Where Are We At With Sweat?

David Curnow (00:10)
We all do it, some of us more than others, and it's considered one of Homo Sapiens' evolutionary superpowers. Sweat. Clear, relatively colourless, and often socially unwelcome, perspiration helps regulate our body temperature as we chase down the kangaroo, escape the lion, or fret about what to say on the first date. Hello, I'm David Curnow and this is "Welcome to Where Are We At With..?". While sweat is incredibly useful for us, it comes at a cost. After all, we are producing something, and it can be a problem if we don't replace the stuff we lose. Dehydration or cramping leads to less kangaroo for dinner and more munching on us by lions. While water and a bit of salt was the main method of treatment for much of human history, twentieth century science and entrepreneurship led to a massive sports recovery drink industry, pioneered by Gatorade, Powerade, and many other types of "Ade". Sweat may not be socially attractive, but it is a key marketing tool, as in this award winning ad.

Clip from Gatorade ad 2023
Sweating is everything. Never stop sweating. Sweating is Glory

Anyone watching the recent soccer, football, World Cup will have noticed the enforced hydration breaks, even in stadiums that are air conditioned. Why? Well, they're sponsored by one of the "Ades", "Power" in this case. And so to make sure FIFA gets ever more money, they make players and viewers pause and be drowned in ads for sugary sports drinks.

Professor Hugh Dunstan and some of his colleagues at the University of Newcastle spent 30 years trying to identify what's in sweat, how we make it, and how our body copes with losing it. Recently, they took that research a step further and started their own company, selling sports recovery products. If you can't beat them, join them. In this episode, we'll hear about the things Gatorade doesn't do, why our body eats our muscles while we're actually trying to grow them.

And why good science doesn't automatically translate into instant commercial success. And sadly it appeared someone sweated on my microphone during this interview, so we do apologise for the sound of my voice. I seem to do that a lot. Where are we at with sweat with Professor Hugh Dunstan?

David (02:28)
Professor Hugh Dunstan thank you so much for your time today.

Hugh (02:30)
Thank you for having me.

David (02:33)
Given your decades of research into what's in sweat and what we do when we lose it and how we make it, let's start off with something a little bit more basic. Why do humans sweat? And are we the only creatures who do so?

Hugh (02:46)
Okay, so the primary reason for it is that it's a cooling mechanism. So as we start exercising, doing some work or moving around in a warmer climate, we need to actually sweat so we get the evaporative cooling. That's the primary function. There are a few other reasons. It's actually a major excretory pathway for urea. I think people would have heard of urea and associate that with urine. But a lot of that comes out actually in the sweat as well, and you also lose electrolytes and other things as well.

David (03:18)
Am I right that there are a number of different glands that produce sweat?

Hugh (03:22)
Yeah, so you've got sweat glands, the eccrine glands all over your body. And then you have specialized ones that occur in your armpit, which also have a sebaceous gland associated with it. So you're pumping out sort of more oily or fatty substances as well. But most of the body, it's these eccrine sweat glands that actually are for this cooling mechanism. And it's quite interesting, actually, if you do, we did a few studies, but people have reported on it, the content of sweat is a little bit different depending where you collect the sweat from.

David (03:56)
Yeah, and looking at this with the different glands, you mentioned those under the armpits, and as you said, they're a little bit oilier, and as a result, some of it is almost scent-related, and those glands produce the smelly bits. We also have more of those around our nipples.

Hugh (04:09)
Yeah, and in the, you know, the private regions, shall we say, yeah, around the pubic hairs and so forth, they have these specific functions and those are really important, but that's not what we've been focusing on. But they definitely they do. And also, you've got sweat on your head, so around the hair as well. and, again, the composition of the sweat changes and I don't pretend to understand why or how, but it's fascinating to make that observation.

David (04:43)
Absolutely and when we talk about the fact that there are the different types we'll focus on the ones that are particularly down to cooling they're the ones that you've looked at when it comes to the composition of this way and the process we tend to do have a lot of them in both our palms and soles of our feet which seems at odds with the idea of high temperatures or stress producing these where perhaps that's where things are going to get a bit slippery.

Hugh (05:06)
Yeah, that's a very good point. hadn't thought of it like that. We've found it quite useful because we used to collect sweat. used to put the plastic bags and seal them around the forearm and then collect the sweat which was coming from the forearm and the hands. So it's very convenient for us. But an interesting point, which might come up later, is that we used animal models for some of our research and a lot of animals just don't sweat. So dogs and cats don't sweat, but they do have some sweat coming out of their pores. So whether there's some evolutionary association with that, I don't know.

David (05:41)
Yeah, as I said, just personally, and this is not for scientists speaking as we've explained fairly thoroughly on this particular podcast, I'm not a scientist. If I want traction, I don't want liquid coming out of my feet. Anyone who watches motor racing knows that's how to make an interesting race, just spray the racetrack.

Clip from F1 Official website
Look at the spray coming up from the track and Hamilton goes into the lead as Lando Norris slides off the track!

David (06:17)
Let's move on from the non-science part of this because when we talk about our sweat glands, we think of them as you say, as cooling. This is about a process which in part is a superpower. We mentioned this in our Where Are We Out With Sneakers episode. The fact that humans can cool while exercising gives us an advantage over many, many creatures. Is it just high temperatures that produces sweat that causes our body to create that?

