cool me down or else. Actually,
I don't know. Maybe it'd be like really really hot.
You would be dead. Your thermostat is set high and
it's your hypothalamus, by the way, that controls your body temperature, right,
(03:17):
I mean gets messages say from like your skin that
things are hot, and your hypothalamus is like, oh well,
I better activate the ekron, sweat glands, and humidity. I
reckon too, because that's what kills me. Well, humidity kills
you because it keeps you from sweating, not me, man, No,
it does. It kills you. It keeps you from cooling off.
I should say, yeah, so so it's like gets backed up. Yeah,
(03:42):
but it can be like sixty degrees in humid and
I'll sweat. The worst is when you get out of
a shower and you start sweating immediately, Like you go
to the gym and the shower didn't take Yeah, right, man,
I think that's a Seinfeld reference to actually is it? Yeah, George,
you got a shower that didn't take. Yeah, Okay, that
that rings a bell. So I'll take an ice cold
(04:02):
shower after the gym and it's still yeah, just sweat. Well,
it takes a little while for your hypothalamus to be like, okay,
it's cool down. Yeah right, so, um, your hypothalamus if
it detects that your body temperature is getting too high,
it needs to cool down it. Um. It sends a
message to your ekrone sweat glands that says, start sweating, boys,
And it's a different type of sweat that you're sweating then, Um,
(04:25):
the stuff that comes out of the apricrine glands, right, Yeah,
it's mostly salty saltwater basically, or water and salts but
mixed together, you sal and electrolytes. You've seen Idiocracy I have. Yeah,
you didn't like it, he said, No. I thought it
was good to a point, but the one joke premise
movie kind of got stale for me. I liked it,
(04:47):
but yeah, okay, but we did manage to work a
movie into a sweat podcast. The other kind, chuck is aprocrine, yes,
and that is usually in the well. Is it usually
in the ace, the axila and breast just period or
with this condition, that's where it's most heavily concentrated period, yes, okay.
(05:08):
And the axcel is under the armpit. Yes, that is
your armpit, Yeah, your xcel A. It's not under the armpit.
There's nothing under the armpit now, it's just dead space there,
that's right. Um, And I remember when we talked about
deodor versus any parts print classic s Y s K episode,
But that's a long time ago. Yeah, it was. Well,
we talked about sweat then too. An apacrine sweat glands
(05:30):
produced the kind of sweat that makes you stink, right, right,
So if it's just salt and water coming out of
your ecrone sweat glands, that's not gonna smell. Sweaty palms
are not gonna stink. No, they don't. You know that
there's a I mean there's over I think hyper hydrosis period.
But then some people get it so bad in their hands,
you know, they have surgery. Yeah, well that's as that's
(05:53):
as far as we've ever progressed with um, the treatment
of sweating of any kind of sweat problems, like destroying
a sweat gland. We're moving them and rid of them
all together, or yeah, going in with like a laser
like yeah, I don't get the palms, it's just it's
my head and face, which is an awesome place to sweat. Well,
your palms are very hairy. I imagine if they weren't,
they would, uh, they would, they would be far more,
(06:16):
far sweatier. Okay. Um, So with the apricrine sweat glands,
you're sweating out water. That's the vehicle that's actually moving
the stuff like fats um, the waste by products of metabolism.
Just basically it's a way to evacuate stuff from your
cells outside of it's a disposal system. Yeah, it sounds gross.
(06:38):
So when you say fats and wastes right well, coming
through your skin, yes, And those don't stink in and
of themselves. It's the bacteria on your skin, the local flora,
you know, the local fauna um that eats those fats
and then creates the stink as as excrement. So you
stink because of bacteria excrement. That's what it is. So
(07:00):
you've got both of these, and both of them are
capable of condition a very very strange condition called chrome hydrosis.
I've never heard of this, and I would I thought
I knew everything about sweating. And the reason I didn't
know anything about it is because it is really, really
really rare, Like this is the alien hand syndrome of
(07:20):
bodily fluids, I would say, yeah, of sweating at least,
there's a lot of weird bodily fluids going on. Syndromes. Uh,
this is when drum roll, although you know the title
is when your sweat is colored and I thought I
had it bad, but sweating green. That's really what it is.
This um, this condition, chromo hydrosis is um painless. It
(07:44):
doesn't lead to any other conditions. It's totally benign. It's
strictly embarrassing. It's it's debilitating, I imagine it. I mean,
you can't wear certain clothes. You certainly can't wear white
because all of a sudden, like you have two large
circles where your nipples are, because that's one place where especially, uh,
(08:06):
the apocrine version takes places very typically under the armpit
and at the breast right. And and one of the
reasons why you can remember that apocrine sweat glands are
around your nipples because they are eventually converted into um
cells that deliver milk when you're when you're lactating, well,
(08:27):
not you, but you know I told you a friend
that lactated a guy. That's right, you did, so apocrine
can turn into lactating cells. That's why they're around the nipple, right, Yes,
And aprocrine. If you have this form of chrome chrome hydrosis,
you will sweat yellow, green, blue, black, or brown. Yes.
