Sweating and thermoregulation: Does sweating release toxins?
Though some like it hot, inducing heavy sweating is not an effective method of ridding your body of toxins — though it's very good at ridding your body of vital fluids, potentially leading to dehydration. Sweating releases traces of toxins (less than one percent of the body's total content), but in reality, its sole purpose is to prevent overheating . The liver and kidneys (not the sweat glands) are the body's true detoxifiers. They filter toxins out of the blood and the body releases them through urine and feces. When someone is dehydrated, these filtration mechanisms go haywire because of a reduction in the plasma level in the blood causing side effects like you experienced post-workout. During physical activity, the body naturally "thermoregulates" (cools itself down) in a variety of ways: radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation (sweating). If the environmental temperature exceeds skin temperature like in hot yoga where the room is often heated...