While exercising, the muscles warm up, and you feel sweat form on your forehead. Even your breath feels warm. Two ways your body regulates your body temperature are sweat and respiration. How does exercise raise body temperature?
Your body regulates this temperature change and keeps you within a safe range.
Effect of exercise on body temperature
Your muscles deplete stored energy when you start exercising. Muscles combine oxygen with ATP to produce more energy, creating heat energy as a by-product.
A study showed that runners had more heat around their legs than their arms because your legs do most of the work when you run instead of your arms, which hardly contributes.
Maintain body temperature
Extra blood flows to your muscles during exercise to provide them with nutrients and lead to waste products. Muscles also generate heat, which heats the blood that flows through them.
Your body releases heat during exercise by pushing warm blood against your skin. As you get hotter, capillaries open near the surface of your skin. According to a 2015 article published in Advances in Physiology Education, acetylcholine is the most critical chemical responsible for this.
Sweat to reduce body heat
Sweating is another way your body cools down. Sweat glands release fluid on the surface of your skin. When the sweat evaporates, it absorbs heat and cools the blood further near the skin’s surface.
Sweat does not work in very humid climates because the water can not evaporate as quickly. Then your body mainly has to rely on radiation to dissipate heat.
Environment, exercise, and body temperature
When you exercise in a climate-controlled environment, such as your gym, the hypothalamus keeps your body temperature at a safe level. When you exercise in water, the body heat is transferred to the water and removed.
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