I’ve always been told that shivering/teeth chattering when cold is supposed to help our bodies warm up. However, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been cold enough to shiver and have also noticed a positive difference in my body temperature after the shivering started. So why do we still shiver if it doesn’t help all that much? Or does it help but in a way we cannot really feel?
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Shivering is actually a really effective way for mammals to keep warm. It was really important for humans too, until we developed clothes and fire.
This is gonna be an oversimplification, but it’ll get the core idea across. Your muscles can generate heat when they contract, in addition to their neighbors and their neighbors’ neighbors and so on till you’re a walking furnace. When it gets cold, you shiver to wake up and force your muscles to contract. If you’re in a cold environment, you’ll keep getting cold unless you move somewhere warmer or you make more heat.
This is why your core muscles like your abs and chest sometimes start contracting and “shivering” on their own when you get really cold. You might not be able to voluntarily control them, but they’re trying to generate heat to protect your organs from freezing.
Finally, you start getting really cold blood vessels in your skin that t disengorged, aka they get more open and blood rushes to the surface. Not shivering entails that your muscles stop moving. That’s how you die in the cold.
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