Hacker News Reader

Comment by ffn | Hacker News Reader

What about rubbing? I mean, when you rub against stuff (even wind), some of your cells get taken off. I'm all for peeing, pooping, and breathing, but how much weight do we lose just through simple friction? And if it's significant, should we employ more rubbing in our daily exercise routines?

View on HN

No, because it is not scalable.

Your epidermis grows at a specific rate and will not really grow faster if you remove it. If you remove it faster, you will develop scar tissue, which is not desirable.

An interesting way to remove fat is lactation. It is the only biologically "native" way to directly remove lipids. Unfortunately this is only available for lactating females.

Sebaceous glands function in a similar manner. Holocrine secretion where you basically expel the cell entirely. Not surprising really since breast tissue is essentially modified sweat/salivary gland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocrine

What about excretion of ketones?

If rubbing and ah... friction accounted for a significant amount of weight loss, I'm sure I would be at a much healthier weight...

Teh Googles say the normal rate of skin shedding is about 1.5 pounds per year.

Enhancing that seems like it would lead to a lot of discomfort for a little gain.

IANAD, but I don't think your are going to change the cell division rate in the skin that way. You will just end up performing trauma to your skin if you remove the upper layers of the skin (past the stratum corneum I think) faster than it can grow back.

your skin is your body's largest organ and one of the fascinating aspects of it is just how rapidly it both sheds or is sloughed off and just as quickly replaced

Reply on news.ycombinator.com