Hugh (06:42)
No, certainly the temperature increase both ambient and generated by the musculature action is one feature. There's also a neurological switch on and hormonal switch on. So, you know, if you're getting under the heat with fierce questioning, you start sweating. And so that's, yeah. There are all sorts of mechanisms involved with that and we started looking at it. It's just so complicated. It's not just a simple switch on, switch off. There are all sorts of mechanisms for feedback control and to help you maintain or optimize what it is you're doing. I'll you an example. One of the things that we did was we collected sweat during exercise, so you know we had people, athletes working on a cycle or running machine, whatever, and we collect their sweat. We get the same athletes and we put them in a hot box. So controlled environment, humidity, temperature, and we collected their sweat. And the sweat collected in the hot box was different to the sweat collected during exercise. And basically more stuff was coming out per mill if you like whilst sitting so the body can afford to lose a little bit more and in doing so effectively retain a bit more of the sodium and chloride. But as soon as you start exercising it's like a physiological trigger that switches off that set of mechanisms and it is much more stringent about conserving its resources.

David (08:22)
It's almost like the human body using a type of turbo device in the engine so that it only spools up when you're accelerating. It only triggers that because we need this a little bit more. The motor racing analogies continue. There'll be another one coming up, I know, based on some of the professional work that you're doing these days. Let's go back though to the idea of sweat when it comes to the population. Some people sweat more than others. Is there much difference that we know of or causes that we know of that vary due to gender?

Hugh (08:27)
Yeah, exactly.

David (08:50)
ethnicity, age, things like that.

Hugh (08:53)
Really good questions. We did a little bit of a look between males and females. We found that on average, and we only looked at some small groups, but the females tend to, the women I should say, tend to have higher concentrations of the mino acids and sometimes electrolytes in their sweat than the same volume from males. Yes, there were differences in the composition as well when you compare the two. But, you know, it's a, terms of population differences, the studies that we did, again, focused on The, we found three types of sweaters, if you like. So there are those that sweated a large volume. So let's say two litres per hour, those that are in the middle at about 1.2 litres per hour and then those at about half a litre per hour. And their compositions also varied. So in a group of say 20 athletes, we're able to define these three different groups of people with different sweating attributes.

David (09:59)
That's interesting, you mentioned that so that effectively it's not that there's a broad and even curve as it were, or even scale, it can be anywhere between here and here and it's exactly marked all the way along. There are effectively groupings at certain amounts. Some people do more than others and then they all cluster around that range. Do we have any indicators as to why that is?

Hugh (10:21)
Look, we've done studies in urine output, for example, which show that there are distinct groups in the population that just function that little bit differently. When you think of all the genes involved and all of the other factors that switched genes on and off and dietary contributions and levels of fitness and history of infections, all those sorts of things contribute to what you are today and how you sweat and what you put out in the urine. I think it's really important to just harp back on that variability because in times gone past, people who have measured what's in sweat before, back in the 50s, they started doing some lovely work, but they were hampered by the fact that what they were finding is huge variability. So if they took a group of 80 people, the variance was just ginormous and they just thought, oh can't do anything with this. Yes, you lose stuff in sweat but we can't really make anything of it. So what we did that was a little bit different because we had, well, advances in technology, but also advances in statistics. And we worked with people that taught us multivariate statistics and so forth. And what we can do then is to easily group people with very little bias based on the experimental output data that you're getting. So we took profiles of the sweat and we were able to show that, yes, there were actually different types of people in regards to sweat output in the population. And once you tweak to that, things start to make sense. So you have type variability within the small volume sweaters and type variability in the large volume sweaters. And then you can actually start relating that to the blood work and make more sense of it. I do think there's a big bit of genetics behind that too, just like you have different types of runners and people in a football team. You've got the solid ones and you've got the little fast sprinters and those are the sorts of variations we're talking about.

David (12:21)
Speaking of somebody in the heavy sweating group, I have to immediately agree to that. Anyone who's done any exercise anywhere near me knows all about that. At the end of the workout, nobody's rushing to give me a high five. We've talked about the composition and we won't list all of the things in it because frankly the list is so long. But I was struck by the composition of two, just how many varied things we lose as part of sweat that I wouldn't have thought our body wants to get rid of. Just list some of the things.

Hugh (12:32)
There was a paper that came out, publication probably 10 years ago now, that did these, what they call it, metabolymics. And basically it's a huge big machine that can measure pretty well anything you want in terms of small biological molecules. And you know, the array of stuff that you saw and split was phenomenal. You you get some sugars there, you got amino acids, you got organic acids, got some fatty acids and all sorts of stuff. It was amazing.

David (13:21)
Metals, like we're losing some, losing some zinc, we're losing iron, things like that.