(08:48):
And why specifically because the culprit here is something called
LiPo fu skin. I don't know if it's lip a
few skin or lip a few skin. It's like lipid
like fat. It's a it's a type of that that's
been oxidized and yeah, and there you have it. I
mean it's pretty simple, like yeah, mystery salt. So Um,
if you come to your physician and say, hey, man,
(09:11):
why are my nipples orange producing orange sweat? Or blue
or green or yellow? Um, he's going to say I
have a pretty strong idea that it's apicrine chromeohydrosis. I
would say right away. That would be I saw the
orange lady. Did you see her? The I saw a
power point someone, Uh, what's she? A nurse? She wouldn't
(09:33):
know orange. So this is such a rare condition. I
don't know if we said that whoever you're talking about.
It was probably the first case ever documented, and that
was like two thousand eight, maybe because it was a
power point that some I guess physician had done and
it showed, you know, her face was blacked out, but
it showed pictures of like her stained brazier and T
shirts and it was just like, I can't imagine that.
(09:55):
I feel awful enough as a sweater, right, I mean
you're a sweater plus color? Yeah. Basically just fascinates people.
You can't you can't fault somebody in. They're like, why
is what's going on. Yeah, yeah, you know, but I'm
sure that happens a lot. Like all you do is
explain away, like, oh, I have this weird condition where
I sweat orange. Well, apparently with um. This nurse that
(10:17):
I mentioned, I think she was like twenty six or
something like that, she spent five months wondering what the
heck was going on before she went and sought treatment.
She had no idea. And I can't imagine sweating something
right away and waiting like five months before finally going
to a doctor for red sweat. Like I'm one of
those guys who will like put off going to the
doctor forever, you know, but red sweat would get me
(10:40):
in there. Have you seen the Gatorade commercial for people
sweat colors. I'm sure that's not what they were. They
weren't like they should have had a tag at the end,
like not chrome. Yeah exactly. Did not have been like
the five people in the world to have this, so
um chuck. We were saying, like, if you come in
and your docter sees that you have like blue sweat
(11:02):
coming out of your nipples, they're gonna think it's apocrine chromhydrosis.
You can prove definitively that it is by um holding
a black light up to the sweat because the the
LiPo fuskins phosphores what's called the wood the woods lamp.
I've never heard that that's called a black light because
you know you have a basement and I when to
(11:25):
Spencer guests, right, exactly do you have any woods lamps? Yeah? Exactly. Um.
So that's apricrine chrome hydrosies. Akron chrome hydrosis is also
equally well explained. It's always a foreign object like a
die or something that person is ingested that somehow gets
into the ecrine sweat clands and then is is um
(11:48):
produced because the one common thread between these two is
that the pigment is produced in the sweat plant. Yeah,
that's important because if you're a min or a copper miner,
sometimes you'll get a mineral mix with the sweat once
it leaves the skin, and it'll turn it blue blue
for copper. Yeah. Um. But which is not to be
confused with the blue man who who had he took
(12:11):
too much some kind of copper colloidal silver, that's what
it was. The senator or something or a congressman was
really one of the guys turned silver. He Oh, this
guy was blue. He looked like a blue sand clause. Yeah,
from too much chloidal silver. So yes, if you have
a pseudo chromydros, it's it means that you're sweating a
(12:33):
normal color or colorless sweat, but it's reacting with something
on your skin to produce and they say, get out
of the copper mine and we'll stop eventually, stop rubbing,
you know, pigment on yourself. Um. But with ekron chrome hydrosis, UM,
you're you're producing pigmented sweat and then sweating pigmented sweat.
But it's it's not from lip a few skins, it's
(12:54):
from something else. And that nurse that I was talking
about that weighted five years uh, and I think this
is in the mid nineties, in the late nineties. Um,
she's sweat red and her um physicians took some samples
of you know, her regular sweat and you know, compared
it to the substance they found on her clothes and said, yeah,
(13:15):
you've you've got chromidrosis. And we think it's akron And
well it would have to be because it wasn't yellow, green, blue, black,
or brown. Right. Yeah, But we know so little about
this that if somebody's start if somebody presented with a
case of red apicrine um chromidrosis, they'd be like, Okay,
well there's this is new, right, you know, because they
don't understand the mechanism behind either of them. They understand
(13:35):
what's going on, or they understand how it's happening. They
don't understand what's going on. They have no idea. Yeah,
and I think this, like alien hand, is one of
those where they might be able to find out, but
it's so rare. There's it's not like a lot of
funding goes into this for research, so they just treat it,
you know. Speaking of alien hand um, I found out
about this thing. I wrote a blog on it recently
(13:56):
about mirror dystonia, and it was like mirror neurons and
alien hand mixed together. Right, So, like if you have this,
your brain isn't producing proteins. This one specific protein that
basically acts as like the switch like when you go
to pick pick this up with my right hand, right,
so both of your both sides of your brain get
the signal. But there's this protein that switches as like okay, right,
(14:19):
right hand. So this protein isn't strong enough and people
with mirror estonia so they go like this, really pick
up something with both hands, both hands, yes, or both,
Like if they go to take a step with their
right foot, they do with their left foot to the
walking is very difficult to jump. Yeah, wow, isn't that crazy?
