does the human body learn to accept warm or cold places to live?

[Olumin]

The summer always drives me to stay up later since the night & early morning hours is the time the weather outside becomes comfortable. One thing that surprised me is that there have been no mosquitoes so far. Since I leave the windows in my bedroom open all night Id be the first to notice. Fewer insects in general this summer. Or so it feels anyway, not that im complaining.

 

[jtr1962]

How tf no one noticed you were lying on the driveway passed out?!

The end of my driveway by the garage isn't really visible from the street. Plus my neighborhood is dead as a doornail late nights. After this happened I made a point of not going out if I'm really exhausted. Unless of course someone is around who will notice my absence after a few minutes.

The desert sounds scary, like you could dry out and get severely dehydrated before you even realize it. Good idea to carry lots of water when you have to be out in the heat. I recall doing work for a neighbor when it was in the mid 90s. I bought along a 3-liter soda bottle filled with ice water. I went through the entire bottle and didn't even need to pee, that's how much I was sweating.

 

[jtr1962]

The summer always drives me to stay up later since the night & early morning hours is the time the weather outside becomes comfortable. One thing that surprised me is that there have been no mosquitoes so far. Since I leave the windows in my bedroom open all night Id be the first to notice. Fewer insects in general this summer. Or so it feels anyway, not that im complaining.

Being an extreme night person I'm on that kind of schedule all year, but more so in the summer when bedtime is typically around sunrise for me. I figure I sleep through the worst part of the day.

I noticed fewer insects this year myself but I'm not celebrating. As annoying as they can be, they're essential for life on the planet. I hope this is just something only happening in cities, not worldwide.

 

[idleprocess]

The desert sounds scary, like you could dry out and get severely dehydrated before you even realize it. Good idea to carry lots of water when you have to be out in the heat. I recall doing work for a neighbor when it was in the mid 90s. I bought along a 3-liter soda bottle filled with ice water. I went through the entire bottle and didn't even need to pee, that's how much I was sweating.

Weekends during the summer of 2018 - and the odd day off - I would spend 5-6 hours a day working on the shed. I'd walk the dogs, eat breakfast, mow the lawn one day a week then work until 3-3:30 in the afternoon. Some days I'd take a brief lunch and eat some granola bars or other instant food, some days I wouldn't. Normal hydration for the day was a half gallon jug of ice water and a quart of iced gatorade that I'd mix rich (vacuum-insulated flasks are fantastic!), sometimes more. My work clothes would always be drenched in sweat and I did not always take a restroom break those days.

The gatorade was essential to avoiding heat exhaustion and associated splitting headaches, as was taking 15+ minutes to cool off before a lukewarm shower. Ever since that year I've mixed a quart of gatorade for the 45-60 minutes of weekly lawn mowing / misc yard work and make a point to take a few gulps between each phase of the work.

 

[fulee9999]

Normal hydration for the day was a half gallon jug of ice water and a quart of iced gatorade that I'd mix rich (vacuum-insulated flasks are fantastic!), sometimes more.

Those are two great points!
1, vacuum-insulated flasks are lifesavers, I carry it literally everywhere, the fact that I could be trekking for hours and still have fresh cold water way outweighs the extra added weight, and it stays cool when left out in the sun ( I forgot mine in direct sunlight once for an hour, and the bottle was almost too hot to touch, but still cold in the inside ) or left in the car in hot weather
2, when you need to drink excessive amounts of liquid, for example 6-8 liters a day ( 1.5 -2 gallons ) then if you don't eat much during that period you need to drink something like Gatorade or other isotonic drinks. some bushcrafters make their own version of this by doing half part water half part fruit juice and just a pinch of salt

 

[bykfixer]

Many people in the summer end up with dehydration symptoms even though they consume a lot of water. One thing not known to some is how many nutrients leave the body with sweat. Therefore a diet rich in electrolites can help ensure the nutrients aren't just going from bottle to toilet but are actually digested more thorough by eating them. Potasium deprivation can become a dangerous issue after a while. So drinking water without adding some electrolites can actually water down the electrolites remaining in the body causing the person to "feel" less tolarent to heat.

