Relations between sweating, cutaneous blood flow, and body temperature in work

¹ Department of Anatomy and Physiology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Men worked on a treadmill for periods of 5, 5, 10, 10, 10 and 10 min, stopping for 2 min between work periods to be weighed. Finger and mean skin temperatures decreased at the beginning of work (10 mets). When room temperature was 25 C vasodilation occurred in the finger in the third work period as gastrocnemius muscle and femoral vein temperatures reached maximal values. Temperatures of skin and saphenous vein blood rose rapidly as the men reclined during the rest periods and decreased when work was resumed, coinciding with changes of femoral temperature in the opposite directions. These rapid shifts in temperature indicate that during the rest periods the proportion of blood coming from the skin into the trunk of the femoral was greater than during the work periods. The onset of sweating, the rate of its increase in the early stages of these work experiments, and its decline in recovery more nearly paralleled corresponding changes in femoral temperature than any of the other temperatures measured.

Submitted on October 5, 1964

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