What to do a full podcast on that? Maybe there
is not enough on it? All right, Well that was
(14:40):
it then, So um akron chrome hydrosis that nurse I
was talking about. She was eating some sort of and
I could never find out. I wonder why I couldn't
thought it was like like a boy. I can't say.
It was like a keebler devil's food cake. It had
it was tomato based and had pepperik and it was
(15:00):
a prepared food that she ate as a snack constantly.
So the red tomato paste and the paprika, we're coloring
her sweat. And that's where science is baffled. They have
no idea how something you can get into your sweat glands.
It doesn't make any sense. They also don't know why
some people overproduced lip of few skins or their fats
(15:22):
become overly oxidized until they become lip of few skins. Well,
ekron is the one that you want because the treatment
for that is to identify the culprit of the foreign
food or not foreign, but that's whatever the food that's
discoloring your sweat and discontinuing that food like stuff. The
(15:43):
lady could have been like, you know, hey, um, to
heck with it. I'm gonna keep eating this. It's like guessing,
so chuck if you I guess if you're stuck with
epicrine chromydrosis, right, or you love your tomato paste peprika
(16:04):
flavored whate prepared food product. Right. Um, that's that's my
novelty throwing disc Remember that on the Simpsons? Yeah, Um,
they couldn't call it it for his Yeah, and I
don't think we can't either, Sure we can. Um, if
if you like it so much that you want to
seek treatment, what what what are some of your treatment options? Well,
(16:25):
there's this substance called cap cap sasan, which is the
key ingredient to pepper spray. And it's a and bare
spray and it is from red pepper. It's a distrived
from red pepper itself, isn't it? Yeah, like red pepper
flakes pretty much. And it will burn you, I guess
if you spray it in your face. But apparently as
(16:45):
a cream it can help treat, uh, the Aprican version. Right,
And we should have said earlier at crane sweat glands
are triggered by changes in body temperature since by the
hypothalamus um apocrine sweat glands are triggered by emotion. Well
that's why I talked about the nerves, right. Yeah. So, um,
there's this neurotransmitter called substance P that apparently is involved
(17:10):
with UM the activation of your apicrine sweat clans. Right,
So with h with cap sasan for some reason, it
blocks the reuptake of substance P, which makes you sweat less. Yes,
see mind working concert and I think most people that
sweat more than usual working concert because like you get
(17:32):
hot and you're like, oh crap, Like if you're headed
to I mean, if if you're not doing anything important,
doesn't matter. But if you're going somewhere and you're like,
oh man, now I'm sweating, and then the other ones
kick in, it even works. Yeah. That used to happen
to me in college, Like I couldn't sit towards the
front of the class because there's self conscious and I'd
still get my scalpels start to tingle a little bit,
(17:52):
and I'd be like, is that sweat or their bugs
jumping off my head? And it just hit this vicious psycle.
Are you sure that was going on? I'm pretty college
bugs jumping off your head? Okay, it could have all
been some sort of dream. Uh. I Also, it's funny,
he said tingling, because I don't know if it's true.
But I did see one account that said it's sometimes
associated with an aura like a warmth or prickling sensation.
(18:16):
What the this condition? Oh? Really? Yeah? Huh, And that
it happens more often in African Americans and that the
youngest age they found it in was eleven year old,
so in apocrine or ecrin both, just the whole condition period.
I think I wonder if like these additional things, like
you can sense them leaving your skin maybe sweat or
(18:38):
this standard sweat. And I don't know if associated means
it was like one of the cases, or if everyone
across the board said it was kind of hazy. And
then we also talked about um Removing sweat glands is
one treatment option for hyper hydrosis and chromydrosis. Yeah, and
boch alenum, yeah, botox or that be fair mile block
(18:59):
is well, um, it's it affects it's a toxin, right,
and it affects the narrow transmitters that are involved in
sweating as well. Oh. The other the other one too,
which is a terrible treatment, is to express the glands
because it lasts a couple of days and like basically
sweat it out. But then you have to do that
(19:20):
for a couple of days. Or you could just go
to the sauna a lot. Yeah, I imagine that would help,
and where maybe like a sign around your neck that says, yes,
I know I'm sweating blue right. Um was stupid. Have
you ever had to express your dog's anal glands? No?
I haven't. I Um someone roughly told me I don't
remember who, years ago, and I was like, I'm not
(19:43):
doing that. They're like, well, then you have to take
your dog to a groomer. I was like, no, I don't. Yeah,
Jerry ever Now have you ever smelled it anyone? Yes?
It is the most distinct awful smell on the planet.
