Determination of the maximum rate of eccrine sweat glands’ ion reabsorption using the Galvanic Skin Conductance to local sweat rate relationship

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to develop and describe a simple method to evaluate the rate of ion reabsorption of eccrine sweat glands in human using the measurement of galvanic skin conductance (GSC) and local sweating rate (SR). This purpose was investigated by comparing the SR threshold for increasing GSC with following two criteria of sweat ion reabsorption in earlier studies such as (1) the SR threshold for increasing sweat ion was at approximately 0.2–0.5 mg/cm2/min and (2) exercise heat acclimation improved the sweat ion reabsorption ability and would increase the criteria 1. Methods Seven healthy non-heat-acclimated male subjects received passive heat treatment both before and after 7 days of cycling in hot conditions (50 % maximum oxygen uptake, 60 min/day, ambient temperature 32 °C, and 50 % relative humidity). Results Subjects became partially heat-acclimated, as evidenced by the decreased end-exercise heart rate (p < 0.01), rate of perceived exhaustion (p < 0.01), and oesophageal temperature (p = 0.07), without alterations in whole-body sweat loss, from the first to the last day of training. As hypothesized, we confirmed that the SR threshold for increasing GSC was near the predicted SR during passive heating before exercise heat acclimation, and increased significantly after training (0.19 ± 0.09–0.32 ± 0.10 mg/cm2/min, p < 0.05). Conclusions The reproducibility of sweat ion reabsorption by the eccrine glands in the present study suggests that the relationship between GSC and SR can serve as a new index for assessing the maximum rate of sweat ion reabsorption of eccrine sweat glands in humans.