Why does putting one foot out from under the blankets bring so much relief of heat while laying in bed?
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If you look at your foot, you can see more veins near the surface of the skin than you would if you look at your lower leg because there is far less fat or muscle. With all those blood vessels near the surface of the skin to help transfer heat/cool between the blood and skin surface, feet are great temperature regulators.
The veins in your foot are relatively close to the surface, making heat transfer from your inner body to the outside temperature much easier. The blanket (or socks) are isolating your feet, making this transfer more difficult.
It is about the flux.
If you are storing heat, you will feel hot.
If you are loosing heat, you will feel cold.
Temperatures almost don’t matter.
Take a steaming hot shower, when you’re done get away from it, you will feel cold even though your place is ar room temperature. You’re actually loosing some heat.
Take a very cold shower, you will feel hot because you’re storing it.
If you’re close to not loosing neither storing, you will just feel neat.
Putting your foot outside the blanket just makes you store less heat. Plus yes feet have a lot of blood flows that helps the thing.
The soles of your feet have plenty of blood circulating through them, this combined with our feet’s double-water pores and increased amount of pores per cm^2 makes it easier to shed heat through perspiration. Water is incredibly good at temperature regulation because of the energy required to heat and cool it to different states
Our palms and soles have an increased amount of sweat glands to provide greater friction with surfaces, our soles with ~600-700 pores per cm^2.
Edit: can’t find a source for the “double water sweat glands”, but I recall seeing something about it in a PBS documentary comparing humans to other primates, more specifically how sweating more efficiently may have given us the evolutionary advantage
To quote *Moby-Dick*:
“We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”
People talking about heat transfer at your foot, but I think the bigger affect is how when you stick your foot out, you’ve created an opening in the blanket that allows warm out to leave and for cooler air to enter.
Most of the skin on you’re body fluctuates how much blood is near the surface to regulate temperature. The bottom of your feet doesn’t do that so much so blood stays relatively close the the skin surface so your feet are great out sending out heat.
I enjoy doing this it feels good.
I work outside so most times wrap up warm, when overheating I pull my beanie up over my ears and I start to cool down without removing layers. Still warm I then roll up sleeves. Do whatever before removing a layer.
Coz they are literal heat sink. Think of hairless skin patches on body like foot soles, palms and facial area that don’t grow hair as heat sinks in machine that need to throw away extra heat. Body is never not burning calories and thus constantly creates heat which is also why balls are outside so sperm don’t die of heat.
Forget the scientific explanations, it’s about tension and release. It’s the same reason a foot outside of the covers going back in also feels great.
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