There's nothing worse. And it's exactly like when you smell it,
you're like, okay, that's anal gland. Yeah, well that's why
they rubbed their their bottoms. They're expressing their own anal glass.
(20:03):
My dogs are they self expressed. But you smell it
when it happens, and then you see them cleaning themselves
and you're just like, all right, remember no licks for
like a week on me? Yeah, I don't know. That's sorry,
I got sidetracked. So yeah, I guess that's it, right,
You got anything else to do? There's so much I
(20:25):
don't on this one. There's so much sweating stuff. I
personally can tell you quite a bit about sweating, sweat, glands, zits,
all that stuff. I spent like a couple of months
is writing about this stuff for a while. Um, and
this article came out of it. I wonder if I
never got zits because I sweat so much. I wonder
if that helps keep my pores clean or something. I
(20:46):
don't know. It also has to do with oil on
the skin, and I think you're like my family, none
of us really got it, So I think it's hereditary
to a certain degree too, right, Yeah, And I think
it also has to do with the degree of how
sensitive your skin is. Right away, if you want to
learn about that kind of stuff and sweating and uh,
read my article on chrome e. Grosses. Type sweat into
(21:08):
the search bar at how stuff works dot Com and
they'll bring up a ton of stuff. We should do
one on acne. Okay, that's that's a big one. Yeah,
I'll bet some of our pubescent listeners would appreciate that one.
Am I right? Yeah? All right? Well I said, Am
I right? So that means it's time for a listener now. Yeah,
(21:29):
I'm gonna This is someone who's correcting us, and I'm
just not quite sure how right she is, so we're
gonna discuss it. Hey, guys, I'm a fairly new fan
of your show, but I really enjoy every episode. I'm
dying to go back and listen to the older ones,
but there are so many that it's taking some time.
That's true. I just listened to the recent one about
America's version Murderer. It was great at the beginning, though
(21:49):
I think you may have confused or lumped together Puritans
and Pilgrims. Pilgrims that came to Plymouth rock in were
actually separatist because they wanted to completely breakaway in the
Church of England, whereas the large group that settled in
Massachusetts like ten years later it was Puritans they wanted
to purify, reform the Church of England, not break away.
(22:10):
The Puritans and Separatists had some different philosophies and beliefs,
so I think it's important to make that distinction. I
am a history nerd, so I think those details are cool.
Please let me know if I misheard or if I
don't have my facts straight. Thank you, Rachel. I am
a history nerd too, Yes, And I don't know the
answer to that one. I looked it up and I
(22:30):
got a little confused, to be honest, because it was
a little bit like that rectangle or square thing like
I think some of the separatists where some of the
Puritans were separatists but not necessarily the other way around
or something, or pilgrim I don't know. I got confused. Oh,
so you're saying some of the Pilgrims were separatists, but
not all separatists were Pilgrims. One of those kind of things. So,
but I mean I could see it. That explains why
(22:53):
there is the word separatists, say in the word Puritans. Yeah,
and I'm sure described the same group. I think I
would argue though, that, um, it matters so little at
this point that we Okay, lump them together. She's saying that.
I think she's saying that there were no Puritan pilgrims. Okay, well,
(23:13):
we'll find out. We'll either find out someone will set
a straight that really knows it, or we will just say, Rachel,
thank you for the correction. Yeah. Either way, I'm gonna go. Look, Okay,
I can't let this suppress. Let me know, even if
it doesn't matter any longer, I still need to know.
And it's not like I didn't care. I did, look,
but it's we're busy now. I didn't have quite enough
time to fully researcher. Well, uh, okay, if you have
(23:38):
an amazing historical fact that's been lost to the age
of the time that you want to tell us about,
We're very interested in that kind of stuff, right right, Uh,
send us an email you totally should. You can address
it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(23:59):
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Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, you welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant flying by the seat of our pants, right, Chuckers.
(00:24):
Speaking of flying, you're like, let's go, let's go. I
gotta go to New York. Yeah, it's your birthday tomorrow.
It is happy birthday. This will be after the fact,
of course. I can't believe you're bringing this up. So
you got a little birthday trip plan. That's very nice.
You mistake me to New York. Nothing like a weekend
in New York that they're celebrating anything. I'm very excited
about it. Cool, I'm giddy. What you should be. Yeah,
(00:47):
and we were just in New York. But it wasn't
quite the same. You didn't come with did she? No? No, no, Um,
we're staying at a friend's place. Fortunately. Um, we have
some friends in Brooklyn. Well, should you say his name? Adams? Yeah, yeah,
I will Adam and Serena's now, Oh, it's a lot
(01:08):
of info. Might as well give out their address, so
security number, that kind of thing, um chuck, which probably
gets started right. Yeah, let's do it. You enjoy a
good sweat that has been determined. You know, you know
about sweating. Actually I hate a good I hate a
good sweat. Do you plagues me? I wouldn't call it plague.
(01:28):
I think you have it under control. Yeah, I mean,
if I'm in the steam room, I love a good
sweat or the sauna. Yes, that's when you're supposed to sweat.
