Freezing My Arse Off - On Purpose!

Hey folks, up here in the Canadian Prairies we are currently in the transition zone -- between the long hot sun days, and the weirdness of radical heat that fried many plants, deep drought that fried more plants, and forest fire smoke that made us envious of the West Coast (which had big smoke also, so no help there).

But to the point: we are now in the zone where it warms above freezing in the day, and freezes hard in the night. Backpackers and outdoors-persons know this well - it's "the perfect hypothermia zone." And it will inevitably trend downward, and dip into the -40 zone (where the F and C scales converge and agree -- it's lousy bloody cold).

I've lived here all my life. And the fact is that my tolerance for deep cold in November is very different from my tolerance level in February. The body adapts! Today, I am freezing; In March, today's temperature will feel like a spring day and I'll be working in bare hands. I know this for a fact.

So I'm not babying myself. Hot core, cold fingers and toes, and no whining allowed. I recall reports that the hands of trappers in the far North grew all sorts of new capillary flow because their hands were in freezing water all the time.

Suck it up, buttercup, and your body will adapt (my mantra; but my fingers and toes are icicles right now).

Very interesting! I read a book about some guy that decided he was going to live like the amish for a year. Had no a/c in the summer, did a moderate amount of work outside (nowhere near amish level, but more than he had before). Then him+his wife went back to the city for a week, spent most of it in the air-conditioning. When he came back, a group of amish guys asked him to help with haying. Well, in the middle of it, while the rest of them are basically just getting warmed up, he eventually gets so hot that he throws up and passes out. The amish guys were fine. It seems that (kind of obviously) you can tolerate extreme cold+heat if you have had time to get used to it. The A/C shocked his system into thinking it should be getting ready for winter again.

Almond Thompson wrote: It seems that (kind of obviously) you can tolerate extreme cold+heat if you have had time to get used to it.

I think that is true. But I need a lot of time to get used to extreme heat, and even then it's not pretty -- I have to choose my times of day, and slack the pace...

I guess I"m wired for somewhere north of the 49th -- and that's okay with me.

It just happens that I had a long discussion about this today. I do exactly the same in the autumn: let myself get a bit chilly to wake up my Siberian settings! Just a couple of weeks is enough, and I no longer need a jacket for fetching firewood or water.
I have the habit of walking in the snow barefooted every morning. Takes a while to get used to it, but gradually you can start standing barefooted in snow for lengthy periods. No more freezing feet!

I always acclimated myself to the desert heat that way. I didn't work in full heat, hot sun etc, I timed my work well, but had marginal/minimal/ineffective A/C in my house, none in any of my cars, never had a problem with it.
I need to acclimate to the cold....

turns out being cold helps your body to produce brown fat.

https://www.healthline.com/health/brown-fat

Just a bump --

I'm standing in my unheated shop, with the big garage door open to the elements (so I can see the sky! Jupiter is poking through the haze.). The temp is hovering around 0*C.

And I am puttering in the shop and typing on an unheated keyboard without gloves. My hands feel slightly chilly, but they are not fat and inflamed from the cold; the dexterity is there.

The body adapts, people!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:The body adapts, people!

Sometimes... sometimes, not so much. My surface area to volume ratio is crap. I've been sensitive to the cold since I was a child. I actually looked *forward* to hot flashes when that stage of life arrived... Yeah, right! While my friends/family of similar age were all annoyed by them, my  hot flashes lasted 1 week - I kid you not!