Hugh (13:26)
Yeah, it was hard to put into context of the major things you're losing. And I think this leads into nicely a discussion of what actually what is sweat. And people have often thought, many professionals, many medical health practitioners think that sweat is actually like a perfusion of blood plasma filtered into the sweat gland And that's not the way it is at all. What happens is you've got this little sweat gland that sits under the skin and in this compartment, sweat is made, literally starting from nothing. There's a sequence of events and you pump certain ions in there and fluid comes in and it's very structured. It's very tailor made and stuff gets in there either by leakage or seepage. And these are some of the amazing compounds that we're talking about. But predominantly the bulk components in there are things like the urea. is excretion pathway for urea. But when it's made, the concentration of sodium in the sweat gland is the same as it is in the blood plasma. So when it's first made, it's the same concentration. Now the body can't afford to lose too much sodium. Sodium is one of those things that's maintained in the blood to within an nth degree. You know, it hardly varies. And if it does, you're in deep trouble. So what the body does very cleverly is as that sweat passes from the gland through a channel up into the surface of the skin, it's subjected to all of these special mechanisms to draw back the sodium. So it starts off, let's say, 140 units in the actual sweat gland. By the time it reaches the skin surface, it's down to about 25 or 30 units. So the body has resorbed let's say, 80 % to 90 % of the sodium that it used to construct the sweat in the first place. It's quite phenomenal. It's amazing.

David (15:32)
Do we know how it does that?

Hugh (15:34)
We have quite a bit of knowledge as to how. So nothing is for free. So if you're going to pull sodium back into the body, you've got to pump something out in return. And what we do understand very well is that there are sodium and potassium pumps. so potassium is sacrificed by the body, is pumped into the sweat gland to bring the sodium back in. And so we talk about loss of potassium quite significantly in endurance runners and so forth and that's why you see it in any good electrolyte formulation. What our work then looked at was why there's such a high concentration of this small group of amino acids in the sweat and when you start looking at it, amino acids are involved in sodium exchange in all parts of the body, cellular exchanges are important for maintaining electrolyte balance within your cells and tissues, for absorption from the kidneys, reabsorption and absorption in the gut. You need amino acids to make that sodium transfer happen. And what we found is direct correlation between the sodium being absorbed and the output of these high demand amino acids. And so you find very high concentrations of these, six or seven amino acids in the sweat as a result of helping sodium resorption. You know, sodium resorption, as I said before, is such a big issue to maintain your well-being, your activity, performance, that the body is sacrificing its potassium, magnesium, and calcium in these exchanges, as well as these amino acids.

David (17:13)
Anyone who's looked at exercise and rehydration knows we only need a tiny bit of salt in our bodies, but by goodness, we need it even if we lose it, we're in bit of strife. Let's talk though about "Biol-101" refresher... amino acids. What do they do for us? What role do they play? You've mentioned some of the roles they play in different organs. What else do they do?

Hugh (17:32)
So amino acids are small organic molecules. So have a backbone of carbon, of nitrogen on them, some of oxygen as well. And these are the units of protein formation. So there's about 20 used in formation of proteins. And we get these from the diet and that's fine. These amino acids, that's probably the consensus view. I need amino acids to repair muscles that have been broken or had a heavy day training. I need to rebuild my muscles. So I take amino acids. But amino acids are also involved in huge areas of important metabolites. They are the precursors, not all of them. Certain ones are the precursors for neurotransmitters. One of them forms carnosine, a really important, some of you would have heard of a carnosine as a supplement and carnosine is really important for muscle function, brain function and it's absolutely critical. Another amino acid is key in forming haemoglobin. Now, when we say haemoglobin, we think of the protein. But sitting in haemoglobin is this ring structure which is called the haem, the haem group, and it is built of one amino acid. This amino acid is called glycine, and it's got eight repeats to make this circle. If you don't have enough of this amino acid, then it can lead to falls in haemoglobin levels. So these are the types of functions that are really important. Also, you've got formation of antioxidants. They play huge roles in removal of waste products. So you generate a lot of organic waste when you're doing exercise or when you're eating foods and you need the amino acids to help you get rid of them. They're involved in the formation of DNA. Everybody thinks amino acids, proteins. And then you've got these other things like purines and pyrimidines that go into the DNA. Well, yes, but the amino acids are used to build the purines and the pyrimidines building blocks for DNA. So that's something that a lot of people don't realize. So these things are just so important for general good health. But when you're doing a level of activity, you are constantly rebuilding, repairing. They're even more important.

SIDE NOTE
David Curnow (19:55)
Now you might have noticed by the way that Professor Hugh Dunstan and I are pronouncing a word differently. I say amino acids because that's how I learnt it, but he says that's fine. He just happened to learn amino, which is right. I'll let you decide.

David (20:11)
You mentioned the fact that we get them effectively from, I we could produce them, can digest them, or absorb them from food, things like that. Is that the normal pattern? If I'm not exercising heavily and I'm just sweating regularly, I'm losing some of these amino acids, but I'll be okay to get them back reasonably soon.

Hugh (20:29)
Yeah, look, it's a really good question. It's one that gets asked a lot. And obviously, the more you do, the higher the demand for these specific important amino acids are. Let's call them the high demand amino acids or HDAA. Now, these HDAA, because they are lost so, and used so much in metabolism and lost so much in sweat, to give you an example. If you've got blood circulating, you've got about five litres of blood in there, and in that plasma in the blood you've got levels of sodium. And the sodium that you lose in sweat is equivalent to about 800 milligrams per hour. Okay, so that's the quantity that you're losing. So nearly a gram, you're losing a gram of amino acids an hour as well, but nobody's taken count of that. And in that gram of amino acids, 70 % of them are these HDAA amino acids. Now, I'm sorry for the convolution of the story, but the amount that's circulating in your bloodstream compared to what you're losing per hour through sweat on average, you're losing three and a half times your capacity in the bloodstream per hour through sweat for the amino acids, for these HDAA. So that gives you an idea of the imbalance, if you like, or the disproportionate level of loss of these high demand amino acids through sweat. Now, coming back to your question, if you're sitting around with pretty leisurely lifestyle, you're still sweating at least half a litre a day. Likely it's more than that, litre, litre and a half a day.

