SHOWERS IN THE WINTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 180, 1 August 1932, Page 6

SHOWERS IN THE WINTER.

A SENSELESS PRACTICE.

On these cold winter nights and mornings the most difficult thing that one strives to do is to keep reasonably warm. Nevertheless, there are martyrs to the cold who counteract it in a roundabout way by indulging in cold showers and baths, or, if near the seaside, a plunge into the briny. Such a practice they continue throughout all seasons, thinking thereby that they will build up physical fitness, hardiness and mental alertness. Certainly it makes one- freeh and sprightly, even nippy, but its effects are merely temporary and very little real value is derived from resorting to the practice. This view<point may not, perhaps, be accepted by those who look forward to their cold showers, etc., during the winter months, holding in extenuation that a dip into cold water and a rub down immediately afterwards produces a pleasant, warm tingling throughout the body. But this warmth is produced at the cost of sacrificing whole calories of heat, which is detrimental to the even balance, even running, of the body. Therefore, the body, if it is to maintain that even balance, must receive normal treatment. When you plunge into the ice-cold bath you are calling'upon your body to conscript all calories and. throw them into the furnace to. maintain the normal Wood heat, normal body temperature. Thus is produced "that glowing feeling."

Almost every week, a Sydney writer states, the students of the local university are tested for their heat production in the metabolism room. They arrive breakfaetless' and are required to rest on. a bed for half an hour, with a Douglas bag fitted to their mouths, and the exhaled ai.i: is drawn out by.a machine which registers the metabolism of the student. Thie testing for metabolism has produced some very interesting results, for it. has been found that a woman is ten per cent colder than a man of equal height, weight and age, which circumstance is partly due to her excess of fatty tissue. Fat is inert, but muecular tissue is energy personified and. produces heat. It has been discovered that a heavy person gives off more heat than a lighter ont; a fat man gives off more heat than a thin one; a tall man gives off more heat than a short one; and that heat production decreases steadily (though not regularly) with age. A sparrow, compared with its weight, produces ten times as much heat as that produced by a fowl. Thie is explained by the fact that a sparrow has a relatively larger body surface to chill in the wind. Similarly, an infant, in proportion to its size, produces about three times the heat that a fullgrown man does.

No doubt you have wondered why animals curl up in the cold. Why don't they "lip at full length upon tha ground? The answer is simply thifi, that by so doing the animal has less body surface exposed to chill, and that therefore less calories are called upon to. keep the body warm. This also explains why it is possible to keep warm for a while by curling up on the bed When naked, providing that the cold is not too severe; the smaller amount of body surface exposed calls for lees calories to maintain the normal heat; but the fact that the air is colder than normal body temperature calls upon all those calories that would be only required to maintain the normal heat of all the body exposed at normal temperature. In a cold wind a horse does not stand sideways on. but stands with ite back to the blast, thue giving less surface to chill. If a man, when getting under a shower, were to curl up he. would thus be able to resist the cold more easily and not draw so extravagantly upon the heat-producing engines of the body. Eschew the cold shower in winter, and your body will be resultingly better for it.

It is a practice in most of the big boarding schools of the Dominion, and probably those in other countries as well, to insist upon the students who are there as boarders taking cold showers or cold baths every day in the week throughout the year. No exception wae made on bitterly cold or white, frosty mornings at one of New Zealand's leading colleges, where the writer boarded ae a youth several years ago. It was quite a common occurrence to have the fingers and toes of the students quite numb with cold after, a bath or a shower on a mid-winter morning. The fellows used to complain of it often, and not a few endeavoured to give the shower a miss, at the risk, if discovered, of a "whacking" by the dormitory prefect, who had the power to administer punishment of that;sort to shower-shirkers. The practice of taking cold showers and baths on bitterly cold mornings never appealed to the writer as anything else but ridiculous. Why make an individual colder when he. is already freezing T . It, is. surely contrary to the most natural instinct—to seek warmth when cold. The warm, tingling sensation said to be always experienced afterwards does not repay the shock of the shower, and very often the tingling sensation does not come for quite a long while after, if ever. But the process of getting warm again eats up whole calories of heat energy, and why should this have to be made necessary? One never heard any of the fellows at school say he

derived any benefit from a cold shower in middlewinter, although in the summer season it was looked for, by some of the bora, with anticipation. —R.M.C.