On the latest episode of the Vodafone Healthline series, health professionals have debunked the assertion that sweating while working out is fat-burning.
General Practitioner Dr. Kwekuma Yalley explained that humans sweat when there is a way for the body to regulate temperature; thus when the body temperature goes up, the body puts out water on its surface to cool it down or regulate how hot it becomes.
“Just like how when you are using a car for a while the engine becomes hot, likewise when you are working out over time, the muscles become warm, they burn out energy and causes the body temperature to go up so the body produces this water on the surface to try maintaining a constant temperature,” he said.
Adding up to that, Senior Physician Specialist Dr. Aba Folson emphasised that fat in the human body does not come out like we see in sweat, but gets used up in the body. “Sweating is not indicative of how much fat you are burning, because people sweat differently depending on the type of activity engaged in; other factors also affect how much you sweat,” she reiterated.
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She further outlined factors such as intensity level of exercise, sex of the person -because men sweat more than women- weather condition of the environment, among others as determinants of how much one sweats during work out which is not related to how much fat one burns in the body.
Dr. Yalley complemented this point by adding that burning calories or losing weight has little to do with sweat – because swimming is an activity that does not cause an individual to sweat but a lot of calories are lost during swimming.
In this 10th episode, the Healthline train moved to the capital of Shai Osudoku district – Dodowa, in the Greater Region – to rescue eight-year-old Nasira Lihadi, who fell into the fire and transformed from being once touted as the most beautiful girl to become someone nobody wants to get close to.
Nasira’s mother narrated that she left home that fateful morning for school, but after a few minutes, she received a phone call that her daughter had fallen on top of a gas stove and injured herself. She was badly burnt and we took her to Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital where the wounds were treated; but before the wounds were healed, the doctors informed us that her neck had developed a condition that required surgery to correct but the cost was beyond their capacity to afford.
According to the mother, Nasira’s speech has even been impaired by the neck injury and she struggles to speak. “We heard that Vodafone has a programme that can assist us and we called them, and thankfully they responded and agreed to come to our aid. I am so excited and grateful to Vodafone Healthline for rescuing Nasira and putting smiles back on her face,” she said.
Dr. Victoria May Adabayeri, Consultant Paediatric Nephrologist, KBTH, on her part touched on allergies and respiratory tract infections. She indicated that allergies can be carried on from childhood to adulthood, though sometimes they clear out of the body; but largely they remain, especially when the immune system is less resistant to them and therefore reacts once activated by consumption of the allergic material or substance.
“Allergies are recurrent, they happen so frequently; and once a mother notices that anytime I do this particular thing the baby shows this issue, then it can be related to allergy. But usually, they don’t appear early in babies until they are over a year old.”