David (22:28)
Because a lot of people will say, no, no, don't sweat at all.

Hugh (22:32)
Yeah, I wish I had a dollar for everyone that said that to me.

David (22:35)
Wouldn't need to set up a company.

Hugh (22:38)
The thing is that it's a very efficient fluid in the sense that it's designed to evaporate. And it does, it goes into your clothes and evaporates and it helps you cool. And if you want to see whether you are actually losing fluid, whether it's going for a walk, sit around for the day, just weigh yourself and take into account what you're drunk and eaten and there will be a weight change. And that's roughly equivalent to what you're losing in sweat

David (23:12)
Yeah, obviously there are other things that you are losing or excreting. Things like carbon monoxide or breathing out is a bit hard to measure. Things like that are a little harder, but there's nowhere near as much. Okay.

Hugh (23:20)
Yeah. Yeah, the bulk of it can be attributed to sweat loss. There is a, I forget the formula now, but you know, there is a proportion that's attributed to what you lose through breathing.

David (23:36)
We'll get on to some of that and the different formulations in terms of what is in our sweat as we exercise and how that changes as we exercise and increase our exercise energy about the sweat. The fluid itself, I assume it also comes from the bloodstream, is that right?

Hugh (23:52)
Yes. So if you like the water of it, yes, it's coming. And so what happens is that as you're exercising, obviously you're losing fluid. And one of the remarkable responses is that the body will actually shrink a little bit in terms of what's circulating. So if you're, I don't know the magnitude of that shrinkage, but it is sufficient. let's say if you've got five litres of blood, three hours of exercise and might be down to 4.8. I don't know exactly, but the concept is that it will shrink a little bit. And the reason for that is because you've lost fluid, the body is trying to keep the concentration of the sodium and the electrolytes in circulation the same. So if it hasn't got enough of that fluid, then it will decrease the volume.

David (24:40)
Effectively, it's the transportation system and if you reduce the number of buses, not as many people can get around the city. Professor Hugh Dunstan is our guest on where are we at with, we're looking at where are we at with sweat. Yes, it's perhaps not something you thought of as a major future promise, but trust me, things have changed, particularly in the world of sweat and when it comes to hydration and sport intake, particularly. We'll get onto some of the developments there in a moment. We talk about losing fluid, we talk about losing a number of things. If I literally sweated, exercised, sweated, and then replaced that fluid with water, just water, is that enough?

Hugh (25:19)
No. So with this shrinkage I was just talking about, if you add just water, then effectively when that gets absorbed, you're diluting what's in circulation. And that diluting effect can have big impact at the muscular level. And we've got a couple of, not our publications of research where it's been shown that that dilution effect will lead to cramping. And so it's really important to take that fluid intake, especially after, you know, intense energy or endurance performance with an electrolyte balance and a bare minimum. And we would now add to that to add the high demand amino acids.

David (26:07)
We'll talk about those, the HDAAs in a moment, and the AA in a company founded by you, but we talk about replacing fluids and electrolytes. That, I suppose, fairly neatly leads us to a fairly popular product in the market that promises to do just that. Gatorade, was that the first sports recovery drink, we think?

Hugh (26:25)
Yeah, that's a wonderful story. In Miami, the researchers there were keen to support their local team, the Gators. And they did some great research. They were the ones that sort of nailed it in terms of, we're just not losing water. And why does our sweat taste salty if you want it to lick your skin?

David (26:43)
And it was also because their athletes seemed to not be able to just cope. They basically were collapsing. were getting dehydrated more than others. Of course, they were from the University of Florida, one of the most humid and warm places in the United States. And so part of the research of why are athletes constantly suffering dehydration led to this development. Tell me a bit about it.

Hugh (27:05)
So they came up with the need and they did some wonderful stuff on how much sodium and chloride. And just while I think of it, everybody talks about sodium, but they forget chloride. Chloride is a perfect counter ion for sodium and chloride is needed for nerve transmission, all sorts of ion balances in the body. And some electrolyte formulations have sodium, there is something else like sodium malate, sodium citrate. And that I don't believe that's what's required because you got to also make good that loss of chloride. Anyway, sorry, I digress. So they did wonderful studies. They measured how much was lost and they worked out, you know, what needs to be replaced per hour. And there's a good publication by the, I can't remember the exact name, but the American Sports association equivalent with recommendations. And I found it really interesting because they were doing this. They're trying to support high intensely active athletes. And so they said, oh, well, it'd be a good idea if we had some carbohydrate resource in there. Let's put some glucose in there. We figured probably need about whatever it was, 20 grams to support it. And so off it went and that was Gatorade. But some of the powers that be took that as to say you had to have glucose in your electrolyte drink.

