Managing Your Fuel or Regulating the Furnace:
If all we did while winter camping was eat, eat, eat, we would still probably freeze to death. We need also to consider ways of increasing the rate at which the body burns the food we have eaten. Basically, there is one way to accomplish this: physical activity. Physical exercise provides a number of benefits which help us to stay warm in the cold weather:
- Increased Metabolism: Exercise increases the rate at which the body burns its food, thereby increasing the overall temperature of the body.
- Increased Muscle Activity: The body’s food energy is burned in the muscles as the move. The more your muscles move, the more food is burned. The more food that is burned, the warmer you will be. This is why you sweat when you are physically active: your body warms up from the exercise, so its cooling mechanism (sweat) kicks into gear.
- Increased Circulation: when the body begins to get cold, certain natural defence mechanisms kick in. One of these is to decrease blood flow to the extremities (fingers, toes, ears, ...).
Here is the body’s plan:
- if it reduces the amount of blood sent to the extremities, it can conserve enough heat to maintain the core temperature of the body and avoid hypothermia and death. In other words, the body is willing to sacrifice a few appendages to frostbite, if it means that it can stay alive.
- Your job is to convince your body that your fingers and toes are worth saving. When you exercise, you not only increase the amount of heat produced inside your body, but you increase your heart rate. An increased heart rate means an increase in blood flow, and warm blood flowing from the body’s core warms your extremities.
- You can prove this for yourself in a very simple test. Stand around long enough that your toes begin to get cold. Then go for a brisk walk for at least fifteen to twenty minutes. Are your toes still cold? Keep in mind, of course, that no amount of exercise can compensate for poor socks or footwear or brutally cold temperatures which exceed the limits of your wardrobe.
The conclusion: if you are getting cold, do something. Or, anticipate becoming chilled. When you are ready to go to bed, take a brisk walk or do a few dozen jumping jacks to warm up.
