I’ve been smelling ammonia post-run-workout on occasion for a few years. This is a post from almost ten years ago that seems to discuss the factors related to that. I thought I’d bump the thread in case anyone else is experiencing this.
Here is “smelling your own pee pee” in more scientific terms.
Health and Fitness: Do You Smell Ammonia In Your Sweat?
Posted on Tuesday, April 13 @ 09:29:21 CDT by root
In the perpetual war between fat and muscle, guess who wins most of the time? Fat is definitely a survivor. However, you know that making muscles stronger will make them undefeatable. Long hours in the gym, training through pain and sweat, all for one goal – build the muscles. But what if you are burning your precious muscles instead of fat for energy? The good news is that you can prevent this devastating effect just by using your nose.
You are doing yourself a bad favor by continuing your training if you can smell an acrid, ammonia-like sweat. It smells differently than your average daily sweat, and you should be able to distinguish the difference. Ammonia has a strong, pungent odor that is easily recognizable in bleech and cat urine. The smell is common amont professional athletes who train for hours on end. The real reason is when you can smell ammonia in your sweat – your body is eating up your muscles. Sounds terrible, feels auful, but it can be prevented. Here is how it works.
When you start exercising, your body taps into your glycogen that is reserved in liver and muscles. On average, a healthy adult has approximately 500 calories worth of glycogen stored depending on individual body chemistry. If you are exercising for a few hours your body depletes all the glycogen stores. Other energy reservoirs your have are your fat and your muscles. Don’t you wish you could just tell your body to burn only fat and keep the muscles? Well, separating dream from reality, your body wants to do its own thing. Being the most complex machine, it burns both – fat and muscle - to preserve both. The only thing you can manipulate is what percentage of each stored fuel is burned.
If you continue to exercise in the glycogen depleted state, muscle breakdown is accelerated. Your body has to work harder and all metabolic processes are faster than normal, which requires more energy, but all the glucose is already used up. In order to raise energy levels, fat and muscle tissue gets broken down and converted into usable fuel. At the moment of intense training, working muscles demand fast working glucose. Since there is no metabolic pathway to convert fats into glucose, muscles serve as the preferable fuel.
You know that your lean tissue is made of protein. The key element is Nitrogen, the most valuable structural part of the body. When it comes to your diet, Nitrogen is the reason you must eat plenty of complete protein to support life. It is the distinctive feature of protein – neither fat nor carbohydrates have it. So, what is ammonia? It is the by-product of protein metabolism in your body. The chemical formula for ammonia is NH3, having one nitrogen (N) and three hydrogen (H) atoms bonded together.
When your supply of dietary protein and energy exceeds metabolic demands, you are in positive Nitrogen balance. For bodybuilders, this means that they are actually constructing new muscle tissue. However, when your body doesn’t have enough supply of energy to maintain its functions (coming from either protein, carbohydrates or fat), you will transform valuable muscle into usable glucose. This is when you will smell ammonia.
Muscles are canibalized by stripping off Nitrogen atom and eliminating it in urea (CO(NH2)2) through the urine. But during exercise other channels of elimination are operating even faster – namely sweat. Nitrogen is converted into ammonia (NH3) which is dangerous inside the body. Ammonia can damage tissue and inhibit energy production, so your body tries to dispose of it quickly. When you exercise there is no faster way to do this than through sweat. And hydration becomes even more important.
If you are dehydrated, regardless of whether the body is resting or working, all salts in the blood and lymph become more concentrated. So, proportion of ammonia to water increases, thus the smell is easier to detect. By drinking additional water you will dilute your body fluids and easily excete all metabolic wastes. Regardless whether you can smell ammonia or not, sweating means water loss. Just 2 percent dehydration in the body will cause 20 percent drop in physical and mental performance! Can you imagine how damaging it can be for your workout?
Protein Intake – Does It Matter?
You might think that if you eat additional protein and pass on carbs you will spare your muscles from being used as energy. Bad idea. It is correct that protein helps to build and repair muscle, and it also aids in increasing your metabolism and enhancing your immune system. But it is the carbohydrates that will actually spare the body from using protein as fuel immediately. If you eat protein for energy, you are actually taxing your over-working body. Before protein will become readily available in your system, it has to undergo a long process of digestion and destruction. Only after amino acids are converted to ketone bodies the body may utilize protein for supporting its functions.
Number one thing to watch for is that you eat enough calories. This has to come through a combination of the major three - fats, protein and carbs. Even the ideal fat loss diet contains all three, just in different proportions - moderate amounts of fats, moderate amounts of carbohydrates and slightly larger amounts of protein.
Second thing is food timing - eat enough before the workout so you can have a great one and benefit from it in the long run. Here I am talking about muscle building, or at least preserving it. When muscle glycogen becomes low the body starts to call on yet another fuel source, protein. Protein is a back-up fuel source for sugar in weight training. The unfortunate thing for you to consider is that protein source may also be your muscle tissue. It is a known fact that when weightlifting, your lifts will go down very significantly (10% or more), because your muscles use glucose to produce the energy needed for lifting.
What if you are trying to shred some body fat? Doesn’t matter, it’s the same process. For that specific purpose perform cardio at moderate-high intensity, and be willing to sacrifice your muscles if you want to burn fat. But don’t go weight training with low blood sugar - you’ll pass out.
And finally, the ammonia smell. This is when the body tears down its own muscles as back-up fuel source. If you overlooked the two mentioned above guidelines for sparing your muscles and happened to be exercising when all the sugar has been used up - take a break, a deep breath and a drink of carb solution, such as a sport drink. Sugar will go to work just minutes after consumption and will stop muscle wasting almost immediately. Replenishing hydration will also dilute your blood and re-energize your whole system.
The bottom line is energy and water - get these in plenty and you will reach the goals. Be sure to always eat a sufficient amount af carbs to spare the lean tissue. Protein for fuel may lead to muscle loss.
Sweat Facts
A pea-sized bead of sweat can cool nearly 1 liter of blood by 1-degree F
We produce enough heat to bring 25 quarts of water to the boiling point daily
Only about 25 percent of the energy in a workout might be needed for the physical action of exercising. The other 75 percent is leftover heat released through persiration.
*The body has approximately **2 - 4 million sweat glands **weighing about 100 grams. *
*The **most concentrated *areas of sweat glands are the soles of your feet, while the least concentrated area is on your back.
There are two kinds of sweat made by two types of glands – eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine sweat is odorless, apocrine sweat smells
Women have more sweat glands than men but perspire 40 percent less than the strong gender, because men are more active
*For women, **sex hormones *progesterone and oestrogen are key players in regulating body temperature. Progesterone nudges the temperature up and oestrogen brings it down. Exercising women with higher oestrogen levels will become red-faced and sweaty earlier
The average adult loses 540 calories with every liter of sweat
By Elena Petko