For all you men who are tired of being too warm because the lady of your dreams is too cold, take heart…once she reaches menopause she will never again be too cold. Au contraire.
I no longer need four blankets and the windows closed at night when it’s 60 degrees outside, and boy is my S.O. glad. No more icy tootsies either. So, as with much in life, time fixes a lot. or something. Sad thing is I used to be shivering in my office while all the menopausal ladies turned up the A.C. and now I am baking in my office while all the sweet young things turn it down. How come I am always outnumbered?
I liked Cecils column, but to be honest my SO only worried about her feet, if her feet are cold she gets a blanket if they are warm she takes her socks off… She let’s me run the room temp at any degree that I feel conformable… nice of her don’t you think lol
Definitely not the finest column. Not only did Cecil fail to go anywhere near the straight dope, but he tried to feed us the utterly bent dope. Cecil, I am very disappointed.
What rubbish! Real, rugged men can put up with invigorating lower temperatures, whereas it’s up to pathetic sniveling pusses to whine about the stalwart constitutions of real men!
Use your imagination Cecil! Apart from the fact that the originator of the comment quoted already explained what she was really talking about, a suit is still pretty much mandatory office wear for men in many, many an office, in many, many a country. On the other hand, women’s office clothing is subject to infinitely fewer restrictions, can be qualitatively cooler, and can consist of much thinner materials/layers of clothing that are sometimes no protection against the elements (bare arms, short skirts, open shoes, decollatage, etc.). I’m not saying clothing is necessarily a factor, but only fragile wimps who feel fine in 25-degree offices would pooh-pooh the concept! Women are allowed to dress very revealingly compared to men–I’m looking forward to the day diaphanous gauze comes into fashion: women will be even colder and men correspondingly hotter, but it will be worth it.
I have a feeling that even if you dressed men and women exactly the same way, women would still end up feeling colder than men. But there is no doubt that the difference in office clothing has an impact on body temperature, as anyone who has even simply worn a tie can attest.
Why then do large women also get cold at temperatures above room temperature? You seem to think that large women are not prone to this problem, but there is no indication that is the case. The simple solution is to ask women to bring some heavy clothing to the office. Short of lining office chairs with ice, I don’t see an easy way to cool down the men in an office where the women control the thermostat, but it’s a relatively simple matter for women to bundle up with a sweater or jacket if they need to. I’m surprised that this very simple solution did not occur to you, or is that what you consider being a pig?
The answer to why women get so cold so easily is probably a mixture of multiple elements, some of them mentioned in the column. Men do have more muscle mass than women, and more muscle means better circulation, heat generation, and insulation.
Women tend to have a higher percentage of body fat, which you would think would significantly insulate them, but this does not seem to be the case (large women also seem to get cold at room temperature for no apparent reason). The higher body fat may be offset by the lower muscle mass or greater surface area to volume, or perhaps the concentration of fat in specific areas of the female body simply does not afford good insulation. Or perhaps insulation has nothing to do with it.
When it comes to hormones it’s more difficult to determine what is going on. Women’s hormonal levels are constantly fluctuating, but so are men’s–the main difference being that male hormone fluctuation is less understood and less discussed.
Smoking could be an important factor. Smoking wrecks circulation, and if women have poorer circulation than men to start with, smoking (or perhaps even pollution in general) may help tip the thermal scales.
So WHY do women get cold so frequently and at room temperature or even above room temperature? I have no idea, but the first thing I would check is whether women actually get colder as a response to temperature change, or if they simply feel colder at random (?) moments or based on factors other than the temperature of a room (which, from my experience, may be the case in at least part of the chilly cases).
Let’s not forget the importance of relative humidity. I’m not sure how it would feature exactly, but since shifts in relative humidity can cause changes in apparent temperatures, humidity may be partly to blame (and both heating and air conditioning have strong impacts on humidity levels).
In case the chilly responses of women who get cold at room temperature are the direct results of decreases in temperature (and not due to other factors), we can think about the problem by considering the ways in which humans cool down. We actively dissipate heat by 1) varying the rate and depth of blood circulation, 2) losing water through the skin and sweat glands, and 3) panting. Perhaps analysis of these processes and how they differ among men and women may help shed light on the question. Or maybe we should look at why some people have the exact opposite problem, i.e. they overheat for no good reason–that mechanism may prove easier to explain and could shed light on this puzzle.
