How to Cool Down Your Body When You’re Really Hot and Can’t Stop Sweating
berkpixels/Getty Images/Amanda K Bailey
In these dog days, the heat can really sneak up on you: One minute you’re seemingly fine, enjoying a picnic in the park, and the next, all you can think about is the sun bearing down on you. Or maybe you just biked or walked to work, the breeze whisking you along, but the second you sit down, beads of sweat dampen your brow. It’s all too easy to surpass what feels like your point of no return—so now you’re schvitzing, steaming, and unable to focus on anything beyond how to cool down your body right this second.
What often happens is, you don’t realize how hot you actually are until you start sweating, a sensation that becomes more noticeable when you stop moving. “When you’re active, you’re creating a wind flow over your body that’s helping evaporate your sweat, and that’s providing a cooling benefit to you,” Rachel Cottle, MS, a PhD student at Pennsylvania State University’s Thermoregulatory and Microvascular Research Lab, tells SELF. “But as soon as you stop, you don’t have as much air flowing around your body, and the sweat isn’t evaporating as quickly.” Suddenly, all that perspiration starts to pool in your pits or slide down the back of your neck.
To be clear, sweat is a necessary and good thing: It’s your body’s way of notching down your elevated core temperature. But we’re also evolutionarily designed to feel totally gross when we’re moist or full-on drenched, Nathan Morris, PhD, assistant professor of thermal physiology in the Department of Human Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, tells SELF. The uncomfortable sensation of sweat building up on your skin is what signals to your brain that you really need to cool down—and essentially drives you to stop moving and/or leave the hot situation.
Indeed, relocating to an air-conditioned (or less scorching) space will certainly help your body regulate itself and dry up your sweat. But that’s not the only thing you can do if the heat is seriously getting to you. Below, experts share exactly how to cool down your body fast when you want nothing more in this world.
First, there’s some prep you can do before being active or heading into the heat.
Here’s some interesting science: If you’re already hot and dripping, drinking something cold isn’t going to drop your temperature; instead, your body will adjust by turning down your sweating, says Dr. Morris (more on that later).
But if you’re dry and not overheating, he says, sipping a chilled drink or taking a cool shower can, in fact, cause a slight dip in your core body temperature. This is called a “heat sink,” which means “your body tissues are cooler than normal,” Dr. Morris says. When you then go outside in hot weather or begin moving your body, “you’re going to heat those tissues up to normal levels first before you start physiologically responding [to the heat].” Meaning, if your body is literally extra-chill when you leave the house, it’ll take longer for you to get hot and sweaty. (Yay!)
What you choose to wear can make a difference, too. Obviously you don’t want to put on a ton of heavy clothing, but it’s also worth staying away from anything that clings to your skin. “If you wear looser clothes on a hot day, it allows for a billowing effect, similar to when you fluff the sheets,” Dr. Morris says. “Every time your body moves, it creates this airflow underneath your clothes, which helps evaporate sweat off your body so you can cool down.” All the more reason to slip on a flowy shirt dress or some wide-leg trousers this summer (bonus points if you opt for breathable fabrics like cotton or linen).
Use a fan to get some air flowing across your body.
Remember how the second you stop moving, you’ll often notice your sweat even more because there’s less air breezing past you? You can counteract that effect with a fan, Cottle says. Even just a portable battery-operated fan or one that you can pop on your desk and angle toward your face can help. This way, you’re speeding up the evaporation of your sweat, which, again, cools you down.
For the same reason, you’ll also want to take off excess clothing (like a jacket), lift long hair off your neck, and roll up your sleeves to expose your arms, Riana Pryor, PhD, ATC, director of the Hydration, Exercise, and Thermoregulation (HEAT) Laboratory in the Center of Research and Education in Special Environments at the University of Buffalo in New York, tells SELF. The more direct contact between your skin and flowing air, the more quickly those sweat droplets will disappear, and you’ll feel a little better.
