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I do wonder how much of this is genetic. My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with
by noir_lord 7y ago
I do wonder how much of this is genetic.
My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with my partner I’d have the the windows ajar even in winter and rarely put the heating on, I’m rarely cold even when cycling long distances on days with the temperature around zero and I wear t-shirts year around, I find jumpers and shirts stifling in any normal temperature room.
I joke that my ancestors evolved for cold drizzle.
- LukeShu 7y agoFor any other confused Americans: "jumper" = "sweater"
- Wildgoose 7y agoI think "jumper" tends to be Northern English, I don't think it's used around London, (but I could be wrong). I believe our Viking cousins in Norway and Iceland use "jumper" as well. Incidentally, we also use the word "pullovers".
- 52-6F-62 7y agoIt’s used in Ireland as well. There’s a famous pop/rock song that features it in particular. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jxmZZBJQAKM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jxmZZBJQAKM
- DonaldFisk 7y agoThey're also called jerseys.
- opsunit 7y agoOr goalposts.
- GordonS 7y agoBrit here. "jumper" is used across the whole of the UK. Nobody British would ever use the word "sweater".
- hnick 7y agoIt's common in Australia too
- hugi 7y agoIcelander here, "jumper" is not in Icelandic. We use "peysa". I believe the Norwegian word is "genser".
- teddyh 7y agoYou’re one of them! “They're almost like normal humans, except they have no knowledge of what it means to be cold.” — http://absurdnotions.org/F1992.html http://absurdnotions.org/F1992.html Of course, there are those other people as well… http://absurdnotions.org/an20020702.gif http://absurdnotions.org/an20020702.gif
- tempestn 7y agoDirect link to the first comic referenced: http://absurdnotions.org/anc70.gif http://absurdnotions.org/anc70.gif > Comic strip characters have a tendency to wear the same clothes all the time, for the ease of both artist habit and reader recognition. But with Jay, there's a reason. He's one of them. You personally know at least one. They're almost like normal humans, except they have no knowledge of what it means to be cold. Jay doesn't even own a coat.
- benibela 7y agoThat reminds me of the witches in His Dark Materials
- echelon 7y agoI am the latter. I wonder what genes regulate adaptability or comfort to different climates? How much is simply environmental (perhaps epigenetic)?
- samplatt 7y agoGod, I love being one of those people. It's like a superpower with the added benefit of getting to irritate other people. Yes, I am also a morning person, why do you mention?
- batmansmk 7y agoOn that point, I wanted to share something you may relate to: my Filipino wife is always freezing in SF. I'm from Scandinavian descent, I could live as naked as a jaybird in the Bay Area weather. Where can't I find a blanket thick on the left, thin on the right? :)
- wrycoder 7y agoEven better - I have a Sunbeam six zone mattress pad. Three zones (head, middle, foot) for me and three for Ms. Wrycoder. We put it on something like 3:3:4 3:3:4 to preheat for a toasty bed to climb into in the winter and then turn one side off. I like to have 0:0:2 to keep my feet warm.
- henrikschroder 7y agoThings Americans do that completely baffle me: In a double bed, they have two pillows, but only one blanket, and end up having fights and struggles about the blanket. You've already solved the problem with the pillows. You don't fight over a shared pillow. Come on, you can figure out how to solve the problem with the blanket as well. "You can have two blankets in a double bed?" Yes. There you go. You're welcome.
- kaybe 7y agoThere is no rule you can only have two though, just saying. More than one per person can be quite nice, especially in winter.
- henrikschroder 7y agoWhatever floats your boat, man. I have friends who prefer the opposite, they have two single beds pushed together, but a shared blanket. Whatever. But the crazy thing is that every single goddamn store that sells bedding, will sell you solutions to your problem. It's not like you go to one store for single-person beds and their matching single-person bedding, and then a different store for double beds with matching double bedding. No, the same store that sells pillows and sheets and blankets sells them in different sizes and you can mix and match as you please.
- findthewords 7y agoYou may have inherited a diet and adopted habits that cultivate brown fat.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoOh I’m the exact same version of mutt as yourself (incidentally, born and raised Canadian) and am much the same. I’ve always said I “run hot” because it can be the dead of winter but as soon as I walk in the building in the morning I’ll start sweating. I have to unzip my coat and take my hat off on the bus and subway or I’ll sweat through. Humid summertimes have to be managed accordingly. I know your situation allllll too well!
- klondike_klive 7y agoI use the same phrase. Public transportation is the bane of my life - here in London they seem to turn the heaters on full blast between specified dates regardless of the actual temperature. I find myself taking off and carrying coat, hat, bag, umbrella on the tube (subway) and still sweating. It's worse having a toddler because I'm either chasing him around like mad and overheating, or freezing my ass off standing still for long periods of time while he examines a leaf!