I like it too. I don't like it. I don't
like it either. I'm totally with you. Like this summer
has been particularly hot here in Atlanta, I don't know
if you noticed, And like I'm at this point. There's
this boiling point I guess that I've been hovering around
(01:51):
for like the last four weeks, where like if I
think about it, I can make sweat just like burst
out from under my my um my pecks. It's so awful,
like all over my stomach. There's like a sweat trail,
a horizontal one that I constantly have getting like skin
tags probably and then if you get the nerves, you
get both kinds of sweat, which we'll talk about. Yeah,
(02:13):
because there's two different kinds of sweat glands. You want
to just talk about sweating first and then go into this.
Let's let's do that, Chuck. There's you know, the average
person has like four million sweat glands all over their body.
You have like eight by that, right, and they're they're
divided into two types, acrine and porcine, clothes, acorne and
(02:35):
apocrine yea ecrinee krone and apricrine. You say, you know, yeah,
I don't say that. So the the the are both
sweat glands. And you would think that you'd have, you know,
like they'd all provide one function. They don't. You would
be wrong, that's right. So ekrone sweat glands I think
(02:57):
are more predominant. I think there's more of them. They
cool you down, Yes, that's there. That's what they're charged
with this. They don't cool me down or else. Actually,
I don't know. Maybe it'd be like really really hot.
You would be dead. Your thermostat is set high and
it's your hypothalamus, by the way, that controls your body temperature, right,
(03:17):
I mean gets messages say from like your skin that
things are hot, and your hypothalamus is like, oh well,
I better activate the ekron, sweat glands, and humidity. I
reckon too, because that's what kills me. Well, humidity kills
you because it keeps you from sweating, not me, man, No,
it does. It kills you. It keeps you from cooling off.
I should say, yeah, so so it's like gets backed up. Yeah,
(03:42):
but it can be like sixty degrees in humid and
I'll sweat. The worst is when you get out of
a shower and you start sweating immediately, Like you go
to the gym and the shower didn't take Yeah, right, man,
I think that's a Seinfeld reference to actually is it? Yeah, George,
you got a shower that didn't take. Yeah, Okay, that
that rings a bell. So I'll take an ice cold
(04:02):
shower after the gym and it's still yeah, just sweat. Well,
it takes a little while for your hypothalamus to be like, okay,
it's cool down. Yeah right, so, um, your hypothalamus if
it detects that your body temperature is getting too high,
it needs to cool down it. Um. It sends a
message to your ekrone sweat glands that says, start sweating, boys,
And it's a different type of sweat that you're sweating then, Um,
(04:25):
the stuff that comes out of the apricrine glands, right, Yeah,
it's mostly salty saltwater basically, or water and salts but
mixed together, you sal and electrolytes. You've seen Idiocracy I have. Yeah,
you didn't like it, he said, No. I thought it
was good to a point, but the one joke premise
movie kind of got stale for me. I liked it,
(04:47):
but yeah, okay, but we did manage to work a
movie into a sweat podcast. The other kind, chuck is aprocrine, yes,
and that is usually in the well. Is it usually
in the ace, the axila and breast just period or
with this condition, that's where it's most heavily concentrated period, yes, okay.
(05:08):
And the axcel is under the armpit. Yes, that is
your armpit, Yeah, your xcel A. It's not under the armpit.
There's nothing under the armpit now, it's just dead space there,
that's right. Um, And I remember when we talked about
deodor versus any parts print classic s Y s K episode,
But that's a long time ago. Yeah, it was. Well,
we talked about sweat then too. An apacrine sweat glands
(05:30):
produced the kind of sweat that makes you stink, right, right,
So if it's just salt and water coming out of
your ecrone sweat glands, that's not gonna smell. Sweaty palms
are not gonna stink. No, they don't. You know that
there's a I mean there's over I think hyper hydrosis period.
But then some people get it so bad in their hands,
you know, they have surgery. Yeah, well that's as that's
(05:53):
as far as we've ever progressed with um, the treatment
of sweating of any kind of sweat problems, like destroying
a sweat gland. We're moving them and rid of them
all together, or yeah, going in with like a laser
like yeah, I don't get the palms, it's just it's
my head and face, which is an awesome place to sweat. Well,
your palms are very hairy. I imagine if they weren't,
they would, uh, they would, they would be far more,
(06:16):
far sweatier. Okay. Um, So with the apricrine sweat glands,
you're sweating out water. That's the vehicle that's actually moving
the stuff like fats um, the waste by products of metabolism.
Just basically it's a way to evacuate stuff from your
cells outside of it's a disposal system. Yeah, it sounds gross.
(06:38):
So when you say fats and wastes right well, coming
through your skin, yes, And those don't stink in and
of themselves. It's the bacteria on your skin, the local flora,
you know, the local fauna um that eats those fats
and then creates the stink as as excrement. So you
stink because of bacteria excrement. That's what it is. So
(07:00):
you've got both of these, and both of them are
capable of condition a very very strange condition called chrome hydrosis.
