Air Conditioning & Obesity
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ElizabethKalmbach wrote: »
RE: Correlation/Causation... I'll just leave this here...
This has always been my favourite one
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I have been using air conditioning for many years and I did not start to get fat, now I hear about it for the first time. I personally am so used to the air conditioner that I am no longer comfortable even without it, so I always turn to aircon servicing in case of any problems. In my opinion, insufficient consumption of vegetables and fruits, craving for fast food and lack of sleep, leads to uncontrolled weight gain, not air conditioning.0
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Correlation isn't causation. (smile)
One reason there are a lot of heavy people around is that we are now all in jobs that are easier. 150 years ago no one thought anything of walking three or four miles to get to somewhere they wanted to go if they were in good health, and most people were. More people were farmers in a time when farming was a physically difficult, intense job. (Ever detasseled corn?) "Traditional American food" is farming food. You can eat like that and not gain weight if you are that physically active. Even the people who lived in cities were dealing with houses that didn't have central heat, and when that happens you eat more because you're burning it to stay warm. Schoolkids and clerks alike dealt with rooms that were so cold the ink froze in the inkwells.
And women who stayed home had a lot of hard physical work to do. Water weighs eight pounds a gallon. Carry enough water to wash hands and face in upstairs, carry the dirty water back downstairs, along with blackwater accumulated over the night that gets dumped in the downstairs pit toilet. (No, we have no plumbing either). Carry buckets back up full of water and bleach to clean with. There is no vaccuum cleaner; you will be sweeping that carpet with a broom. Houses were dirtier in the days of wood and coal heating. Coal soot settles on everything, so every week you have to wipe the walls and wash the windows.
Let's talk about laundry, too. You're wearing more cloth to cope with the cold. The bottom layers have to be washed, because they're against your skin. That means boiling 10 gallons of water on the stove, with the whites in it, lifting that off, having another pot of hot water so you can scrub in hot water, then rinse, then another tub of blueing to keep your whites white, and then you can hand-wring them. Mangles help a lot. Then hang to dry. That's one load. The average family of two adults and three kids had eight loads a week.
We don't work nearly as hard as they did.
Our houses are not designed to be naturally cool any more. We don't have the big windows that run floor to ceiling in line with the door in line with the window on the other side of the house. Transoms are fire hazards. A big four-square house with old windows and interior layout can be opened up with an attic window open and the front door open, and the house will act like a chimney, funneling the hot air up and out. Similarly we aren't set up for retaining heat well either. We don't build our houses round the main chimney stack, making sure that the heat gets a chance to warm all our rooms before it goes up and out. We don't hang portieres at our doors to defeat drafts, or build vestibules to keep the cold out and the warm in.
(Sorry for writing a book. This is the stuff I research for fun.)10 -
My H and I were just this morning talking about adaptive DNA changes in humans over millennia! I think there are a myriad of things than nudge humans into fat-storing mode. Storing fat has until recently been a pretty handy survival tool and we humans have developed a whole bag of genetic tricks to deal with our environment.
Not sure about the AC claims though... but who knows?0 -
I tend to be less active in winter and more so in summer. I also eat less in summer because I’m eating more seasonal fruits. Winter is a time for heavier foods usually.
Also, I’m overweight but still always cold, even in California, even when it is in the low 70s. I rarely run the AC.0 -
...always cold, even in California, even when it is in the low 70s. I rarely run the AC.
My friends from Florida and California are always freezing at what I think of as normal temperatures. As a Nordic gal, my winter-time INDOOR temps are in the high 50'sF. I feel much too hot when the temps climb above 78F. I don't know how my Phoenix and Las Vegas pals can exist in their 100+F summers! So I think the body just adapts over time to where you live.5 -
When I actively farmed, I lost about 20 pounds every summer and gained it back in the winter. It had a lot to do with weather.
It was too hot to cook in summer, so lots of salads, fresh fruits, etc. the air conditioner didn’t matter so much because everyone was always outside. Winter, everyone was hiding inside, nothing to do, so cooked and ate.
When I started an office job, I wasn’t as active, but I also wasn’t as hot, so I cooked and ate a normal meal when I got home.
In the winter, I wasn’t as bored, so still cooked a normal meal, but no fancy desserts and homemade breads. My weight was
Much more even year round.
So yeah, both the activity level and the air conditioning(or lack of) affected my weight.0 -
OP has a zombie profile pic... fitting for a zombie thread. 🤷♀️😂6
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...always cold, even in California, even when it is in the low 70s. I rarely run the AC.
My friends from Florida and California are always freezing at what I think of as normal temperatures. As a Nordic gal, my winter-time INDOOR temps are in the high 50'sF. I feel much too hot when the temps climb above 78F. I don't know how my Phoenix and Las Vegas pals can exist in their 100+F summers! So I think the body just adapts over time to where you live.
I have a personal view (not one I would seriously impose on others) that one should pick either hot or cold to be self-indulgent about, but not both. I'm in Chicago, and have mostly lived in colder climates, but still hate cold and like hot (I spent my earliest years in Florida, so maybe that's why -- my parents had a story about taking me to visit my grandparents at age 3 for Christmas and thinking I'd be exited about the snow and when they put me out in it I started crying).