- grecy 7y agoeh. My family is Australian since a while back, and I moved to the Yukon to live. I thoroughly enjoy riding my bike to work at and beyond -40(C/F), and am always out snowshoeing, snowboarding, ice fishing, bison hunting etc when it's in range of -25 to -40C. The coldest I ever saw was -48C (-54.4F) as a daytime high (before the windchill). It was about a degree colder overnight. It was glorious, and I hope to crack -52C so I will have seen a 100C temperature swing (it was once +48C in my hometown in Australia)
- samplatt 7y agoYou're not from south-coast WA are you?
- grecy 7y agoNope, but I understand your question because there are not so many Aussies in the Yukon (though more than I was expecting...)
- samplatt 7y agoFair enough. I've noticed a lot of south-coast WA people are cold-acclimatised (even more so than south-coast eastern-states, ie, Melbourne) and also see the occasional 48.C day.
- wutbrodo 7y agoUnless it's Aboriginal, your ancestry for the purposes were discussing is definitely not Australian. The timescale that non-Aboriginal Australians have been around is pretty small, likely not long enough for substantial adaptations to climate to kick in. As an easy example, consider how different Aboriginal and Eurasian-descended Australians are in skin color (excluding those descended from similarly sunny climates).
- Riguad87 7y agoWell I hail from the similar ancestry, but while I was immune to cold in my teens, anyway sandals in winter snow and I have clear memory of traversing bitter winter drifts with nothing but summer suit and a Crombie overcoat, this almost fifty year old thinks the cold leis an diabhlaíocht.
- lettergram 7y agoOf Norwegian and Irish decent, I have the same thing. My roommates have always been so confused because I prefer a 60 degree house with short sleeves. Even in -10 or -2 degrees fahrenheit I’ll often just wear a light jacket and feel totally fine.
- kundiis 7y agoHow does your body react when in tropical or 80F?
- noir_lord 7y agoHorribly, 20C days are uncomfortable, 25C is into I want to die territory. Went to Greece last year which was amazing but I spent a lot of time lurking in the AC areas because more than an hour at 34C and I felt exhausted. No free lunch I guess :).
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoWhen I was in college I met a fella from Michigan. The first “winter” here in Florida he was wearing shorts and laughing at us wearing sweaters and coats. That summer every time I saw him he was soaking wet. The next winter he was wearing sweaters also. Something about tropical heat will do that.
- lee 7y agoI'm Vietnamese and I was born and still live in Canada. My body has adapted to the cold quite well and I prefer it over the summer heat. This makes me feel that ancestry is not a part of cold resistance.
- lemmonii 7y agoRegardless of your anecdotal experience, adaption to cold is certainly genetic to a large extent and the literature seems to support that hypothesis. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-014-2962-2#Sec2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-014-2962-2#...
- raxxorrax 7y agoI have fully adapted to climatized rooms at 21°C/70°F. My ancestors must have been pampered wimps then.
- oska 7y agoYour article looks like junk to me. At least from the abstract, there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to control for the environment (and climate) that the subjects grew up in.
- nostrademons 7y agoDunno. Half my ancestry is from Guangdong, China, a tropical climate. I grew up in Massachusetts, and I do fine with cold. My wife is Taiwanese (also tropical) and grew up in California and hates the cold. Then again, the other half of my ancestry is from Ireland & England. Am I fine with cold because it's more about where you grew up and became accustomed to, or because I got my mom's genes? It's a good question, but the rest of my dad's family (currently living in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal) seems to do okay.
- wsc981 7y agoI grew up in The Netherlands, and so did my parents and my parents parents, etc... I hate the cold. I prefer to sweat from too much heat compared to shivering from too much cold. So I emigrated to a tropical country. Perhaps part of the reason why I hate the cold, is that it makes it harder for me to do my work. If my fingers are cold, typing is more difficult, for example. And in the cold I think too much about staying warm.
- carlmr 7y agoIt's funny, I hate winter, not because it's cold, but rather because it's dark all the time. I like running in the snow, skiing, etc. I also don't like summer because I'm always too hot. I want a place that's always Sunny but doesn't get too hot. Ideally here you can ski in winter and climb in summer.
- Robin_Message 7y agoColorado might suit you. Although, looking at timezones, you probably want a place that is more West-skewed for the timezone in order to get more daylight in the evenings.
- badestrand 7y ago> I want a place that's always Sunny but doesn't get too hot I feel similar and for me elevated cities (at ~2000m) in sunny climates are perfect. For example Mexico City, Bogota or Arequipa (Peru). I know, the total list of suitable cities is probably narrow but it is by far my favorite climate.
- warlog 7y agoNow Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell...
- AdmiralGinge 7y agoI'm English as far back as I can find out, and I'm neither great in hot weather or cold weather. I think we're just genetically predisposed to complaints about the weather. I do marginally prefer the cold to the heat though, for what that's worth.
- tieze 7y agoI read this story once about an Inuit fisherman on his death-bed telling his son that throughout his life he was always cold.