The perception of cold begins when nerves in the skin send impulses to the brain about skin temperature. These impulses respond not only to the temperature of the skin, but also to the rate of change in skin temperature.
It always surprises and annoys me when I see people roaming around comfortably wearing shorts and T-shirts in winters. Because in that very moment. Here I am shivering under my five layers of warm clothes, rattling my teeth and almost at the brink of extinction and then there are these people who are enjoying winters like anything.
Don’t we all have that one colleague who wears a thick jacket even in summers? If you thought that the weather struggle is just restricted to winters then let me introduce you to Mr/Ms Extremely Sweaty and Mr/Ms Extremely Fresh. Do you ever wonder why?
The people who feel “always cold” will typically have lower muscle mass relative to body surface area. Their actual body core temperature may not really be below normal, but they feel cold because their body is telling them to conserve heat.
There have also been limited reports that women have a higher density of blood vessels at the skin surface, which would make them more sensitive to cold. However, there hasn’t been enough good data collected on this theory to confirm or disprove it.
If you are a person who is always cold, is there anything you can do to “retrain” your body, so to speak?
One of the best things someone can do is to increase their fat-free mass (muscle). This will increase overall metabolic rate. Another thing a person could do is undergo cold-stresses, such as allowing themselves to be exposed to very cold temperatures for short periods of time. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s been suggested that this could decrease the sensation of feeling cold. An example is putting the shower on ‘cold’ for a short period of time in the shower. Not easy to do, and you would want to build up to a full minute each day, but in some people it can help them to decrease the feeling of being cold.
There is the possibility that someone’s perpetual coldness could be caused by abnormally low thyroid hormone levels, and that can be verified with a blood test. That is by far the rarer condition, but taking hormone supplements if medically needed can help. If a person is quite lethargic, has low motivation, and is always cold, it might be worth having thyroid hormones evaluated.