The too hot/too cold arguments in workplaces arise because people have lost track of basic common sense.
Our ancestors never had this problem, from the time they came down from the trees and began banging those rocks together. In Winter and any other time when they were cold they wore heavier clothes. In Summer, and any other time when they were hot, they wore lighter clothes - or none.
People refuse to follow this logic in the modern workplace and home. We insist on adjusting the ambient temperature to suit us, rather than adjusting ourselves to the temperature.
It is usually impossible to satisfy everyone, as we have different temperature comfort points. So, if most people in the building feel cold, turn the heating up a bit. If only one person claims to be cold, the response should be - “Put more clothes on, you idiot.” In the same way, if just one person feels hot, the answer is “Wear lighter clothes.”
BTW, my mother gets angry about large office buildings in winter. She says it is ridiculous that the office-workers dress in light summer clothes in the middle of winter. This means that they heat their premises massively to bring them to to summer temperatures.
She says this leads to a huge monetary cost in power and fuel, and a huge environmental cost, in global warming and also as dwindling resources. If people wore proper clothing in winter, she says the world would be a better place.
I rarely agree with her, but I think she is making a lot of sense here.
I can attest to the difference that the amount of body fat makes. Having put on a significant amount of weight, lost it, then regained it, I remember being much more able to cope with high temperatures at a lower weight.
As a matter of fact, that’s one of my main inducements for the weight loss & exercise regimen I plan to start “any day now.”
RR
I agree with Balor’ mother. The sensible thing would be to dress for the season. A great many people are wearing summer-weight clothes throughout the year. In winder, their garments may be long sleeved, and they may be wearing “winter colors,” but the garments are light enough for summer. It would be better to wear actual winter clothes instead of heating the indoors to summer temperatures.
In transit terminals, busses and trains, stores, post offices, and other indoor public places where one has no way to get rid of one’s coat, scarf, etc., I really hate it that it is so often way too warm for comfort.
So,
I definitely noticed this behaviour growing up - even as a kid I would be in shorts and my mom would be covering up with a blanket - so I’m not sure the body-mass to surface area theory works (by virtue of the square-cube rule, a small kid would have a much higher ratio of skin to mass than an adult woman).
But - perversely enough - I am now experiencing the “always cold” phenomenon.
About 5 years ago I weighed 300 pounds. I went on a major diet which resulted (among other things) in my ring size going down. Along the way, I noticed that my hands were often cold and as I lost more weight I became much more sensitive to the cold overall. These days I’m quite likely to wear full sweats when I exercise instead of shorts even in the summer, and I’m always rubbing my hands together.
So, clearly there’s a relationship between body fat and a feeling of warmth, but it doesn’t linearly relate - otherwise I would have been cold as a (skinny) kid, too.
Ummm… Your little story confuses me whole-heartedly. Why would your friend, who thinks it is “nice” while you think it’s “hot”, suggest you put on a sweater?
If there’s a joke, I’m missing it, and I don’t miss many of 'em…
Regardless, I’ve just recently passed Unca Cecil’s missive to the people in my section of cubicles, because we have this problem all the time. It’s now sparked a whole new line of arguments about it.
For anyone else that HAS to deal with it. Just use my line on the cold ladies:
**
That should settle the debate for all but the Hunky (as opposed to the chunky) men.
A variation on that has been my reply for years. It doesn’t work for those ladies who find room temperature uncomfortably hot, though.
RR
I think Flight is on to something. I have noticed a similar phenomenon, though admittedly, my dataset is limited.
How does this play with the circulation/muscle mass/body fat theory? I can see why males (or others with higher muscle mass) might cool off overnight-- lower circulation. But the theory doesn’t seem to explain why anyone would warm up overnight. Thoughts?
