10 Things That'll Help You Avoid Having To Do This All Winter

Although you might already know that a space heater is a great way to heat up a room, or that UGG is apparently the shoes of 2013, there are other important warming techniques you might be getting wrong, or perhaps new ones you simply had no idea existed.

Below are 10 things that'll help you avoid having to do this all winter.  


1. Alcohol doesn't make you any warmer.

The reason why you feel warm while drinking alcohol is that your blood vessels dilate and send warm blood away from your core and towards your skin. This effect is only temporary and in the end significantly decreases your body's ability to fight the cold.

2. But you might warm up by eating gingerbread cookies.

There's a reason we tend to associate gingerbread with the cold of wintertime -- people traditionally believed the herb to stimulate the body and increase blood circulation.

3. Feeling cold is all in your mind.

Meditating can make you warmer. Scientists in Singapore have discovered that core body temperature can be increased by using certain meditation techniques.

4. Loneliness can lower your body temperature.

It's no fun to be ignored, but a pair of researchers at the University of Toronto say that lack of social contact can lead to physical consequences. In other words, giving someone the "cold shoulder" can actually make them feel colder.

5. Hot drinks might actually cool you off.

When having a hot drink, nerve receptors in your tongue signal to the rest of your body that something "hot" is coming and you need to start sweating.

6. You don't catch a cold because of cold weather.

Exposure to lower temperatures doesn't give you a cold by itself. The rise in sickness and colds in the winter months is typically linked to people spending more time indoors, which allows germs to transfer between people more easily.

7. Your body heat isn't mostly escaping through your head.

Naturally the most heat escaped from the uncovered area. In reality, you lose about 7 to 10 percent of your body heat from your head, which is about the same amount of surface area your head accounts for.

8. Men and women actually do feel cold at different temperatures.

Turns out that men tend to have more muscle mass than women, who typically have a higher fat ratio. Muscle is good at producing heat and fat is good for storing it, giving the advantage to men, who tend to have more muscle mass and lower body fat percentages.

9. If your ancestors during the Ice Age lived in the north, you do have an advantage against the cold.

Having ancestors who lived in northern climates predisposes many people to better handle the cold.

10. Wearing white might actually be the warmest color.

Black clothing absorbs heat from the sun and white clothing reflects it, but the common wisdom that white should be worn in summer and darker clothes in winter might need to be rethought.

White's function as a reflector also appears to apply to body heat, meaning that wearing it may trap your natural heat close to your body in looser fitting clothes, like a jacket.

Bonus: The cold weather can help you lose weight.

In cold temperatures the body works harder to warm itself up, not only burning more calories while working out but activating brown fat, which burns them more efficiently than white fat.

Source: The Huffington Post