I've never heard of this, and I would I thought
I knew everything about sweating. And the reason I didn't
know anything about it is because it is really, really
really rare, Like this is the alien hand syndrome of
(07:20):
bodily fluids, I would say, yeah, of sweating at least,
there's a lot of weird bodily fluids going on. Syndromes. Uh,
this is when drum roll, although you know the title
is when your sweat is colored and I thought I
had it bad, but sweating green. That's really what it is.
This um, this condition, chromo hydrosis is um painless. It
(07:44):
doesn't lead to any other conditions. It's totally benign. It's
strictly embarrassing. It's it's debilitating, I imagine it. I mean,
you can't wear certain clothes. You certainly can't wear white
because all of a sudden, like you have two large
circles where your nipples are, because that's one place where especially, uh,
(08:06):
the apocrine version takes places very typically under the armpit
and at the breast right. And and one of the
reasons why you can remember that apocrine sweat glands are
around your nipples because they are eventually converted into um
cells that deliver milk when you're when you're lactating, well,
(08:27):
not you, but you know I told you a friend
that lactated a guy. That's right, you did, so apocrine
can turn into lactating cells. That's why they're around the nipple, right, Yes,
And aprocrine. If you have this form of chrome chrome hydrosis,
you will sweat yellow, green, blue, black, or brown. Yes.
(08:48):
And why specifically because the culprit here is something called
LiPo fu skin. I don't know if it's lip a
few skin or lip a few skin. It's like lipid
like fat. It's a it's a type of that that's
been oxidized and yeah, and there you have it. I
mean it's pretty simple, like yeah, mystery salt. So Um,
if you come to your physician and say, hey, man,
(09:11):
why are my nipples orange producing orange sweat? Or blue
or green or yellow? Um, he's going to say I
have a pretty strong idea that it's apicrine chromeohydrosis. I
would say right away. That would be I saw the
orange lady. Did you see her? The I saw a
power point someone, Uh, what's she? A nurse? She wouldn't
(09:33):
know orange. So this is such a rare condition. I
don't know if we said that whoever you're talking about.
It was probably the first case ever documented, and that
was like two thousand eight, maybe because it was a
power point that some I guess physician had done and
it showed, you know, her face was blacked out, but
it showed pictures of like her stained brazier and T
shirts and it was just like, I can't imagine that.
(09:55):
I feel awful enough as a sweater, right, I mean
you're a sweater plus color? Yeah. Basically just fascinates people.
You can't you can't fault somebody in. They're like, why
is what's going on. Yeah, yeah, you know, but I'm
sure that happens a lot. Like all you do is
explain away, like, oh, I have this weird condition where
I sweat orange. Well, apparently with um. This nurse that
(10:17):
I mentioned, I think she was like twenty six or
something like that, she spent five months wondering what the
heck was going on before she went and sought treatment.
She had no idea. And I can't imagine sweating something
right away and waiting like five months before finally going
to a doctor for red sweat. Like I'm one of
those guys who will like put off going to the
doctor forever, you know, but red sweat would get me
(10:40):
in there. Have you seen the Gatorade commercial for people
sweat colors. I'm sure that's not what they were. They
weren't like they should have had a tag at the end,
like not chrome. Yeah exactly. Did not have been like
the five people in the world to have this, so
um chuck. We were saying, like, if you come in
and your docter sees that you have like blue sweat
(11:02):
coming out of your nipples, they're gonna think it's apocrine chromhydrosis.
You can prove definitively that it is by um holding
a black light up to the sweat because the the
LiPo fuskins phosphores what's called the wood the woods lamp.
I've never heard that that's called a black light because
you know you have a basement and I when to
(11:25):
Spencer guests, right, exactly do you have any woods lamps? Yeah? Exactly. Um.
So that's apricrine chrome hydrosies. Akron chrome hydrosis is also
equally well explained. It's always a foreign object like a
die or something that person is ingested that somehow gets
into the ecrine sweat clands and then is is um
(11:48):
produced because the one common thread between these two is
that the pigment is produced in the sweat plant. Yeah,
that's important because if you're a min or a copper miner,
sometimes you'll get a mineral mix with the sweat once
it leaves the skin, and it'll turn it blue blue
for copper. Yeah. Um. But which is not to be
confused with the blue man who who had he took
(12:11):
too much some kind of copper colloidal silver, that's what
it was. The senator or something or a congressman was
really one of the guys turned silver. He Oh, this
guy was blue. He looked like a blue sand clause. Yeah,
from too much chloidal silver. So yes, if you have
a pseudo chromydros, it's it means that you're sweating a
(12:33):
normal color or colorless sweat, but it's reacting with something
on your skin to produce and they say, get out
of the copper mine and we'll stop eventually, stop rubbing,
you know, pigment on yourself. Um. But with ekron chrome hydrosis, UM,
you're you're producing pigmented sweat and then sweating pigmented sweat.
