To maintain a feeling of warmth, you can manipulate your clothes, your activity, and your food.

The most common thing people do to stay warm is to wear a coat, hat, and gloves. Obviously increasing the thickness of the clothing or stacking the layers helps. Winter clothing does not serve to warm you, but rather as a means to prevent the heat you are producing from spreading to the surrounding environment.

Contrary to popular belief, the head is not a major source of heat loss. than any other part of the body adequately covered. If you were to wear a warm hat and no coat, your torso would contribute more to heat loss, thanks to how your body redistributes its blood in cold conditions. If you can keep your torso warm it will keep the blood flowing to your extremities and can often keep your arms, legs, hands and feet warm.

Second, being physically active causes muscles to contract, breaking down more nutrients, generating additional heat. This extra heat production can help maintain body temperature and warmth. You may have noticed this in your own life if you've been running around the place for a bit or doing a quick game of jumping jacks when you're outside in the cold.


Unfortunately, physical activity or layers of clothing can tip the scale beyond what you need to compensate for heat losses. In that case, you will experience an increase in body temperature and your body will begin to sweat in an effort to cool down. This is a bad result, because evaporation of sweat will lead to higher rates of heat loss.

Finally, eating increases the body's heat production. The process of breaking down food will slightly increase your body temperature. Campers sometimes have a snack before bed in an effort to stay warm throughout the night. While the Metabolic impact of a small snack. it may not be huge, the tipping point between thermal balance and heat loss is quite small.

You may also notice the urge to urinate, which doctors call a cold diuresis. It is a side effect of blood vessel constriction and the resulting increase in blood pressure, since the same amount of blood has a smaller space available to travel through your body.

And if you're the type who tends to get cold and leaves your coat even indoors, you may want to rethink the habit. Your skin will be full of blood when your body tries to dissipate the excess heat inside. Worst of all, you can start to sweat. Once you walk out the door, you may feel even colder at first than when the cold air sucks the heat off your skin and evaporates your sweat. To stay comfortable, your best option is to dress appropriately, whether indoors or outdoors this winter.


Discover more in this podcast.