At work, at home, in the car, at university …. The discussion about putting on or taking off the air conditioning or heating never ceases to be the order of the day. In any everyday context there are those who are always too cold or those who are always too hot and reaching an agreement becomes quite an odyssey. But, what is the reason for this difference in thermal sensations that makes some people much colder than others?
First of all, it should be noted that “being cold” is not the same as “feeling cold” . Have you ever stopped to think why when your fever rises, even though your body has a very high temperature, you feel very cold?
The first is related to an objective question, with the temperature at which our body is. The sensation of cold , however, is somewhat more complex and attends to several factors. We begin to perceive that we feel cold when the nerves in our own skin send signals to the brain about the temperature at which it is, but do not respond exactly to how low that temperature is. The feeling of cold rather has to do with the speed at which the temperature changes .
Therefore, when we jump into a pool, our first sensation may be of intense cold, due to the sudden change in temperature. But as we spend time in the water, the sensation is mitigated, since, regardless of whether the temperature at which we find ourselves is more or less low, it remains constant and our perception is regulated : the body temperature can remain high up to one hour.
In reality, that first impression is an alarm signal that our body generates to warn us that the temperature change has occurred and to ensure that we do not suffer from hypothermia . In fact, the physiological system works so that the blood goes to the internal organs, the most vulnerable, protecting us from a fright or even a lethal reaction.
Now, the way in which each one receives the shock has to do with how our brain processes the information received, and this feeling is completely subjective according to our own way of feeling. There also comes into play our limbic system , responsible for the emotional state. This gets to the point that sometimes we can feel cold or hot just from having seen someone too warm or too bare, even in a movie.
In any case, in today’s society, with heaters and air conditioners, we have become accustomed to regulating the ambient temperature so that it is the one that adapts to our body and not our body to the environment.
