Walking, Talking Space Heaters

The Newton Blog at RealClearScience weighs in with a discussion of why women frequently complain of being, or feeling, cold. It turns out there are physiological reasons for this, it isn't just women being sensitive "princesses."

For starters, women's bodies produce less heat than men's. Men generally expend more calories than women, about 23 percent more in fact. Spent calories are essentially burnt fuel.

The body is a furnace, and a male body runs far hotter. Most of this variance is explained by the fact that men contain much more heat-generating muscle, but even if body composition and activity are accounted for, women's bodies still run 3 to 10 percent cooler.

A good chunk of the energy we expend gets dissipated as heat, and this heat warms our skin, clothes, and immediate surroundings. As walking, talking space heaters, men are much more powerful.

As a small boy, my father told me women are nice but their thermostats don't work well.