So I totally believe you that some people not only adapt, but benefit health wise. I know a couple of people who jump in the ocean at this time of year and call it a "cold plunge" and it works fine for them. Please, don't ask me to try it. I'd likely end up in emerg.

~~~~The problem is, ... after living in nine decades, I'm getting a bit tired of "adapting" every Winter.
Every year, just a little bit harder.
But hey, Spring is right around the corner.
Right?

Jim Fry wrote:~~~~The problem is, ... after living in nine decades, I'm getting a bit tired of "adapting" every Winter.
Every year, just a little bit harder.
But hey, Spring is right around the corner.
Right?

LOL, I hear you Jim. When I was young and tough, I just went out and did what needed to be done. And it all happened without me paying attention.

Now I'm not quite as young nor quite as tough, and I'm mindful of the changes. And yet i know -- taking the long view -- that the first blast of winter will send us to parkas, and when the same weather hits in late March we'll be barbecuing in shorts and Hawaiian shirts. Hmm!

Agreed, adapting is a nuisance. But then I get to live in a place with four distinct seasons, where the light changes, and the land smells different, and the wildlife migrate through in both directions, and there are different problems to attend to as the sun moves.. This is called living. Regardless of the hassles, I can't imagine living in a place that was the same homogeneous "grey goo" the year 'round. This prairie boy would be crawling the walls. Where are my three-hour sunsets?

I'm just saying be careful what you wish for. You may get it.

I tend to have the opposite difficulty adapting to heat, but immersion works. My SCA Desert Restoration Corps Wilderness Crew leader would not allow us to use AC in the vehicles going to and from southern CA desert camps and restoration worksites, for the purpose of our adapting to the 110F+ conditions in which we were doing hard labor. It worked. When I later travelled to the South Pacific, the few times I had access to AC really threw off my acclimatization. Same happened when I worked trailcrew in Pinnacles National Monument in central CA, where we had to do rock work in 110f+ for two weeks straight, but had an AC equipped housing unit. I never got as used to it as I was on that no AC SCA crew, or later when I hiked the PCT and the first 700mi are mostly desert, and the only cooling options are creeks spread many miles apart.

For cold acclimatization, I have much less trouble, but finishing every shower with the coldest rinse I can get from the faucet seems to make the rest of the world feel like a warm shower. That cold water in the shower also gets colder as our off grid water tanks tend to follow the ambient temperature. I may have also had a leg up on the cold growing up doing this in Seattle, where the water comes out very cold from pristine and protected rivers (the Cedar and Polk) running from the Cascades. I have noticed it is hard to get really cold water out of the faucet in most other places where their reservoir water sits and warms up in the sun. This cold, clean water is also part of why so many breweries are in Seattle and Portland (with similarly good, cold Cascades water).

Hey all! Bumping this thread.

I'm in the garage with the door open, trying to type. It's right around the freezing point, with a breath of breeze.

And -- as before -- not babying myself. Hot core, cold fingers, no whining allowed. 15 jumping jacks will restore circulation, and drive off the impulse to hibernate (it's a light thing).

Time to toughen up! And get on the winter list -- there's lots to do!

I cannot believe you guys . . . I rarely remove my sweater before it gets to 20°C   (that's 68°F - ish)   Each to his or her own though.

Jill Dyer wrote:I cannot believe you guys . . . I rarely remove my sweater before it gets to 20°C   (that's 68°F - ish)   Each to his or her own though.

LOL well it's hardly a Tidepod challenge or some other nonsense like that. Nor some kind of macho thing.

I'm just being practical and proactive. Around here, the temperature WILL drop into the -30C range and occasionally much lower. That's a fact. I can't just sit around for 5 months.

We run into the same thing in the northern USA. In the fall, 40F is freezing. People are building fires, putting on coats, warming their vehicles before they leave to go somewhere. By spring time, 40F means kids playing outside on the back porch with barefoot, short sleeves, and shorts.

Matt McSpadden wrote:We run into the same thing in the northern USA. In the fall, 40F is freezing. People are building fires, putting on coats, warming their vehicles before they leave to go somewhere. By spring time, 40F means kids playing outside on the back porch with barefoot, short sleeves, and shorts.

Yes, exactly! Given a chance, the body is remarkably adaptable. Those of us in winter climes can't stop and sit for months on end. We keep going!

Jill Dyer wrote:Each to his or her own though.

Made me laugh! 18 degrees C for me is bikini weather...we sell a lot of woolly hats in summertime here to visitors who feel the cold.