All the time you take changing shower temps and worrying about shower temps should be spent like this:
Relaxing. Take a couple of minutes, maybe a few, and do some really deep relaxing. Big breaths…bring the heart rate down… and just get yourself settled. Then take a nice, comfortable shower… warm enough to relax you, but not hot.
Your hear rate is your obstacle, not the shower temps. Avoiding hot showers is important for another reason, and indirectly relates to your problem: hot showers don’t help inflammation, and inflammation requires more blood flow.
It seems to me that sweating is a response to being too hot. It is an attempt by the body, via evaporation, to cool itself down. Shivering is the response to being too cold. I have never heard of sweating as a response to being too cold, but I could be wrong.
I’m not sure I follow. I used to work outdoors in high heat a lot. We took every chance we could to take advantage of a little A/C.
Regardless of internal thermostat issues, part of the problem is that the body does continue to metabolize at a high rate following exercise. Muscles have a small store of glycogen that has to be replaced either from blood sugar or by pulling glycogen out of the liver into the bloodstream. There may even be some metabolism of fat stores. A certain amount of metabolic byproducts need to be cleaned up. Cell growth has been encouraged and there may be some tissue damage to repair. So even if you got your core temperature down below normal, all this extra activity is likely to put it back up over normal before your body finishes “housekeeping.”
I’d say to go with a cold shower, but try to give yourself an extra 20-30 minutes (or even an hour) before you have to be somewhere where sweating isn’t good.
I agree with the lukewarm shower. A cold shower triggers the heat conservation, a really hot shower excites the metabolic rate. I feel most refreshed in the summer after a quick rinse off with a luke-warm shower.
If you prefer a cold shower, the trick is to quickly blast the soles of your feet with warm water at the very end. If your feet are warm, your body will realize it doesn’t have to conserve heat. No I don’t have a cite, but that’s posted in all Saunas and what Sauna masters learn. (If you go to the Sauna and after dipping into the cold water don’t put your feet into warm water, you can get a heat shock and collapse, when your body switches to heat conservation from the cold water shock, but has too much heat inside).
The only time that I could avoid sweating for 30 minutes after a heavy workout was if I had a pool available to take a quick dip. The temperature of the shower made no difference except that cold shower just pissed me off.
Look Blake, I don’t want to get into a pissing contest here, but you’re being really pendantic.
Yes I did say that and I was wrong to say it. Just a practical bias. In heat stroke we don’t immerse in ice water because it can induce counterproductive shivering.
Also, note that I said surface temp, not skin temp, although from a practical perspective I’m not conceding that it’s an important distinction.
Now this is just flat wrong, each one of my cites states that the brain recieves signals regarding the body temp from nerves in the skin, or that when skin temp drops heat conservation begins.
never said otherwise.
This is directly contradicted by one of my cites.
Umm, not seeing your use of the word radically here, it’s not like the nerves are directly assessing the water temp. They’re only inferring it from the change in the temp of the tissue surrounding the nerve endings.
There is no way, shower or no shower, to instantly alter the metabolic rate. It takes 15~30 mins to start sweating after you start exercising and it will take 15~30 mins to stop sweating after you stop exercising, no matter what you do. And extremely hot or cold showers will probably do more harm than good.
Good that’s all that needed clarifying. If you had said this in response to the first requests for cites rather than repeating the claim there would could have avoided this. We all post erroneous statements due to incorrect wording. The important thing in GQ is to clear up the facts.
[qiuote]Now this is just flat wrong
[/quote]
No, it’s not. It’s perfectly correct
A point that I have stressed repeatedly.
No. None of your references say any such thing. Once again you have totally misinterpreted them
In this case you have totally misinterpreted where one reference says that
“Under control of these [hypothalmic] mechanisms… If the skin temperature drops below 37°C a variety of responses are initiated to conserve the heat.”
Note that his reference, that you supplied, is stating that the skin temperature only serves as fine control for hypothalamus dictated temperature regulation.
Sigh. No, it isn’t.
Look, outlierrn, I can go into any degree of detail on this subject that you like, referencing any level of material form high school textbooks to the latest lancet articles. I have no problem doing so.