But it's it's not from lip a few skins, it's
(12:54):
from something else. And that nurse that I was talking
about that weighted five years uh, and I think this
is in the mid nineties, in the late nineties. Um,
she's sweat red and her um physicians took some samples
of you know, her regular sweat and you know, compared
it to the substance they found on her clothes and said, yeah,
(13:15):
you've you've got chromidrosis. And we think it's akron And
well it would have to be because it wasn't yellow, green, blue, black,
or brown. Right. Yeah, But we know so little about
this that if somebody's start if somebody presented with a
case of red apicrine um chromidrosis, they'd be like, Okay,
well there's this is new, right, you know, because they
don't understand the mechanism behind either of them. They understand
(13:35):
what's going on, or they understand how it's happening. They
don't understand what's going on. They have no idea. Yeah,
and I think this, like alien hand, is one of
those where they might be able to find out, but
it's so rare. There's it's not like a lot of
funding goes into this for research, so they just treat it,
you know. Speaking of alien hand um, I found out
about this thing. I wrote a blog on it recently
(13:56):
about mirror dystonia, and it was like mirror neurons and
alien hand mixed together. Right, So, like if you have this,
your brain isn't producing proteins. This one specific protein that
basically acts as like the switch like when you go
to pick pick this up with my right hand, right,
so both of your both sides of your brain get
the signal. But there's this protein that switches as like okay, right,
(14:19):
right hand. So this protein isn't strong enough and people
with mirror estonia so they go like this, really pick
up something with both hands, both hands, yes, or both,
Like if they go to take a step with their
right foot, they do with their left foot to the
walking is very difficult to jump. Yeah, wow, isn't that crazy?
What to do a full podcast on that? Maybe there
is not enough on it? All right, Well that was
(14:40):
it then, So um akron chrome hydrosis that nurse I
was talking about. She was eating some sort of and
I could never find out. I wonder why I couldn't
thought it was like like a boy. I can't say.
It was like a keebler devil's food cake. It had
it was tomato based and had pepperik and it was
(15:00):
a prepared food that she ate as a snack constantly.
So the red tomato paste and the paprika, we're coloring
her sweat. And that's where science is baffled. They have
no idea how something you can get into your sweat glands.
It doesn't make any sense. They also don't know why
some people overproduced lip of few skins or their fats
(15:22):
become overly oxidized until they become lip of few skins. Well,
ekron is the one that you want because the treatment
for that is to identify the culprit of the foreign
food or not foreign, but that's whatever the food that's
discoloring your sweat and discontinuing that food like stuff. The
(15:43):
lady could have been like, you know, hey, um, to
heck with it. I'm gonna keep eating this. It's like guessing,
so chuck if you I guess if you're stuck with
epicrine chromydrosis, right, or you love your tomato paste peprika
(16:04):
flavored whate prepared food product. Right. Um, that's that's my
novelty throwing disc Remember that on the Simpsons? Yeah, Um,
they couldn't call it it for his Yeah, and I
don't think we can't either, Sure we can. Um, if
if you like it so much that you want to
seek treatment, what what what are some of your treatment options? Well,
(16:25):
there's this substance called cap cap sasan, which is the
key ingredient to pepper spray. And it's a and bare
spray and it is from red pepper. It's a distrived
from red pepper itself, isn't it? Yeah, like red pepper
flakes pretty much. And it will burn you, I guess
if you spray it in your face. But apparently as
(16:45):
a cream it can help treat, uh, the Aprican version. Right,
And we should have said earlier at crane sweat glands
are triggered by changes in body temperature since by the
hypothalamus um apocrine sweat glands are triggered by emotion. Well
that's why I talked about the nerves, right. Yeah. So, um,
there's this neurotransmitter called substance P that apparently is involved
(17:10):
with UM the activation of your apicrine sweat clans. Right,
So with h with cap sasan for some reason, it
blocks the reuptake of substance P, which makes you sweat less. Yes,
see mind working concert and I think most people that
sweat more than usual working concert because like you get
(17:32):
hot and you're like, oh crap, Like if you're headed
to I mean, if if you're not doing anything important,
doesn't matter. But if you're going somewhere and you're like,
oh man, now I'm sweating, and then the other ones
kick in, it even works. Yeah. That used to happen
to me in college, Like I couldn't sit towards the
front of the class because there's self conscious and I'd
still get my scalpels start to tingle a little bit,
(17:52):
and I'd be like, is that sweat or their bugs
jumping off my head? And it just hit this vicious psycle.
Are you sure that was going on? I'm pretty college
bugs jumping off your head? Okay, it could have all
been some sort of dream. Uh. I Also, it's funny,
he said tingling, because I don't know if it's true.
But I did see one account that said it's sometimes
associated with an aura like a warmth or prickling sensation.
(18:16):
What the this condition? Oh? Really? Yeah? Huh, And that
it happens more often in African Americans and that the
youngest age they found it in was eleven year old,
so in apocrine or ecrin both, just the whole condition period.
