Your sweat could help stop you sweating, thanks to naturally occurring minerals such as salt and calcium that could block sweat ducts to act as an antiperspirant.
Jonathan Boreyko at Virginia Tech was inspired to investigate the potential antiperspirant properties of sweat after an intense game of squash, when he noticed that salt crystals had formed on his skin.
鈥淚f you could evaporate the sweat when it鈥檚 still inside the sweat duct, then maybe that sticky white salt deposit might clog the duct,鈥� he says.
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Commercial antiperspirants use metal salts that block sweat ducts. Some studies have suggested that these salts have potential health risks, though overall the evidence suggests they are safe.
To test whether alternatives to metal salts could make the human body produce its own antiperspirant, Boreyko and his colleagues created artificial sweat ducts out of glass tubes and filled them with a manufactured sweat solution that has the same minerals and acids as human sweat.
They placed a polymer cube infused with propylene glycol 鈥� a water-absorbing substance that is often used in cosmetics and isn鈥檛 a metal salt 鈥� 100 micrometres away from the ducts. This increased the rate at which the sweat evaporated and caused the minerals within the sweat to form a plug that stopped it flowing.
鈥淚 had no idea if it would work,鈥� says Boreyko. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really exciting to see it play out exactly as you imagined it in your dreams.鈥�
鈥淭he idea was to form a model and determine what are the conditions for which the duct is getting clogged,鈥� says team member Yashasvi Lolla. The researchers plan to use this data to refine the concept and test it on real human sweat ducts.
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
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