But please, don’t just keep saying that your references say something when they do not. I’ve already explained the mechanisms and pointed out what is actually said. Nowhere do those references contradict the position of mainstream science on the role of the skin in temperature regulation.
Sigh. I know you don’t see the difference. That’s the problem.
I can explain this too you if you like, including experiments that you can do for yourself. So do you want me to?
The body can initiates a metabolic responses to changes in air temperature within fractions of a second. That is as close to an instant alteration as the body is capable of.
How long dos it take you to shiver or develop goose bumps after you walk out into the cold? Most people will experience the first involuntary shiver almost instantly.
Is this a joke?
People do live in the tropics, and I can tell you that if it took 15 minutes to start sweating in response to exercise that would be impossible. In air temperatures of 35oC+ if you don’t sweat for 15 minutes doing heavy exercise you are dead. Simple as that.
I ride my bike to work most mornings and it’s less than 15 minutes ride even at a sedate pace. But I can assure you that I am sweating when I arrive at work.
Once again, simply not true. In winter I will stop sweating within 5 minutes of running for an hour. The idea that a person in the Arctic will continue to sweat even thought hey are going into hypothermia makes no sense. The body sweats to reduce temperature. Once temperature falls to an acceptable level it stops. Often the temperature can’t fall to an acceptable level within 15 minutes, but if you change into light clothing in cold weather I can assure you it will
If you say so, but I think it is you who have misinterpreted me. By keyed I meant that it’s a signal to the thermostat, not that it drives the thermostat. Anyway, I’m done.
No that isn’t contradictory because those are completely unrelated processes. Once again you have failed to understand your own references. One is discussing the control of the sweat glands. The other the feedback provided by the skin sensors to the hypothalamus.
As I said, I’m happy to explain this to you in detail if you want, pitched at whatever level of understanding you desire. But please stop trying to defend factually incorrect material based on vague incomprehension.
That just makes the statement even more incorrect, and demonstrates that you still don’t understand it.
The body most certainly does signal to the thermostat from core temperature. Your claims that it doesn’t are completely and utterly incorrect in every conceivable way.
Well, no shit, good thing I never said that.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
Since this is not a thread about the broad mechanisms of homeostatic thermoregulation I skipped over the imput of core temperature and christ do I wish I hadn’t now.
In answer to the question the OP asked I’m saying that since sensors in your skin signal surface changes to the thermostat, a very steep gradient, such as would be caused by cold water, can trigger heat conserving measures such as vasoconstriction and cessation of sweating even before the core temp has normalized from your work out. Therefore, I’m suggesting that a cool shower which will absorb heat from skin that continues to be flooded with blood will probably draw off more heat in a short period of time than a cold one.
If you interpreted my earlier posts as being substantively different, than you have substantively misunderstood me.
So yeah.
You did say that.
You said exactly that.
You said that your body’s thermostat doesn’t doesn’t key off your core temp, and that keyed meant “a signal to the thermostat”.
**You said that your body’s thermostat doesn’t signal to the thermostat off your core temp.
That is factually incorrect.**
I’ll leave it to others whether they want to trust you after this display. I have certainly seen enough to know whether you have any knowledge at all on this subject or are just another “Google expert”.
You seem to be pursuing this for it’s own sake. As I said, my initial statement was about the effect of skin temp on the thermostat, not core. I worded it badly. I conceded that in post #27. You acknowledged that in post #29. I repeated my regret in #33. I never made multiple or ongoing claims, yet you made it plural. It has nothing to do with the bulk of what I was trying to offer the OP, yet you keep focusing on it.
BTW I’m a registered nurse.
Another thing to consider-- a hot shower puts steam into the air, and in summer the additional warm humidity makes it all muggy and sweaty in the vicinity afterward, making it harder to cool down.
I’m glad this topic sparked some discussion–I was worried that it might have the sort of obvious answer that would make me look stupid for asking the question. For what it’s worth, I’m going to go with what seems to be the emerging consensus opinion and use lukewarm water, making sure to spend some time with my head and the back of my neck under the water, and maybe I’ll try running warmer water over the soles of my feet before finishing.