David (28:35)
And of course glucose for those who haven't worked out that sugar.

Hugh (28:39)
Yeah, sorry. And it's just staggering. I mean, as far as the interactions I've had with endurance athletes, know, the triathletes and long distance runners and so forth, they've got all of their support systems worked out to a T. They've got their rehydration stuff, electrolyte stuff, and then they've got their energy supply stuff worked out and so on. Any professional athlete should be doing that. And I think that the reason they've stuck with it is because it tastes good, everybody likes it and they want a yummy drink.

David (29:15)
Well, that was indeed looking at the history of Gatorade, specifically following that little rabbit hole myself. It was noticeable the fact that, look, initially they weren't so keen, but once they added both the sugars and the lemon-lime flavor, the original, they went, well, even if it doesn't help us, it tastes okay, so we'll drink it. And of course, the rest is history. They became known as the second half team, the fact that they could just keep playing and playing, whereas the other teams couldn't. We'll get onto that sugar in a moment particularly from a food standards perspective because that's played a big role in your most recent work. But I just wanted to talk about the idea of consumption when it comes to putting those things back in. Because one of the key factors that a lot of us don't consider is digestion and what happens when we exercise. Talk us through that a little bit.

Hugh (30:03)
Okay, so when you're going into exercise, if you're into running, for example, or a cycle, the blood supply to your digestive system is diverted to your muscles. I mean, obviously there's still some blood going there, but most of it goes away so that it can take extra oxygen to the muscles, can get rid of waste CO2, plus all the other nutrients that it needs. So digestion is very limited whilst you are undergoing exercise. Now there are some things that can be rapidly absorbed. So water, for example, can be absorbed. Simple sugars can be absorbed. Electrolytes can be absorbed. And amino acids can be absorbed. So in their free form, these small molecules, they don't need digestion. They just get absorbed. And they can get into the system and help you within 10 to 15 minutes. Protein drinks are another thing. They're not much use whilst you're exercising and nor are they much use immediately after because once you stop exercising, that blood supply remains diverted for anything up to two, three or four hours depending on your intensity of exercise. So if you take the protein drink, it'll sit in your stomach till it's ready to go again, eventually get digested and will be helpful. But what you want immediately you finish exercise is something that's going to help you start recovery straight away. So if you can take something like free amino acids that the body needs to do its restoration, then that's helpful. The one thing I haven't mentioned is that while you're exercising, obviously you cannot eat a meal for those very reasons to get more substrate for your muscles. So what the body does very cleverly is to break down muscle proteins. And so the longer you exercise, the more muscle proteins you break down to provide the amino acids that the body needs to support exercise. And it's not just protein synthesis, it's all of these other things in terms of getting rid of waste products, nerve function and all of that. So that process of blood diversion from the digestive system remains in place for, as said, two or three hours after you've finished. And so if you can get something into your body that helps the body do or begin its restoration and recovery, then what you're effectively doing is to cut down on the amount of muscle protein breakdown.

David (32:52)
So effectively as I'm exercising, possibly wanting to exercise to build muscle, think that depends on each person and what they do, exercise good for you no matter what, but in a sense my body is consuming part of the muscle to provide what's needed for the exercise. So it's a little bit like a builder saying, I'm gonna put up 150 bricks today, first let me knock down 100.

Hugh (33:15)
It's a little bit more subtle than that, but yeah.

David (33:17)
Maybe knock down 10. But it is literally that process and not, so we're losing the muscle but we continue to lose that muscle even after we've exercised for a period of time no matter how quickly we eat, a steak, our eggs and breakfast, whatever it might be.

Hugh (33:34)
Yeah, one of the things that we've learned by looking very closely at the relationship between the sweat, blood supply and urine and so forth is that the blood content stays very, very constant. mean, yeah, there are a few ups and downs and there are a couple of things that you can notice in response happening, but largely the composition in terms of amino acids anyway, stays very, constant. What that lets us understand is that this process is continual. There's a continual demand for the muscles. Yeah, we need a little bit more now. Come on, bring them in. And I'll slow down a bit. It's almost like your foot on the accelerator. It is very, very rapid and it's very well controlled.

David (34:19)
Some of your research looked at both the red blood cells in humans and in other creatures, particularly when it came to things like absorption of protein from red meats, mushrooms, whey protein. they all the same? Does the body use them all equally and give the same amount?

Hugh (34:39)
Again, you've got some really good questions. One of the things that we reviewed was the composition of proteins from different sources. So meat proteins, a couple of different meats, a range of vegetables. And what came through was that on the whole, you're getting roughly the same amounts of most. Yes, some will have higher certain essential amino acids and others. But on the whole, you're getting the full balance. And that's what a lot of vegetarians would argue. What people tend to forget though is that the muscles, and this is just one example, are bathed in this thing called carnosine. I mentioned it earlier. Now carnosine is, you can think of it like a buffer, but it's absolutely critical. It acts a bit like an antioxidant at times, but it it's fundamental to good muscle function and good brain function. So there's a lot of carnosine in the meat. And this carnosine actually, when you eat the meat, it's like getting an extra load of histidine, which is one of these essential high demand amino acids. And there's no equivalent in the vegetarian diet. So straight off, look at a vegetarian diet versus a meat-based diet or mixed diet, there is this lack of extra input of this key amino acid. Now histidine, it's fundamental. If you don't have enough histidine, you don't make enough haemoglobin. And there are studies showing that you become anemic. Histidine is just really fundamentally important on so many levels. So give you a fun example, we, one of our attributes, or two of our attributes, we lose a lot of histidine and sweat. Why we pick histidine to do that? I don't know, but it's one of these ones involved in that sodium resorption. histidine and glycine are one of the highest components of your sweat. It's also really, really high in your urine. Again, okay, we can obviously afford to do it because if we're designed to eat meat and we're eating all of this carnivore, we're getting an extra hit of history. In horses, we studied them as our animal model and horses are obviously vegetarian, they do not lose histidine in the urine. So they have evolved to compensate for this not having this extra hit of eating meat and therefore getting erection bit of histidine. So they conserve it. They don't wee it out. But we as humans do. Because we can afford it.

