Effects of cold weather

Effects of cold weather

As we all know, winter is the coldest season and it has some beauty too. This winter has been quite cold than before, therefore most people didn’t adapt to this. My general idea is to inform people about the current condition in our country. So, in this article, I will talk about the effects of cold weather on the human body. Actually, there are a lot of problems that cold weather caused, but I want to tell you some of them.

The two main cold-weather illnesses are frostbite and hypothermia. Frostbite means that your skin has fallen below the freezing point, and ice crystals are forming within your skin cells, killing them. Hypothermia is when your body loses more heat than it produces and your body temperature decreases.

The average temperature for our body is 36.6°C. If it starts to decrease and reaches about 35°C, you are getting dangerously close to hypothermia. This harms your inner organs like the heart and brain. When the body’s temperature reaches 33°C, your mental functions will be impaired and this causes amnesia. You will become unconscious at 28°C and die at 21°C which is the final stage of hypothermia.

When our body starts to get cold, our blood becomes thicker, which can cause clotting. Clotting can cause problems and is one of the reasons we see more heart attacks and strokes in the days following colder weather.
Being cold also affects our body’s ability to fight infection. This is why in the weeks after the cold weather we see more deaths from infections like pneumonia, as lung conditions and coughs can develop into a more serious problems.

Just like there are two sides to a coin, the cold has also its benefits:

Reduction in disease-carrying organisms - biting flies disappear when the temperature decreases. It doesn't need to be extremely cold which has the effect, actually, relatively mild winters is enough for organisms that spread diseases.
Burning body fat - colder temperatures mean you burn more calories to stay warm. This would work to lose weight if you ate the same amount, except we tend not to.
So, many of us think the health risks of a cold are limited to hypothermia, but the reality is that many more people will die of heart and lung problems due to cold weather. And mostly people think that cold weather has only negative effects, hope they will come to the right conclusion after this article.