On feeling cold in the morning:
Body temperature is not a constant, and tends to be lowest during sleep and early morning (see circadian rhythms). It is therefore not unusual to feel a bit chilly when you get up, and, within normal parameters, I think has only little to do with skeletal muscle mass, because although these generate much more heat than the other heaters (liver, heart, brain, and glands), during sleep the voluntary muscles are paralyzed to prevent injury. When we sleep we essentially enter a state where less energy is required. Extrapolate the concept and you can see why hibernation makes sense for some species (such a dramatic drop in activity, metabolic rate, and body temperature is like an exaggerated form of sleep).
I’m not aware of people who, on the norm, have a higher body temperature during sleep than when awake. I’m guessing that if you’re warming up overnight it’s probably because the room or the blankets are too hot. Or perhaps it’s a particular health problem.
Higher muscle mass means, if anything, better circulation and therefore an increased capability to regulate temperature should our internal thermostat will it. Skeletal muscles are useless without an adequate blood supply, and bigger muscles require more blood.
Here’s another idea, which was mentioned in passing in Cecil’s column: differences in metabolism.
Looking at the difference between mammals and birds, we could speculate wildly on a few things. Birds have slightly higher metabolic rates than mammals, and also higher average body temperatures (37.7-43.5C for birds, versus 36-39C for mammals). Because of avian build and behaviour (can’t sneak into a warm shelter as easily as a mammal, diurnal habits), the metabolic rate of birds is at peak more often than that of mammals. This is also connected to body mass, as I understand it: obviously a more massive body undergoing external influences changes temperature more slowly than a smaller one, not to mention that each cell in the body is involved in the production of heat simply by virtue of being a living cell (so, more mass = more cells = more heat production).
Do men get hotter because they spend more time on metabolic peaks? I’m guessing this could be possible even though men and women appear to have quite similar base metabolisms; it may help account for the temperature conflicts in the office.
Women are also less massive on the whole than men, and therefore lose heat energy more rapidly and generate less heat to begin with.
porkchop_d_clown, if you went from 300 pounds to something substantially less, I can see how the loss of insulating material may have affected you. If you spent years being that heavy, your body may have adapted to produce as little heat as possible or to dissipate it more quickly, with the result that now you are cold quite a lot. I do agree that there is probably not a linear relationship between body fat and insulation, but there is almost certainly some sort of link which becomes evident in cases of obesity.
I still see no solution other than encouraging women at the office to bundle up. Seeing a whole bunch of men strip in an office would be a very alarming thing for everyone involved, including the women. On the other hand having the women strip would no doubt raise morale --at least among the men-- but we do not live in a perfect world where women get too hot and men get too cold…
I never had Cecil down as a shivering wuss until now!
Anything above 20° Celsius is just too hot for indoors.
17°Celsius is ideal for me. The clothing factor mentioned earlier does come into play a little. When I work in an office environment, I tend to wear long sleeved shirts or jersey tops. I wear tights with suit skirts and dresses.
However, I notice that some of the ladies who prefer cool to hot have said they’re well-padded by body fat. I have a small coating - I’m not skinny, but by no means fat. It’s more what I’m used to. I’m used to cool temperate.
I live in the North of England, and find London perpetually too hot when I go there, even in winter. Damn urban heat zones. I’m always relieved to get back to the nice refreshing cool of the North. The cool breeze (warm seeking folks, read this as “cold wind”) that meets me as I get off the main line train at Lancaster is a blessing.
A few observations:
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I, too, am a man who (a) feels warm when my wife says it’s cold; (b) puts out a lot of heat (my wife clings to me as if I were a hot water bottle); © bundles up at night – by the time I wake up, I’ve got all the covers wrapped around me that my wife has thrown off at night.
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I conclude from this that feeling cold is a matter of the skin’s rate of cooling; after I’ve spent the whole night pumping heat into my little cocoon, I dread the tiniest current of cold air–the equilibrium is shifting. Producing lots of heat, so that my skin is kept warm, I seldom complain of cold. My wife produces less heat; although she is well-insulated (sorry, dear), her skin is not kept warm (in fact, body fat insulates the skin from the inner fire), so she feels cold.
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Just about all physical sensations are a matter of equilibrium rather than absolute sensation; your skin’s cold receptors may be firing just as often as another person’s, but if that person lives in Nova Scotia, they’ve been firing for years, and probably don’t affect the brain’s electrochemistry much any more.