David (37:30)
always like it when I get to lead immediately on to the question I was about to ask Professor Hugh Johnston, former University of Newcastle, now co-founder and continuing to work with a company called "Innovaate". Horses. You've spent a bit of time with them and obviously there's a bit of money in horse racing. How other than that are they different and how are they similar to humans? What are some of the ways that we can compare and contrast?

Hugh (37:53)
Horses are really good to work with because if you get a good trainer that's happy to work with you and understand what we're trying to do, we can control everything. You can't control things with humans, however good they say they, it's where they're going to be. There's diet variations, there's drink variations, you lay, but there's a very... Horses were just great and they're just lovely animals.

David (38:11)
I just had one drink, doctor. No, no, just one.

Hugh (38:20)
Horses are good too because they sweat. They are different in the way they sweat. They put out different types of protein as well, know, that latherin type stuff to make the surfactant on the hair so that get evaporation. So there are different features, but fundamentally we learned a lot about the sweating mechanisms and how it relates to blood and so forth. Yeah, so that was a really good part of our investigation.

David (38:46)
Was it looking at horses and particularly suppose race horses that first led you to think maybe we should be doing more than just theoretical research with this, should we commercialise this?

Hugh (38:58)
But before I answer that, one of the things we could do very easily with the horses is to put them through a standardized exercise regime, take blood samples and understand what's going on. Now we work with standard bred horses. So these are the harness racing horses and they work very hard. tend to, once they get up to speed in terms of their training, they will then compete for a very extended periods, know, maybe 25, 30 weeks. By the time they're in 15 weeks of racing, they're looking pretty tired and worn out. And what we did was providing the supplement trial with them. Within two weeks, they got their shine back on their coat, their musculature was looking better, the trainer was over the moon, he couldn't believe how better they were performing running training. And that was really good. But for us, what we could find is that at that stage of their competition, their blood haemoglobin levels were down at about 130 units, between 120 and 130. And after a couple of weeks of supplementing with the high demand of amino acids, we got them up to 150. So we're able to increase their haemoglobin count in there, hematocrit, is their red blood cell proportion. And these results to us were just fabulous. And you know, if I hadn't retired, or if I hadn't, COVID hadn't come along, that's a really exciting direction to go in to see how these things can modulate and improve haemoglobin. And that could have great impact for all sorts of applications.

David (40:44)
And not just horses. Okay, well let's then talk about the idea of transitioning because when we look at science, when we look at research, there's a lot of research out there that gets published and some people read it, often other scientists in the same field, and then it gets put on the shelf. The step to take it from that to commercial reality is a big one and not a lot of people will make that step. Tell me about how it happened for you and your colleagues.

Hugh (41:12)
It's always been an interest of ours because we've looked to have industry support in our projects and trying to get certain. So we learned about how funding works with industry partners and it's difficult because they want an answer in six months. Boom, where is it? And it doesn't happen like that. So we thought, okay, we'll look. We've got these results. We think we can make something of it. We started with the horse trials. That was good. And we've done a couple of trials with humans as well, with the amino acid supplementation and got some very good results. So we thought, well, yeah, we can either just bury this in the library when we retire or try and do something with it. And it's been a very interesting journey. My colleague, Professor Tim Roberts and I have started this company and we've learned so much just from putting in a patent. We actually got a patent, which is pretty rare in this industry. And we then have learned how to do e-commerce. We've built our own websites. We've got third party manufacturers involved. We've got third party distributors or 3PL, and gone.

David (42:22)
Do you need to work with other organisations? there pathways for scientists doing research considering this sort of thing that they need to work with? If it's government when it comes to certain funding, CSIRO, are there ways of doing it that aren't just a couple of folks sitting around with a beer thinking about it to proceed?

Hugh (42:38)
Oh yeah, we've had very good support, especially from CSIRO. We got on to, think it was called the Entrepreneurs Program and that was fabulous. Really did help us develop the product and do some good studies. I'll give you an example of some of the issues that come up for you. We went into bat with a quite a large supplement company very well known in Australia and they were thrilled by the research we had behind it. They wanted to do this, that and the other. Excellent. This is how we'd frame it. And they strung us along for about a year. Make a long story short, they already had a product on the shelves with the same claims. And so they were never going to put on a new product that would displace their existing product. We had to have something in a whole new sphere and I suppose if they'd told us that we could have tried something. But anyway that's the kind of frustration that one comes across in trying to engage with some industry partners.

