Surprising Ways You Can Stay Warm When Your Heater Goes Out
If your heater goes out in the winter, you're in a potentially dangerous situation. While you can layer your clothing, lay under blankets, or turn to alternative heat sources, your home may still rapidly lose heat. This puts you in danger of decreased body heat, which can lead to a variety of health problems. These simple tips will help boost your body heat while you wait for a heating expert to fix your problem.
Take A Warm Shower
Although you generally want to avoid getting wet in cold situations, a warm shower in the early hours after your heater failure can actually warm your body temperature by several degrees. However, you have to make sure you find a good balance between too hot and too cold. Both options are dangerous; water that's too hot will cause your body to bring too much heat to the surface and will actually cool it off. Cold water will, obviously, lower your body temperature.
Instead, find a temperature that is just warm enough to feel pleasurable without being uncomfortable. Once you're finished, immediately dry off and put on fresh clothes. Make sure to layer your clothes to trap as much of that increased body heat as possible.
Exercising To Increase Body Heat
When you exercise, your body will begin producing more heat. That's because your heart rate increases, your veins dilate, and you begin breathing heavier. Several minutes of exercise can quickly increase your body heat, but stop just before you start to feel sweat.
Sweat is dangerous in cold weather situations because it actually takes heat away from your body. After you're done exercising, change into new clothes (ones that aren't wet) and layer up to trap your new heat, like you did after taking a shower.
Eating The Right Foods
Certain types of foods actually help promote more body heat by either stimulating your metabolism or simply having hot juices. For example, foods such as ginger and green tea are perfect for boosting your body heat, especially if you drink your tea hot.
Other foods that will increase your body heat include root vegetables, such as kale, cabbage, sweet potatoes, and carrots as well as hot peppers. Root vegetables are harder to digest, which makes your metabolism generate more heat. And the juice of hot peppers will immediately cause your blood to pump faster and increase your temperature.
Performing these simple tricks should help keep you and your family warm long enough for a professional heat repair specialist to show up. Just remember to layer your clothing, stay close, and avoid going outside or opening the fridge to keep the temperature as warm as possible. For more information, talk to a place like Super Cool Heating & Air.