I think I wonder if like these additional things, like
you can sense them leaving your skin maybe sweat or
(18:38):
this standard sweat. And I don't know if associated means
it was like one of the cases, or if everyone
across the board said it was kind of hazy. And
then we also talked about um Removing sweat glands is
one treatment option for hyper hydrosis and chromydrosis. Yeah, and
boch alenum, yeah, botox or that be fair mile block
(18:59):
is well, um, it's it affects it's a toxin, right,
and it affects the narrow transmitters that are involved in
sweating as well. Oh. The other the other one too,
which is a terrible treatment, is to express the glands
because it lasts a couple of days and like basically
sweat it out. But then you have to do that
(19:20):
for a couple of days. Or you could just go
to the sauna a lot. Yeah, I imagine that would help,
and where maybe like a sign around your neck that says, yes,
I know I'm sweating blue right. Um was stupid. Have
you ever had to express your dog's anal glands? No?
I haven't. I Um someone roughly told me I don't
remember who, years ago, and I was like, I'm not
(19:43):
doing that. They're like, well, then you have to take
your dog to a groomer. I was like, no, I don't. Yeah,
Jerry ever Now have you ever smelled it anyone? Yes?
It is the most distinct awful smell on the planet.
There's nothing worse. And it's exactly like when you smell it,
you're like, okay, that's anal gland. Yeah, well that's why
they rubbed their their bottoms. They're expressing their own anal glass.
(20:03):
My dogs are they self expressed. But you smell it
when it happens, and then you see them cleaning themselves
and you're just like, all right, remember no licks for
like a week on me? Yeah, I don't know. That's sorry,
I got sidetracked. So yeah, I guess that's it, right,
You got anything else to do? There's so much I
(20:25):
don't on this one. There's so much sweating stuff. I
personally can tell you quite a bit about sweating, sweat, glands, zits,
all that stuff. I spent like a couple of months
is writing about this stuff for a while. Um, and
this article came out of it. I wonder if I
never got zits because I sweat so much. I wonder
if that helps keep my pores clean or something. I
(20:46):
don't know. It also has to do with oil on
the skin, and I think you're like my family, none
of us really got it, So I think it's hereditary
to a certain degree too, right, Yeah, And I think
it also has to do with the degree of how
sensitive your skin is. Right away, if you want to
learn about that kind of stuff and sweating and uh,
read my article on chrome e. Grosses. Type sweat into
(21:08):
the search bar at how stuff works dot Com and
they'll bring up a ton of stuff. We should do
one on acne. Okay, that's that's a big one. Yeah,
I'll bet some of our pubescent listeners would appreciate that one.
Am I right? Yeah? All right? Well I said, Am
I right? So that means it's time for a listener now. Yeah,
(21:29):
I'm gonna This is someone who's correcting us, and I'm
just not quite sure how right she is, so we're
gonna discuss it. Hey, guys, I'm a fairly new fan
of your show, but I really enjoy every episode. I'm
dying to go back and listen to the older ones,
but there are so many that it's taking some time.
That's true. I just listened to the recent one about
America's version Murderer. It was great at the beginning, though
(21:49):
I think you may have confused or lumped together Puritans
and Pilgrims. Pilgrims that came to Plymouth rock in were
actually separatist because they wanted to completely breakaway in the
Church of England, whereas the large group that settled in
Massachusetts like ten years later it was Puritans they wanted
to purify, reform the Church of England, not break away.
(22:10):
The Puritans and Separatists had some different philosophies and beliefs,
so I think it's important to make that distinction. I
am a history nerd, so I think those details are cool.
Please let me know if I misheard or if I
don't have my facts straight. Thank you, Rachel. I am
a history nerd too, Yes, And I don't know the
answer to that one. I looked it up and I
(22:30):
got a little confused, to be honest, because it was
a little bit like that rectangle or square thing like
I think some of the separatists where some of the
Puritans were separatists but not necessarily the other way around
or something, or pilgrim I don't know. I got confused. Oh,
so you're saying some of the Pilgrims were separatists, but
not all separatists were Pilgrims. One of those kind of things. So,
but I mean I could see it. That explains why
(22:53):
there is the word separatists, say in the word Puritans. Yeah,
and I'm sure described the same group. I think I
would argue though, that, um, it matters so little at
this point that we Okay, lump them together. She's saying that.
I think she's saying that there were no Puritan pilgrims. Okay, well,
(23:13):
we'll find out. We'll either find out someone will set
a straight that really knows it, or we will just say, Rachel,
thank you for the correction. Yeah. Either way, I'm gonna go. Look, Okay,
I can't let this suppress. Let me know, even if
it doesn't matter any longer, I still need to know.
And it's not like I didn't care. I did, look,
but it's we're busy now. I didn't have quite enough
time to fully researcher. Well, uh, okay, if you have
(23:38):
an amazing historical fact that's been lost to the age
of the time that you want to tell us about,
We're very interested in that kind of stuff, right right, Uh,
send us an email you totally should. You can address
it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(23:59):
Be sure at you out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Staff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought
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