Women sweat differently than men

[Owlie]

DBF grew up in Florida and Arizona. He complains all the time about winter here. 50s and 60s are apparently cold. He doesn't handle humidity well.

I grew up in New York and southern Ohio. I'm fine with cold. Just layer! What I don't handle well is heat and humidity--you sweat and it does nothing. Once it gets above 85 or so, I turn into a slug. All I want to do is hide somewhere air-conditioned.

[arielmoon]

I am an aclimator. I think I made that word up. I was born in Philly but spent most of my childhood in FL. I went away to school in MA then to Boston University. My first summer back in FL I thought I was dying and my first winter I was chuckling at all the cold people. Then I acclimated and I can deal with extreme heat. When it starts getting colder I adapt to that well too.

What I have a hard time with is cool nights in the 40's and daytime high's in the upper 80's or so. My body doesnt know what to do!! I get hot flashes of sorts because my body was ready for all the cool weather and instead it is hot.

[OakLeaf]

I grew up in a variety of climates too. Never anything that was super cold or super warm year round, but by the time I was 14 I'd experienced -40° (which is the same C or F), +115°F (46°C, but it was a dry heat ), and Chicago-area humidity.

My body just doesn't make warmth in the cold. Even in north Florida, if the winter stays cool, my toes are blue. In Ohio, my toes are literally blue from October through April. When I go to sleep on a cool night, I have to wear a cap, wool everything, three blankets drawn up over my head with only my eyes and nose exposed, and I still spend a half hour shivering before I can sleep.

I can acclimate to heat, but I'm also prone to overheating when I'm not acclimated. I try to stay out of AC as much as possible - I don't like it anyway, but the less I have to deal with it, the easier I can acclimate to heat.

[colby]

After a few years of year-round exercise now, I'm pretty well convinced I was born to exercise in overcast skies in the 50s. Coincidentally, I grew up in Seattle and have only lived in Washington.

My husband spent a few years in WA, then moved to CO, then spent 10 years in TN before moving back to WA in college, where he's lived since. He can't tolerate the cooler temps nearly as well. There are probably other factors, but I wonder if it's just the environment you spent/spend the most time in outside collectively - we all (generally) spend a lot of time outside as kids, and maybe that's where we do the majority of our general acclimatizing.

It takes me a few weeks to acclimate to warm summer weather, and I still haven't quite figured out the formula for high effort or endurance exercise in hotter temps with lots of sun.

[moonfroggy]

i have spent time in snow (not super cold maybe 10 degrees Fahrenheit but still i did better than my aunt who lived at the south pole for a while) and time in tropics and i always seem to adapt quickly and do better than others regardless of climate. i was born in San Francisco in march so was probably pretty mild weather.