How do I deal with being heat sensitive?

June 30, 2017 8:45 PM

My body likes colder temperatures. My workplace is warm. How do I deal?

For whatever reason, I've always gotten hot really easily. If I just get up and walk around for several minutes, or even change my clothes in a dressing room, I'll heat up and sweat and my face turns visibly red. The thing that bothers me the most is I work in a lab and need to wear a lab coat and gloves over my regular clothes, and there are regulations about having my legs/feet adequately covered, so no shorts or sandals allowed. I feel most comfortable in 40-60F, but the rooms are generally 68-75F.

I know some people are going to tell me to go to a doctor about this--I did this when I was a young teen and the response was just "meh, some people are like that." I'm not sure this is an ailment, it's just my body is most comfortable at colder temps for some reason. My weight is stable--well, going up very slowly as I get older. I am 29, female, at about 230lbs right now and 5'8". The weight is evenly distributed around my body, not really centered anywhere (idk if that has an effect on insulation? Even my fingers are plumper than most other ppl my weight). I don't feel anxious or tired or anything. Just hot. I don't mind being hot when I go to the gym since there are lots of fans blowing and everyone else is getting hot and sweaty, but it can be sort of embarrassing/annoying at work, or if I'm just walking around outside with friends, and I'm the only one getting red and sweaty while everyone else is normal.

I'm wondering if anyone else has this issue and how do you deal with it?

posted by picklenickle to Health & Fitness (18 answers total)

I don't have this problem, but I have a potential solution for you. Can you add a cooling neck band to your wardrobe? Cooling your neck off will do wonders to your core body temp.

I would check in with a doc again too. It may be partially your weight, but it sounds like you run really hot. For you to feel comfortable at 40F is pretty far outside the bounds of normal, at least in my non-medical opinion. Your pediatrician may not have given it much thought, but hopefully as an adult, you may be taken more seriously by your physician.
posted by hydra77 at 9:57 PM on June 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Drinking very cold water throughout the day should help a little.
posted by studioaudience at 10:20 PM on June 30, 2017

Desk fan. This may not help much if you have to move around a lot, but if you do most of your work at one or a few stations, it makes a difference. I've had to keep a fan and a sweater at work every place I've ever worked (since I started working desk jobs). The one I have on my desk now looks similar to this.

A bladeless fan is another possibility, but I have no personal experience with those.
posted by Bruce H. at 11:03 PM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I keep a fan under my desk at work (a big freestanding one, but not the kind that rotates), drink lots of cold water from the cooler, keep a separate small USB powered fan on my desk in case my face is unbearably hot for some reason, and try to keep track of where the building aircon tends to be colder (the vents are all around the edges of our office space and so are a lot of the meeting rooms, so there's usually a chilly room I can step into for a few minutes).
posted by terretu at 12:13 AM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not all leg and foot wear is equal in the heat. Covering your lower body does not have to create a lot of heat. Nthing what everybody said about fans and cold beverages. I have a tiny USB fan on my desk and from a couple of feet away it does nothing. But sitting at my desk and having it point at my upper body still is lovely.
posted by koahiatamadl at 1:32 AM on July 1, 2017

I hotdesk so bought a USB fan from Amazon which can be plugged into my laptop. Works just fine, provides a nice cooling breeze and isn't very noisy.
posted by mr_silver at 2:11 AM on July 1, 2017

Cold drink subtly applied to wrist is my coping strategy.
posted by AlexiaSky at 2:44 AM on July 1, 2017

Just wanted to add that you are not alone. I ALWAYS run hot; everybody asks if I've been running or something; it's embarrassing. All medical tests are fine. I have noticed that I run cooler when I weigh less. The one thing that has helped oodles was a desk fan. And towels to wipe my face off.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 5:11 AM on July 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

You know all those places where people apply perfume - behind the ears, the back of the wrists, behind the knees, etc.? Those are all points where your circulating blood comes closest to the surface so cool/cold water applied to those same places will cool you down as quickly as possible. In your case, ice cubes might be in order.