David (43:44)
One of the elephants, suppose, in this room is something that I know from my background with the ABC, tends to be a key is we don't promote products partly because then immediately there's a question mark, there a danger that commercialising your work can undermine the science or the research that's been done? That idea of Professor Hugh Dunstan from the University of Newcastle tells me this, spent 30 years looking at it, I'm gonna believe him. If that same person also has a company and he's selling a product, really? Is there a danger of that?

Hugh (44:16)
Yeah, no bang on. Yes, absolutely. It's really hard. We went in there pretty naively thinking we've got all these publications. People had told us that the science will be a differentiating point against other supplements. And I can tell you now people don't want to read the science, they don't want to read the background. Look at the other marketing techniques. It's getting a top footballer influencer to say, hey, this works for me. And that now does all of our efforts. It's really hard. But what we've been able to do is, I mean, yeah, I guess we're just used to keeping on battling on. And we've got a very small group of people who buy a product and we turn over and it would be lovely if somebody came and bought us out. Honestly, it's just really nice to see people using it, spreading the word and other people who hang up saying, Hey, this is great. It really has helped.

David (45:16)
What's the reaction being generally? You approach a sporting club, an organisation, I imagine you've approached some fairly large ones, whether they be here in Australia or elsewhere, what's the reaction?

Hugh (45:26)
We've tried a lot. We've approached big sporting teams. We've approached local sporting groups, communities. We've tried talking to clubs. We've tried going out to the public and giving presentations. We've tried a professional marketing firm. It's all hard. If somebody's interested and I can get 15 minutes with them, I can get the penny to drop. It's, it's, um, that's the difference. You've got something that actually has some substance to it. You have to have that story. You can't just do the three second grab, Hey, get this because you can't. And that's been my frustration. But having said that, I've really enjoyed it. You know, we've been learning a lot about how business works and how people work and how, how we just, one, one very interesting thing is the way we write as a scientist, right? It's pedantic. It follows a logic. And the first thing we learned, especially through the CSIRO program we went on is that that all goes out the window. You put your first statements first to get the message across so that you capture people's attention. Okay, fine. That's good logic. But when it comes to writing blogs or writing things for social media to grab people's attention, it's just, it's so hard.

David (46:52)
Preaching to the choir as a professional communicator, former journalist, things are different across the sphere. I know when we talked earlier, you mentioned the fact that some of the clubs and organisations you approached, their resistance was almost down to the fact that look, we've already got a contract with somebody else. How big a role is that in Australian sport?

Hugh (47:10)
Yeah, that's been a big thing in the past. So if a football club or something gets signed up by a big supplement company, then often they've got to use those supplements and they can't be seen to certainly be promoting another one. I don't think they can stop them using other ones, but they certainly can't promote. And there are all these, I see them as kind of, I suppose, hurdles or barriers, but to give an example with the tennis players, know, the Australian Open. These poor people suffering in incredible heat playing five, six, seven hour competition and they're taking pickle juice.

David (47:54)
I was looking forward to the mention of pickle juice. This was one of my highlights I was anticipating. Just mentioning it, dropping it and watching the reaction from Professor Hugh Dunstan. Tell me about pickle juice and your feelings thereon.

Hugh (48:07)
Well, I don't understand why they keep using it because they keep on getting cramps. Same with the cricketers. I mean, I don't know if you Google it, it's meant to have some benefits, but I mean, anything that provides a little bit of electrolytes or whatever, but there's not much science behind.

David (48:25)
think it does represent a little bit of what you're battling against. Glenn Maxwell made 100 against Bangladesh in the most incredible image that a lot of people have ever seen in their life in cricket. He drank pickle juice as he was suffering cramps. 

David Curnow (48:44)
Quick correction here. Obviously it was against Afghanistan, not Bangladesh. Sorry, Tigers, my fault. Still an amazing physical effort, possibly despite the pickle juice, not because of it.

David (48:53)
Now whether that would have been better off consuming something else is almost irrelevant because people saw that happen and then they saw an athlete complete something. That's the process that you are fighting against, isn't it?

Hugh (49:05)
Absolutely. And, you know, we've been trying to speak with their nutritionists or their advisors, their trainers and just can't get in. Just can't get in. And I, you know, I don't know how to break through or jump those hurdles. Just getting a chance to walk with them.

David (49:22)
If the Australian Institute of Sport is listening, feel free to drop to Professor Dunstan and his colleagues a line. Look, as I said, we have no skin in this game, if you have a little bit sweat in this game. One of the other hurdles that you came across were food standards and some of the requirements. Now this one particularly struck me, and I know my children are fascinated with it as well. When it comes to an electrolyte drink in Australia, there's another ingredient that it has to have that isn't electrolytes, is that right?

Hugh (49:26)
Yep, sugar.

David (49:52)
We mentioned this earlier, it seems incredible. So sugar was put into these drinks originally, why?

