Sweating. It’s gross. Sometimes it smells and it’s definitely never attractive. It’s right up there with body hair for most annoying human body thing. So we’ve designed ways to avoid sweating, from air conditioning to antiperspirants. But when we decide to suppress a function that humans have been doing for millenia, there are negative repercussions.
The first thing most people counter with is “well I sweat at the gym”. Great, but it’s not the same as sweating passively. When our bodies are at rest we are in what is called a parasympathetic state. This is the body’s “rest and digest” mode. All of the body’s secretions are improved when we are in a parasympathetic state, and so the benefits of sweating like detoxification are enhanced.
While sweating out toxins is great for our health, the most interesting thing our body does when exposed to extreme heat is producing heat shock proteins. Our cells begin making heat shock proteins after our body temperature increases by just a few degrees. Heat shock proteins have two main roles. They chaperone proteins within cells, and they assist the immune system in a very exciting, anti-cancer sort of way.
Proteins are so much more than just the stuff our muscles are made of. Every enzyme is a protein, signaling molecules can be proteins, receptors can be proteins, and so forth. Proteins have 4 levels of organization, and if any of these goes awry, it’s quite likely the protein will no longer function as it ought. Heat shock proteins come along and help with what is called protein folding, ensuring that they take the proper form and consequently function, as well as preventing proteins from aggregating. A common protein aggregation disease is alzheimer’s, where beta-amyloid (protein) starts building up in cells.
Heat shock proteins also chaperone old proteins to proteasomes, which are the recycling center of the cell. Cells are extremely dynamic and can make new proteins on a dime to deal with whatever conditions may present in the body. It is important to be able to clean up any unused or aberrant proteins. In this way, heat shock proteins play a major role in cellular repair and management.
The role of heat shock proteins in immunity is multifactorial as well. Perhaps the most interesting role is that heat shock proteins help with antigen presentation, which means they help the immune system recognize a threat. This is not normally an issue with classic infectious agents like viruses and bacteria, but is THE issue in diseases like cancer. Cancer is essentially a disease in which cells that malfunction are not recognized and flagged by the immune system for destruction.
Heat shock proteins also improve the inflammatory response of the immune system. They activate clean-up cells like macrophages. They activate natural killer cells (best name every) and T-cells (also killers). Really no part of the immune system works as well as it does in the presence of heat shock proteins.
The implications are pretty exciting but there is still a lot left to be learned about heat shock proteins. They are pretty hot in cancer research, but may also play a role in other diseases, from alzheimer’s to heart disease.
But let’s trace back to where we started, sweating. It’s fascinating that most cultures, especially in cold climates, had some sort of heat therapy. Think about the sauna therapies of Nordic peoples to the sweat lodges of North American natives. If there is a habit that is that pervasive across peoples, you start to wonder if there isn’t something to it. You won’t find much research on heat therapy because there is no money to be made on it, but heat shock proteins are the missing link between the ancient practice of sweating and your health.