Feeling a little stiffer after a day in the office now that autumn has turned to winter? Does it take your arms and legs a little longer to wake up when you’re preparing for your workout? Is your uncle complaining that his knee hurts so a storm must be coming? Well the good news is that you’re not alone. These are all just symptoms of wintertime cold weather and its effect on the human body.
The effects of cold on your muscles:
When temperatures drop, muscles contract more slowly because oxygen is not transferred to the muscle cells as efficiently. This means your muscles need to work harder to produce at their normal levels, raising the risk of muscle tears and injury. Muscles are also not as likely to receive the normal amount of attention and exercise because the cold weather forces people indoors and into a more sedentary lifestyle. Finally, cold weather can numb sensory mechanisms so that it’s harder to feel when you may be pushing certain muscle groups too hard during workouts. This can lead to serious injury as well.
How to minimize these effects:
The effects of cold on your joints:
The effects of cold weather on your body’s joints are tougher to definitively prove than cold weather’s effects on your muscles, but there is a generally universal consensus that they do exist. The most stereotypical one is cold weather causing more pain for people suffering from arthritis. Changes in the weather cause the arthritis to flare up, oftentimes allowing the person to predict weather changes before they actually happen. The most widely accepted explanation for this phenomena centers around barometric pressure, which is essentially the pressure that Earth’s atmosphere is applying to us at all times. Weather changes cause the barometric pressure to rise and fall which makes the inflamed arthritis tissue expand and contract causing the pain.
How to minimize these effects:
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