What does the human body do when it gets cold?

Answer 1

the reaction is not good

Answer 2

It's called negative feedback. When you're hot, your body tries to get you cold, vice versa with cold. The body takes several steps to try and warm you up:

• Chemical settings in the brain react to a lowered core body temperature, sending signals throughout the body to begin steps to warm it up.
• Shivering involves your muscles moving rapdily to make more heat through the chemical reactions that your body uses to create energy.
• Goosebumps involve your body hairs standing up on end. This helps prevent airflow around the body; still air has a chance to warm up and less warm air is lost due to movement.
• Curling up to lower the ratio of volume to surface area helps lower heat loss through the skin.
• Blood flow to the skin is lessened, to prevent the warmth leaving the blood more easily, and to maintain it within the deep body systems.
• Breathing is slower and more through the nose, as breathing through the mouth causes more moisture and heat loss than via the nose.
• Finding cover is an instinct that leads to removal from the cold environment, or movement into a warm one.
• If the body becomes too cold, it will stop shivering to conserve energy.

Answer 3

There are a few actions your body takes to keep itself warm when it's cold.

First your body shivers. this vibrating produces heat.

If the cold persists and becomes extreme enough, your body moves the blood to the center of your body to keep your vital organs warm.

Your capillaries constrict to allow less blood flow and less heat loss. That's why your fingers and nose get cold.

The small muscles around each body hair constrict and raise the hairs, attempting to trap more warm air in what little "fur" humans have.

See below for information on how warm-blooded animals maintain a temperature warmer than the environment.

I notice most people seem perplexed about this.

The cop-out answer is usually "we're endothermic" or "we're warm blooded", or Thermoregulation!! -but none of that actually explains just HOW it happens. That's because most people whom study Biology don't study chemistry.

Think about it!

"Cold blooded" (Ectotherms) creatures don't eat as much food as "warm blooded" (endotherms) creatures.

Well, why is that?

Well, think about it...

Cold blooded animals don't eat as much because they don't need to be warm. Since they don't need to be warm they don't eat as much.

Warm blooded animals must eat more food, and more frequently to maintain their thermoregulation, or body warmth...

But, that still doesn't quite answer the question.

It's chemistry.

Think back to the eating of the food.

Think digestion!

Digesting food means your body breaks down and dissembles not just pieces of food, but the molecules. It's breaking it down into glucose, which is a simple sugar.

Ever heard of "burning calories"?

Burning because it's WARM.

By breaking apart the molecules, breaking them down, and using them as glucose it releases energy in the form of heat.

(Many types of chemical reactions release heat.)

If cold blooded animals ate more food they would feel warmer too, but their bodies weren't "designed" to function the way warm blooded organisms were. They're less active, eat less food, and they're cold blooded. Since they don't need to maintain heat they also need less food.

Even fish have less moving parts, and don't require as much food as a cat or a dog.

The nervous system of your body "feels" whether it's too warm, or too cold, and it will take steps to regulate it's temperature.

The problem with the body trying to keep itself warm in the cold is that you burn more energy, much faster. But a human body doesn't have the ability to create its own vitamin C. So, when it tries to compensate for cold temperature by shivering, and heating up, it uses up the vitamin C, and once it's uses-up the immune system stops fighting off infection as it views staying warm as more important. Which is why infections happen more easily in the cold seasons for human beings.

A cat, however, can make it's own vitamin C within its body, which is why cats never catch a cold.

All of this happens on a molecular level.

It's also why in the colder months people drink warm liquids to warm up, and in hot months people eat icy things to cool down. It helps or hinders the warming process.

It's all connected to digestion on a chemical level.

Answer 4

Our human body is very sensitive to temperature changes.The respond for cold temperature is the body will shiver because during shivering the muscles are doing some mechanical work so some heat will be produced in order equlize the temperature drop inside our body.

Answer 5

When the human body gets cold, it shivers to generate heat through muscle activity, constricts blood vessels near the skin to conserve heat for essential organs, and may also experience an increase in metabolism to produce more heat. The body may also experience goosebumps to trap a layer of air near the skin as insulation.

Answer 6

The human body is very sencative and if you dont take care of it you will find yourself very sick. When you get to cold you well get hypothermia and you will die!

Answer 7

Muscles in the skin cause the hair to stand up.

Answer 8

You get goosebumps

Answer 9

it shivers