Can You Acclimatize To The Cold?

A few days ago, I came across the following tip from Forge, which is a publication by Medium (a site that is, in my opinion, well worth subscribing to, as I discuss here):

(You may be able to see the original post here, although it’s possible it’s only for paying members.)

What was odd was that I had literally discussed this very same phenomenon the day before with a friend of mine.

The house I live in, which my late wife bought in 2003, is difficult to heat and therefore gets very cold in winter.

There are several reasons for this, including:

• It’s on top of a mountain, at over 5,500 feet above sea level, which means it’s usually pretty windy up here.
• It’s not particularly well-built – the door and windows are poor quality, and there are draughts that I have never been able to track down.
• It was set up for warm-air heating via a wood stove, but that was never sufficient, according to my wife, and hasn’t been usable for years.
• It’s mainly open plan inside, so you’re not just trying to heat the room you’re in, but most of the house at the same time.

Even though winter only technically began a day ago, I’m struggling to keep the temperature in the living room, where I spend the vast majority of my time, at even 60 degrees, which doesn’t sound like it’s asking too much.

I don’t recall it being this cold in the house last winter – I’m pretty sure it rarely dropped below 60 in here, and yet I don’t feel as cold now as I did previously.

So, as I joked to my friend, it seems as though I’m acclimatizing to the cold – just as the above article says.

The winter prior to that, my wife was still alive and we had one more dog than I have now, so it’s possible the additional body heat helped maintain the temperature a little bit.

Another potential factor, because I’m not sure whether it helps or not, is that I’ve been clearing out a load of stuff since my wife’s death.

Some people say that the more solid items in a room, the more they absorb the heat and therefore make the room cooler, while others say the opposite. And it is true that the living room has much less stuff in it now than it did a year ago.

And lastly, I started doing a bit of exercise for the first time in over a decade. It’s not much, but every morning, usually before 8:00am, I go out to my back porch and spend 10 – 20 minutes on my exercise bike.

I have seen some benefits from this, such as not being out of breath so easily, but whether this would help build up resilience to cold weather, I don’t know.

I started this exercise regime in spring, I think, and chose to do my cycling first thing in the morning because I know that, once I go into work mode, it would be all too easy to skip it. During the warmer months, it also made sense because it would be too hot later in the day to exert myself.

However, now we’re in December, it’s usually between 15 and 25 degrees Fahrenheit when I go out to exercise, which means it’s pretty damned cold – but it doesn’t feel like it.

So perhaps working up a bit of a sweat – not too much, because I’m not going to go crazy with this after having done no exercise at all for all those years – does help deal with this colder weather too.

Either way, it does feel as though you can get used to the cold, although it’s not exactly by choice. I would much prefer to live somewhere that’s 75 – 85 degrees all year around!