If you’re outside without access to a plug or battery-operated fan, you can achieve a similar effect by finding a spot where there’s some wind or using a paper or plastic handheld fan to create a mini breeze, Cottle says. The one exception is if it’s very dry outside and the temp exceeds your skin temperature, which is roughly 95 degrees Fahrenheit—in this case, moving air around can just pump dry heat toward your body and make you hotter. In any humid place, though, fanning stagnant air can bring some much-needed relief.
Run your hands and forearms under cool water.
One of the quickest ways to cool down is literally at your fingertips. Like the soles of your feet, the palms of your hands are full of superficial blood vessels (near the surface of your skin), which dilate, or open up, when you’re hot. As more blood gets pumped into these vessels, it’s exposed to your skin’s surface; extra heat then gets transferred out of your body and into the surrounding environment, Kenneth Diller, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, tells SELF.
You can shuttle this process along by dunking your hands and forearms in cool tap water, Dr. Diller says. (You’re essentially speeding up how quickly the heat dissipates from your skin’s surface.) Once the blood in your hands cools, it also travels back throughout your body, helping your core temperature reset too.
Just note that you want to stick with cool water versus ice water, Dr. Diller says. If the water is frigid, it can cause those blood vessels in your hands and forearms to constrict (or get narrower), which allows for less contact between your warm blood and the surface of your skin, meaning less potential for heat to transfer out—not good. By contrast, tap water on the chillier side is “quite effective for cooling the blood flowing through the vessels while still keeping them open,” Dr. Diller says.
Dab your face with a cold wet towel.
Your cheeks and forehead are also spots with a bunch of blood vessels right below the skin’s surface—hence that flush you might get when you’re boiling. So the same general principle as above can apply here: By just chilling your face, you’re going to cool down a lot of blood quickly, which can make you feel much better ASAP, Dr. Diller says. Not to mention, your face is very sensitive to temperature, Dr. Morris says, which is also why you can get such instant relief from directly cooling that area.
Down an ice-cold drink.
You might remember from above that chugging something cold won’t actually drop your body temperature if you’re already mid-sweat. What drinking a chilled beverage can do, though, is slow down your body’s sweat response, allowing more of that liquid to quickly evaporate from your skin (as opposed to dribbling down it).
As you slurp that icy drink, your overall temperature will stay about the same, but you’ll eventually be less damp, and therefore, more comfortable, Dr. Morris says. Any cold beverage can do the trick here, but if you reach for plain water or an electrolyte-rich sports drink, you’ll also maximize your rehydration, which is key whenever you’re schvitzing (and especially post-workout).
If you’re home, take a cool—not frigid—shower.
If wetting your hands, forearms, and face can chill you out, it only follows that covering even more of your body with cool water will just enhance that effect. Of course, it’s not always possible to douse yourself—say, if you just got to work or a restaurant, and the beads of sweat are forming—but if you’re home, and a shower or bath is feasible, it’s a quick way to cool down and stop sweating, Dr. Pryor says.
If you’re extremely hot, it might be tempting to go full ice bath or crank that faucet as cold as you can handle—but it’s possible to take things too far, Dr. Diller says. Again, super cold water can cause your blood vessels to constrict, which blocks heat from transferring out as easily (the opposite of what you want).
And if you really can’t cool down…
Feeling overheated can go from a mild nuisance to a serious health issue quickly if you aren’t able to lower your core body temperature. If the above steps don’t seem to be chilling you out, or you’ve been active in the heat and feel like you just can’t stop sweating, it’s important to seek medical attention, as you may be experiencing a form of heat illness, like heat exhaustion. (Common signs include nausea, vomiting, headache, and feeling dizzy or lightheaded.)
With a bit of prep, and by taking some heat-of-the-moment action to cool your body down, though, you can soak up the sun this summer without feeling personally victimized by it.
Related:
It’s Not Just You: Extreme Heat Is Making All of Us Really Cranky
Here’s What ‘Sun Poisoning’ Actually Means, According to Dermatologists
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Originally Appeared on SELF