Rehashing the “it’s what you’re used to” business, another prime example:
My sister live in an apartment complex where she doesn’t have much control over the heat. For whatever reason, the building is always around 80 degrees F all winter long. When she comes to visit and stays at my parent’s house, which is kept right around 70 degrees F, she is freezing while everyone else there feels “just about right”. When she goes to work, she’s always wearing extra jackets and such, and she even wears long sleeve pullover sweatshirts all summer long. In winter, she adds a turtleneck underneath. She seldom turns on her air conditioner unit in her apartment (not central a/c) in the summer - it would have to be a major heatwave for that. So even while where she works isn’t terribly warm, where she lives is.
I think we’re going to find out that this matter is influenced by a variety of factors including circulation, set-point, hormone fluctuation, body mass/body fat and maybe some unknown mechanism.
Two different scenarios, I think. In the first exchange, the friend thinks it’s nice; in the second one, the friend thinks it’s cold and suggests that her companion (who thinks it’s nice) put on a sweater. (Remember when you were a kid and had to put on a jacket every time your mom felt cold? Same thing.)
I think you’re on to something here. For years my baby brother thought I was pulling his leg when I’d come home for Christmas break and complain that the house was freezing- for two solid weeks every year I thought I was going to freeze to death no matter how heavy the clothes I wore were. The problem was that the dorms were kept above 75F, often as high as 80F, year round, and at home it is more like 65-8F.
This year when he came home from college at Christmas, he was the one saying it was cold, while I was more or less comfortable. He seemed cold longer too, but I’m not sure why that would be.
Well I wonder whether you just hear more women COMPLAIN about the cold than men. Like is that a societal thing? That women need to communicate their discomfort while cold men perhaps do not want to or need to? Just positing. Personally, I (female) normally just put on a sweater or hat rather than complain.
Out in the winter coldness and I have no problems at all, even for extended periods. I love it! (for the record, I am thin and of childbearing age) I can’t take the heat though, because I stop sweating above 85F. My boyfriend, in contrast, gets all chilly in the cold, and can wear a three piece wool suit in 90 degree weather. Without complaint.
Actually, women’s cycles have a temperature pattern as a result of the hormonal changes (this is the reason why women trying to conceive take basal or morning temperatures). From about around period to before ovulation , temperatures stay around the same range (for me it is below ‘normal’), just around ovulation an ovulation stimuting hormone is produced which often coincides with a temperature drop for a couple of days. Then the temperature does back to the pre-ovulation temp for a couple of days and then it rises by a degrees until the period arrives when a different hormones is more predominant. If a women conceives, then another temperature jump often occurs. If a period arrives instead, then her temperature drops.
OT: Porkchop - how’d you do it? I’m trying to lose a lot of weight myself.
Anecdotal:
A female coworker, about 155 cm, and almost certainly not 45 Kg, was always cold in the office, all year. She solved that by sitting on a heating pad.
I rarely feel cold. I’m about 70 Kg, 177 cm, male, and grew up in the American midwest. Yet it seems I have terrible circulation, as my feet and hands are freezing to the touch from equinox to equinox. Luckily, I’m fine with this. Also, my wife is perfectly happy for me to put chilled body parts against her at night, as it helps tap out her heat.
My wife, a lifelong resident of the American south, is about 85 Kg at 157 cm. She sweats profusely at anything over about 25 C, and prefers to keep the house at around 20 C in the summer, 18 C or so in the winter. (Fine by me, except when the air-conditioning bills arrive.)
I wear short-sleeved shirts year-round, and rarely a coat or jacket, as I spend nearly all of my time indoors. (I keep a coat in my car in the winter, should I have trouble.) True, I could wear “winter clothes” to the office in the winter. I would be happy to do so, but it seems someone came up with the notion that just because it’s cold outside, it has to be hot inside. Sometimes I think our office air conditioning is set to a lower temperature in the summer than our heater is in the winter. Thus, if I were to wear “winter clothes” to work, I would roast all day. (When I have worn long sleeves to the office, I have invariably had them rolled up before the day’s end.)
Strangely, I sometimes must head to the restroom to run warm water over my hands to return full mobility to them in the winter, even though I am, on the whole, quite comfortable.
Go figure.