Tips for Maintaining Body Temperature in Freezing Weather

Are you concerned about staying cosy this winter?

Many areas in the U.S. are currently experiencing winter storms and freezing temperatures, along with widespread wind chill warnings and advisories in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and the South.

Such plunging temperatures underscore the importance of certain winter safety procedures, such as maintaining a steady body temperature.

David Holmes, an MD and associate program director in the Department of Family Medicine at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, says that several factors influence how your body keeps its temperature steady—a process known as thermoregulation.

Holmes says that skin, sweat glands, circulatory system, and hypothalamus are all crucial to thermoregulation.

Even though all these factors contribute to the body's self-regulation of temperature, it’s true that some individuals may be more susceptible to feeling cold than others.

Even if you are not usually “cold-natured,” it can be beneficial to everyone to have a basic comprehension of how to effectively regulate body temperature.

Several elements influence your perceived chilliness, including age.

The elderly and the very young have a harder time managing their body temperatures and lose heat quicker,” says Zaffer Qasim, MBBS, an associate professor of clinical emergency medicine at Penn Medicine.

Qasim notes that certain health conditions, including hypothyroidism and diabetes, as well as some medications, such as blood pressure medications, sedatives, and psychiatric drugs, can alter your temperature sensitivity. Furthermore, people with a lower body fat percentage are more likely to feel the cold.

According to Tracy Zaslow, MD, a sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, body fat acts as an insulating layer for body heat, and having less of it increases one’s susceptibility to the cold.

Zaslow also clarifies that there's a wide range when it comes to normal body temperatures, with some regularly cooler than the empirical average of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, who are more likely to feel the cold when exposed to it.

Having a slower metabolism can also make you feel colder.

Daniel Bachmann, MD, an emergency medicine physician at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, explains that some people have a higher metabolic rate which is linked to how quickly you generate heat, thus influencing your sensitivity to temperature.

In addition to these physiological factors, psychological responses to the cold also vary amongst individuals.

Being 'cold-natured' and having issue with temperature regulation are two different things. Those who run cold might desire higher indoor temperatures and feel particularly cold outdoors in winter. In comparison, poor temperature regulation can pose severe health risks such as hypothermia.

Hypothermia implies a body temperature lower than 95 degrees Fahrenheit, as per Holmes, with symptoms including shivering, confusion, fatigue, poor coordination and balance, and slurred speech.

Zaslow maintains that barring serious conditions like hypothermia or its opposite, hyperthermia, most people are capable of regulating their temperature unless there's an abnormality.

If you are more sensitized to the cold, don't push it aside. Bachmann recommends consulting your doctor if you consistently find it hard to warm up since there may be an underlying medical reason that requires attention.