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I read an article, "Fully integrated wearable sensor arrays for multiplexed in situ perspiration analysis", which describes the design of a wearable band that detects various components in sweat in order to monitor the wearer's health. One of the components detected is sodium.

My thought is that as the wearer sweats and the sweat evaporates, there will be a small amount of sodium left on the skin. When he sweats again, there should be an increase in the concentration of sodium due to the addition of more sodium from the new sweat to the residual sodium left on the skin.

I didn't see this addressed in the paper and am unsure if my thinking is correct. If I'm correct, wouldn't the sensor then need to have a component that does a calculation of how much sodium is due to the new sweat and how much is residual? Would it need to "know" how much sweat was produced to achieve this? What if the sweat under the band doesn't evaporate at the same rate as the surrounding skin due to being trapped under the band?

Melanie Shebel
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    This is an abstract for an article that probably addresses exactly what you are asking about, but it's behind a pay-wall. I don't know if you have access to this journal; unfortunately the abstract just states the problems, and doesn't itself give any answers. – airhuff May 08 '17 at 02:39
  • @airhuff The article does address this, thanks! – Melanie Shebel May 08 '17 at 02:44
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    Well, you've got me curious as I don't know how they'd get around the "residual" issue. If you've figured it out I hope you will self-answer! – airhuff May 08 '17 at 02:53
  • @airhuff I'm trying to get a good grasp of the concept that fixes this problem, then I will definitely self-answer. – Melanie Shebel May 08 '17 at 03:04
  • I am also waiting for your self-answer. I would hazard a guess and say that you can measure skin conductivity as a function of time and correlate the peaks and dips of conductivity to what was happening during the data collection. Small but persistent increases and decreases in conductivity could be attributed to residual sodium being incorporated into sweat. – J. Ari May 08 '17 at 18:48

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