Sweet, Sweet Sweat

Question:

Are there any negative effects or benefits of ingesting your own sweat? I am a heavy sweater, and when I ride my bike or do strenuous exercise, I sometimes ingest some salty sweat as it pours off my
face.

Submitted by – Ray, Tracy, California

Answer:

I feel very safe saying that you cannot drink enough sweat as it runs off your body to have a negative or positive effect. There simply isn’t enough of it. And sweat is almost entirely water and a few salt compounds anyway; the amount of salt varies depending on fitness, acclimatization to heat, what you’ve been eating, and other factors. There are a few other compounds in sweat, such as ammonia and lactic acid, but they almost always comprise less than one percent of sweat and do no harm if swallowed. In other words, there’s not enough volume to sweat, or enough components in it, to have a physiological effect on your body. So lap up the pouring sweat. —Buck