Anyway, I use the heat liberally in the winter and like it to be at least 70 indoors when I am not in bed (and 72 is even better). However, I rarely bother turning on the air, and it almost never is so hot here that it seems unpleasant for me (granted, it's not like Phoenix or LV). Of course, my sparing use of air conditioning doesn't seem to have prevented me from gaining weight in the past, and I'm another who tends to gain more in the winter than summer (which I don't think has a thing to do with using the heat either).
I have spent time in the deep south in the summers for work, and one thing I couldn't get used to it the contrast between how incredibly cold people seem to keep it indoors when it's hot vs the heat outside -- I kept expecting weather fronts to exist when one opened the door, and I'd have to dress so warmly to avoid freezing indoors that it was miserable being outside. That's not an issue here, since I just pull on layers before going outside in the winter.1 -
...always cold, even in California, even when it is in the low 70s. I rarely run the AC.
My friends from Florida and California are always freezing at what I think of as normal temperatures. As a Nordic gal, my winter-time INDOOR temps are in the high 50'sF. I feel much too hot when the temps climb above 78F. I don't know how my Phoenix and Las Vegas pals can exist in their 100+F summers! So I think the body just adapts over time to where you live.
I'm part Nordic and never acclimated to Okinawa (two years, mostly no air conditioning) or South Florida (7 years, with AC.)
I've been living with my OH since 2016 and have turning the thermostat down more every winter and HE is acclimating to this
At our annual July 4th picnic here in Massachusetts, I often sweat like crazy while doing cleanup yet our friends from El Salvador are cool as a cucumber.1 -
...always cold, even in California, even when it is in the low 70s. I rarely run the AC.
My friends from Florida and California are always freezing at what I think of as normal temperatures. As a Nordic gal, my winter-time INDOOR temps are in the high 50'sF. I feel much too hot when the temps climb above 78F. I don't know how my Phoenix and Las Vegas pals can exist in their 100+F summers! So I think the body just adapts over time to where you live.
I’m half Nordic too but was born and raised in California. I do feel that our bodies usually adapt somewhat. I have a friend who moved from Southern California to NYC and she said it took her about 5 years to get used to the cold there but she is fine with temps in the 40s-60s now.
Then again, I have friends and coworkers from So Cal who are always hot and love running the AC. Our bodies have different natural comfort levels too. I thought being a little overweight would help with my feeling cold all the time, but it didn’t. In fact, I have gotten worse with age. I’m 38 now and my body temperature ranges from 95-97 usually. When I was in my 20s I was closer to 98. I’m colder now than I have ever been.0 -
Lol, if this were true then the whole Nordic region should be full of obese people.I read an article a year or so ago suggesting a possible link between air conditioning and obesity. It talked about how, in the days before central air and forced-air heat, the body's normal cycle was to bulk up when the weather started to get chilly in the fall (to provide an extra layer of fat insulation) and then to shed that extra weight when the weather broke in the spring. But since the advent of controlled heating and cooling, we're fooling our bodies into keeping the weight and then adding on to it. By not experiencing the weather fluctuations, our bodies do not have to work (and thus burn more calories) to warm up or cool down. And it starts to create a cycle... the heavier we are, the hotter we get, so we crank the air down another degree.
I think this makes a lot of sense. I have always been one for turning the air on as soon as the weather hits 80 because I hate to sweat. I'll definitely be reconsidering that this summer.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Ppl become obese bc they eat/drink too much (ie , CI > CO) and/or bc they suffer from genetic and medical conditions that affect their ability to control their wt.
Any other "reason" is pure BS.1 -
I think it has more to do with people getting lazy and preferring to stay inside where its nice and cool versus being outside and more active.0
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Mrsrobinsoncl wrote: »I think it has more to do with people getting lazy and preferring to stay inside where its nice and cool versus being outside and more active.
Yep my experience is people have developed a narrowing band of "tolerable" temperature over the years
I have lived most of my life in an area where the temperature can very legitimately range from -20F to +105F (without adding anything for heat index/wind chill) in the same year.
Many people don't really like to be outside if it's outside the 50F-80F band.0 -
Mrsrobinsoncl wrote: »I think it has more to do with people getting lazy and preferring to stay inside where its nice and cool versus being outside and more active.Theoldguy1 wrote: »Yep my experience is people have developed a narrowing band of "tolerable" temperature over the years
I have lived most of my life in an area where the temperature can very legitimately range from -20F to +105F (without adding anything for heat index/wind chill) in the same year.
Many people don't really like to be outside if it's outside the 50F-80F band.
My band is 7F - 80F, with a preference for 40F-70F.
It's not laziness keeping me inside at >80F; I just hate it, especially since here in MA those temps usually come with humidity. There is a limit to how lightly I can dress. But I do get creative at how to stay active indoors when I have a strong preference for outdoor cardio.
For me, being comfortable outdoors in the cold is just a matter of more layers, warmer boots, and wool socks. Absent a medical condition like Raynaud's, IMO more people could stand to just bundle up and get out there in the winter.0 -
That doesnt make sense to me. IMO you want to keep yourself comfortable. That will help with your motivation to exercise, and with your mental health. Suffering unnecessarily doest burn calories, build strength, or promote health.0
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