 

[pnwoutdoors]

does the human body learn to accept warm or cold places to live?

That's been my experience, yes.

Of course, it's a modest to moderate acclimatizing that the body does. But many people report this, when moving from one place to another. I've lived more than a decade in several different types of regions, where "typical" warmth and cold eventually became easier to tolerate.

Lived 15+ years in a spot where <30ºF cold was rare. But in that same place it wasn't uncommon to have months of >80ºF weather, with a month or so of >95ºF weather.

Lived 20+ years in a spot where the the average temperature range throughout much of a year would be ~50-65ºF. Occasional winter extremes dropped below 20ºF, almost never reaching single digits, with summer highs rarely north of 80ºF.

Lived 10+ years in a spot where extreme winter temps could go below -10ºF on rare occasions, but where most winters were teens-50ºF. Most summers have several months of >80ºF, with a few weeks >95ºF.

Have acclimatized to all of it, myself. Has taken awhile, in each of those spots, but generally before a couple of seasons goes by I find myself dealing with it much more easily. A little more clothing, a bit less clothing, a slightly adjusted exercise schedule to avoid the extremes of a given day ... eventually, I find I'm less cold (or hot) than the first year or two. Honestly I don't know whether it's my body's blood deciding to be slightly thicker or thinner, or my body's A/C (sweating and water usage) becomes more effective, or what. But it happens.

Across half a lifetime of swimming in sometimes quite-cold waters, I've also noticed that it occurs there as well. Occurring more quickly if swimming in such temps is done daily. Becomes easier and easier, the more it's done.

 

[orbital]

+

edit: wording


Powdered electrolytes are a great backup plan, many out there to choose from.

 

[Monocrom]

im reading about the heart breaking heat related deaths in the uk. but i recall as a kid in south florida we had no ac or fans no eletricty .but it was bad and it sucked but i felt we got used to it. can that be true maybe we sweated more?

Sorry, but no. People don't sweat more. They pass out or die of heat stroke! Drinking massive amounts of ice water can help prevent that when out & about. But indoors with no A/C? Forget it.

In the UK and Europe, approximately only 5% of households have A/C. Compared to 90% in America. No clue why it's only 5%. Perhaps their Summers are mild? And, a few sweltering days are just tolerated best they can? For example: Temps. usually only in the 70s in the UK this time of the year. This year, hovering worse than in the 90s on the F-scale.

Summers in NYC can be surprisingly brutal. Just yesterday, in the 90s but feel was reported as closer to 100 degrees. Can confirm it was horrible as I had errands to run in the neighborhood. (Meaning, car stayed parked while I did so.) And, that was in the morning! I can live without A/C. If I moved to Alaska! It's just weird how the human body is designed to be comfortable only within a certain range of temp. Go outside that range more than a tiny bit, we stop being able to function properly, without either artificial heat or artificial cold being switched on.

 

[fulee9999]

In the UK and Europe, approximately only 5% of households have A/C. Compared to 90% in America. No clue why it's only 5%. Perhaps their Summers are mild?

yes. also communism. having an A/C in the car was normal in the sixties in the US, while having an A/C in your car was luxury in the EU in the nineties...
also the summers are getting worse here as well, in the eighties and nineties summers were hot, but bearable, but last week Paris and London got fked by weather, where normal the temps don't even go near 38C/100F but last week it was over that in the shade and no-one was equipped to deal with that.

 

[idleprocess]

In the UK and Europe, approximately only 5% of households have A/C. Compared to 90% in America. No clue why it's only 5%. Perhaps their Summers are mild?

If Hamburg is at all representative of Europe as I examined in post #13, then yes their summers are mild.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

The summer always drives me to stay up later since the night & early morning hours is the time the weather outside becomes comfortable. One thing that surprised me is that there have been no mosquitoes so far. Since I leave the windows in my bedroom open all night Id be the first to notice. Fewer insects in general this summer. Or so it feels anyway, not that im complaining.

skeeters need water to survive. They lay eggs in water and if the water is all dried up then they cannot reproduce.
We have gotten a little rain here but not enough to keep the lawn from turning brown.