Hugh (49:58)
So it makes sense, know, they're trying in a context of Gatorade and supporting the Gators and playing a game, you know, in one foul swoop, a drink, they want to deliver fluid, electrolytes and bit of energy. Fine. And, you know, the fully sugared up electrolyte drinks can have a great role in that. I guess my point is most of the professional endurance athletes have their own means of getting energy resources in. Most of the stuff sold I think it's probably sold because it tastes good, it's a nice refreshing drink after a hot day doing something. But the interesting thing is that you look at the Powerade and the Gatorade, they're coming out in sugar-free versions which kind of isn't in the food standard.

David (50:44)
So I again followed a of a rabbit hole with this. If you look at the back of the bottle of sugar-free Gatorade Powerade, things like that, it says that it is a formulated beverage. If you look at the back of one that isn't sugar-free, it says it's an electrolyte drink. So the way they're getting around it is effectively not using the electrolyte claim on the front of the bottle, but just on the back where the ingredients are stating that it is a formulated beverage. So in a sense, they're getting around it like that. The other thing that struck me looking at Food Standards Australia was the consumption of sports drinks, as we refer to them, is huge in Australia. In part, because people often see them as healthier than the alternatives, whether it's soft drinks or cordial or things like that, the idea of a sports drink as a social or just everyday drink is very different to the approach that you're taking, isn't it?

Hugh (51:26)
Yes. Yeah, I mean, one of our ideas when we working on our CSIRO program was to work with a local soft drink manufacturer. And one of our ideas was to make the world's first healthy soft drink. Still a good idea. We could still do it, but yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that on the back of the label, our product is actually a formulated sports food. But I had thought there were limitations on how much electrolyte you could put into a formulated health food. So I don't know. It's all very grey and wishy washy and yeah.

David Curnow (52:17)
Quickly here on sports drinks or electrolyte drinks, as we talked about, Powerade is the biggest seller in Australia, over Gatorade, and then Maximus. Food Standards Code Australia New Zealand section 2.6.2-11 says a 600 millilitre bottle of those drinks has to contain at least 12 grams of sugar, but no more than 60. When the Food Standards Regulator estimates that in 2020, Australians drank more than 104 million litres of those drinks. That's around four litres for each of us. And of course most of us weren't pushing our physical limits that year because of the spicy cough.

David (52:55)
Okay, let's talk. We've got a product. If people want to look it up, can. As I said, the company is called "Innovaate" They make a couple of different products and you'll be able to find them through their website. "Innovaate" is spelled with the AA, which took me until far too recently to realise that it stood for amino acids. Sometimes you've got to slap me around the head with some of these pieces of information. what's better, academia or business?

Hugh (53:15)
I love the academia. Academia got a little bit silly in recent times. It's all very changed and that's the... There's a huge emphasis on... 

David (53:28)
How so?

Hugh (53:33)
I guess management from the top down. there's lots of bureaucracy. There's lots of checking of boxes and there's lots of things that just didn't make it much fun to be around anymore. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have QA, but when we first started out, we had very much academic freedom. Everything was funded much more properly. had people to help with the teaching. We had students actually on campus instead of not on campus. It was just a, I feel sorry for new academics to be honest. But to get back to your question, the business side of it has been a lot of fun. And certainly in retirement, it's been a chance to actually learn a different way of writing and trying.

Hugh (54:22)
One of the big things about research is, yeah, you do the papers, but then how do you get it to the people who actually need to see it? And for us, that meant, because we're scientists, not medical practitioners, well, how can we get this to the medical practitioners to see that they can help? So we've been trying to do that as well. And that's been a challenge and that's been a good thing to do in retirement.

David (54:48)
Finally, then as I said, we're not an advertising podcast. Without spruiking the particular product we've already mentioned, "Innovaate" AA, what would you like people to think about when they sweat during exercise? What should be on their minds when it comes to the process and what they can do to help themselves exercise there?

Hugh (55:07)
I'd be focusing on recovery because, know, whether you're aging, whether you're trying to reach a peak performance level for your own good, or to get into that, you know, Olympic team, what you really want to think about is how can you reduce that loss of muscle mass as you're exercising? How can you minimize the aftermath loss of muscle in recovery period? And I think that this offers a way of thinking about that and doing it effectively. And, you know, even if you don't buy our amino acids, but buy other people's but you, I think what's important is we have actually worked out what's lost the most. And that's going to give you the biggest leverage of assisting your recovery and minimizing the muscle breakdown.

David (56:01)
Thank you so much for your time today.

Hugh (56:02)
Thank you.

David Curnow (56:09)
A unique perspective there from a researcher who spent so long studying the topic that he and friends kicked off a commercial enterprise using what they know. Only to find out what many people do over the years, it's not just what you know, but who you get to say what they know that's best. If you know what mean. Professor Hugh Dunstan, originally from the University of Newcastle, now with Innovate, double A. We have links on our website to their product and a number of Professor Dunstan's publications over the years. Next time on Where Are We At with, what happens when our body's cooling superpower becomes a kryptonite? Too much sweat can definitely be more than enough. The fascinating causes, triggers, and treatments of hyperhydrosis, how being a little wet behind the ears, face, chest, palms, etc., is like carpal tunnel syndrome, stroke recovery, and motor neurone disease. And when being afraid you will sweat too much actually makes you sweat too much. Next time, where are we at with sweat 2?! The "Resweatening"! While crossing a sheep and a kangaroo gets you a woolly jumper, it's actually not fun being a heavy sweater. (Groans) Sorry. Goodbye.