It seems counterintuitive, but wool socks keep my feet cooler than any others. (And they're not itchy at all. Really.)
posted by DrGail at 5:41 AM on July 1, 2017

I agree with hydra77 that a cooling neckband might help. This is the one that I use: Eduracool Microfiber Cooling Towel. I also sometimes carry a cheap neck fan for use on the subway since A/C can be spotty.
posted by skye.dancer at 7:15 AM on July 1, 2017

Same problem over here. Summer destroys me.

There's been a product that's been "coming soon" for two goddamn years called Wristify, which is a wrist mounted personal cooling unit. They just got out of the prototyping stages and are working on production, per their newsletter. I will undoubtedly be trying one once they're available. But I fear this might be vaporware.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:51 AM on July 1, 2017

There are cooling vests, often marketed to people with MS. I haven't tried any, but that linked article explains the technology (though a lot of it is mainly "vest with pockets for ice or gel packs") and gives recommendations. That might help for work, at least, especially if you could keep a second set of ice/gel packs in a freezer there to swap out at lunch.
posted by lazuli at 8:23 AM on July 1, 2017

Response by poster: The scarves and cooling vests sound like a possible solution. But do the vests only work when worn over clothes or can they be worn underneath clothes? My main issue is that, because I work in a lab, I have to wear a long-sleeve lab coat and gloves over whatever else I'm wearing. Not sure if that interferes with evaporative cooling.

The fan suggestions are appreciated but mostly I'm walking around from room to room and never sitting in a single place. I guess I've really set myself up for job-comfort incompatibility, lol.
posted by picklenickle at 10:34 AM on July 1, 2017

It looks like some of the cooling vests can be worn under clothes.
posted by lazuli at 12:07 PM on July 1, 2017

My experience comes from hot weather distance running, so take this advice with metaphorical NaCl.

- Water applied to skin is much better than cold water taken internally. A damp buff / scarf applied to arms, neck, forehead, wrist
- cut / thin your hair
- +1 to cold can on wrist. It's a heat sink.
- if your office is desert level dry, then consider incorporating more cotton so that the water can take more heat before evaporating
- get somewhere dark cold laying down more often.
posted by gregglind at 2:42 PM on July 1, 2017

Get some gelpacks and keep them in a freezer or refrigerator, ideally at work. Put 1 in each pocket of your lab coat. You might be able to sew in some special pockets. Lots of diabetics get meds by mail and have lots of gelpacks to give. I see them on freecycle.net and craigslist/zip.

Damp bandanna on your neck, refresh during the day.

When I have long hair, I wash it, put in a bun or braid, and it takes a while to dry, providing steady evaporative cooling, especially lovely in Maine winters.

Your comfort range is pretty unusual; maybe ask your doc to check your thyroid.
posted by theora55 at 5:40 PM on July 1, 2017

I have used a cooling cloth around my shoulders/neck under a lab coat. It performs sub-optimally, but provides some comfort as long as the ambient humidity wasn't too bad.

Not all lab coats are created from the same material; lab coats are available in a range of materials and thicknesses that still provide adequate personal protection - possibly try to find lab coats made with a different (cooler) material?

If you're using latex gloves, give nitriles a try, or a different brand. My hands used to swell from a M to M/L during the summers and it sucked. Got samples of different brands of gloves and found a brand that fit well during the hot months.

If you have thick head hair, a lighter/shorter cut may help.

I also used to have to work in a BSL2+ environment (lentivirus) with deficient cooling and it was HELL. Had to use a headband to keep sweet from dripping into my eyes and the humidity was high enough that the cooling cloth wouldn't work (nor would I want to bring it into the virus room and ever want to bring it back out except in a biohazard waste bag). There wasn't really anything I could do but suck it up.

Running hands/wrists under cold water (as an added final component of handwashing after removing a doubled-layer of gloves) helped recovery, though.
posted by porpoise at 5:01 AM on July 2, 2017

Likely irrelevant, but do you drink a lot of alcohol? A component of sobering up can involve hyperthermia in some individuals.
posted by porpoise at 5:09 AM on July 2, 2017