Why do children not react to cold like adults do???!? Example could be kids at the beach loving the freezing water on a cloudy day, whereas an adult is physically hurting in the same temp. water.
In: Biology
pain tolerance change with age. If you’ve been conditioned for a very long to avoid most pain. The slightest changes seem extreme. Plus, children are far more adaptable to environmental swings and their perception/nervous system is still learning. So if children have no reference point of office job, couch sitting for 40 years stored in their body. They won’t be so easily dislodged from their bodies true potential.
Children are way more active than adults, for one. More active = more heat. Two, *feeling* cold is not the same thing as *being* cold. Our sensation of warmth isn’t the same thing as temperature, in other words.
Best example: touch a fluffy blanket in your room. Then touch a piece of metal in your room. The metal *feels* colder, but it’s literally the same temperature (room temperature). What you really *feel* is the transference of heat energy away from your body. Children may actually not feel like they are cold because compared to all the heat their activity is generating, the sensation of the heat leaving their body may feel kinda nice comparatively. But that doesn’t mean their body is not actually cold (temperature-wise).
Ever heard of Wim Hof?
Adults have learned to react how they are expected to react to the cold water. Children enjoy it as a new sensation and a novel experience. Kids stay more in the moment, until they’re taught to react in a different way by well meaning adults.
Most adults have been sedentary and inside climate controlled environments for a long time. They cant cope with ‘freezing water’ anymore.
Adults who regular exercise outside would experience the cold water the same as kids do.
I think part of it is also that kids really know how to live in the moment. If they’re horsing around in cold waves, they’re not thinking about if their towel is getting sandy on the beach, if they have enough warm clothes ready for afterwards, if there are enough sandwiches ready for lunch and how cranky everyone is going to be on the way home. They’re just playing and screeching and loving it and able to ignore a lot of other external things including being cold.
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