Inside a car en route somewhere or other:
“Put the window up, I’m cold.”
“But then I’ll be too hot.”
“Then turn on the air-conditioner.”
“You say it makes you freeze to death.”
“It wasn’t like this when we were dating.”
“It sure wasn’t!”
What is it about the male/female dynamic after about age 17 when she begins to catch a chill from anything less than 80 degrees and he can’t breath unless frost is forming on all indoor surfaces?
That thought kept bobbing around as I was headed home after a lunch with a group of friends with whom I held “The Great Hot and Cold Debate.” Everyone had her or his own opinion, made fresh by our recent weather that gives us temperatures in the 70s one day and 50s the next, thereby messing up everyone’s internal thermometer. The most emphatic was that even though women have an extra layer of fat, men are just fat and stupid, so it cancels out. However, we couldn’t come to a consensus. That drove me to the Great Oracle of the Web.
The Journal of Physiology, of course, had it down cold. Quoting a South African study: “Body temperature has a circadian rhythm, and in women with ovulatory cycles, also a menstrual rhythm. … We investigated sleep and 24-hour rectal temperatures in eight women with normal menstrual cycles in their mid-follicular and mid-luteal phases, and in eight young women taking a steady dose of oral progestin and ethinyl oestradiol (hormonal contraceptive), and compared their sleep and body temperatures with that of eight young men, sleeping in identical conditions. All subjects maintained their habitual daytime schedules.
“Rectal temperatures were elevated throughout 24 hours in the luteal phase compared with the follicular phase in the naturally cycling women, consistent with a raised thermoregulatory set-point. Rectal temperatures in the women taking hormonal contraceptives were similar to those of the naturally cycling women in the luteal phase. Gender influenced body temperature: the naturally cycling women and the women taking hormonal contraceptives attained their nocturnal minimum body temperatures earlier than the men, and the naturally cycling women had blunted nocturnal body temperature drops compared with the men.”
That should clear it up once and for all.
(Posted 11/05/07)
William M. Dowd is a local writer and photographer who specializes in food, drink and destinations at Dowd’s Guides.