What for some of us is a comfortable temperature is too chilly for others. People’s heat perception varies, and their sex plays a role. Women feel cold quicker than men do, as the many thermostat battles in homes and offices can attest.
Having more muscle mass increases your rate of metabolism even at rest, meaning you burn food faster to fuel your body, a process that heats your body up. And contractions of skeletal muscles, whether voluntarily or involuntarily through shivering, are a primary source of heat production.
The reason men typically have more muscle mass probably lies in evolutionary history. While prehistoric men hunted – moving around and generating heat – women and children often stayed behind in their dwellings, says Dr Rüdiger Köhling, director of the Oscar Langendorff Institut für Physiologie at the Rostock University Medical Centre in Germany.
However, “women are better at centralising heat”, he adds, by directing more blood carrying heat to their body’s core in response to cold. “Meanwhile, blood circulation to the extremities – such as hands, feet, nose and lips – is restricted,” Brandes says.