How do pigs sweat

But our liver and kidneys do a great job of getting rid of most of these. Sweat glands need not apply for employment. They are unequipped to help. But of course a lack of understanding of toxicology and physiology does not deter the promoters of various quack detoxication regimens. There are foot baths and patches that supposedly suck out toxins. Exactly what these toxins are is never mentioned, nor is any evidence of their removal provided. And then there are the infrared saunas and sweat lodges that claim to detoxify through heavy sweating to carry toxins out of the body.

Infrared saunas use infrared light that penetrates the body and warms up tissues from within instead of heating the body from the outside as in the case of a regular sauna. There is zero evidence for this. Actually, when sweating is carried to an extreme it can cause dehydration and impair the work of the kidneys. As a result, she is later to come on heat again, which means that she has both a reduced litter size and an increased chance of spontaneous abortion.

All of these problems happen because pigs effectively cannot sweat, even though popular belief claims they can. Which brings us back to the "pigs sweat" belief, which is everywhere in our culture.

Back in , Bette Middler was changing from a stage performer adored mainly by gay audiences, to a mainstream actor. She was playing the role of self-destructive rock star, Janis Joplin, in the big budget movie The Rose. She liked the advantages of being a movie star, as compared to a stage performer. She said, in a Women's Weekly interview, "It's soooo easy. You don't have to get up there for four hours every night and sweat like a pig.

Widely misunderstood, that's the pig. In fact, Homer Simpson misunderstands them as well. In " Lisa the Vegetarian " Simpsons , Season 7, Episode 5, , Homer asks his daughter, Lisa, if she'll ever eat bacon again, and she says "no". He then asks if she'll consider eating ham or pork chops, not realising that all these meats come from the same animal, the pig.

Evaporative Cooling in the Pig. Nature , — Download citation. Issue Date : 24 July Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

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Whenever we sweat, we do not think of that as our mechanism for ridding our body of toxins. Pigs have a metabolism very similar to ours and, thus, can cleanse themselves internally so to speak as we do.

Pork is wholesome and you can be assured that it does not contain some mythical buildup of toxins.