September 30, 2026
When one is built different, they may just be built worse. Some have natural disadvantages in sports! Others may freeze at a slight drop in temperature. Unfortunately I exist in the second category.
At one point in my life people remarked upon how furnace-like I was! At the end of turkey trots, water vapor would steam off of me in the morning air. When I lived in Iowa I’d often walk to my car in below-zero weather and start it so that I could cool down (my apartment, while architecturally beautiful, had a broken heater such that I had to warm my bed with insufficient space heaters which would then cause me to overheat). It was in Houston that this fortune began to change.
Degradation in one’s quality of life will sneak up on them in insidious ways. As one grows more tired, they exert themselves less such that they become deconditioned. Coldness steadily creeps in until it is all one can feel. The office begins to feel more frigid - though in fairness, it likely is - and one begins to wear a jacket daily. Then they have to retreat to the sous vide of Houston air to reheat their extremities. Slowly the office becomes intolerable; the air conditioner switching itself on a sign that they will complete next to nothing for forty-five minutes, fidgeting to stay warm. On cooler Houston nights walking home from the club, a jacket is necessary to get home.
The cold appears where you don’t expect it. Fingers and toes turning purple is expected as is a frosty tip of the nose, but numbness of the upper lip and jaw is a particularly strange sensation. Though the top of one’s head ought to be the warmest part, heat begins to escape from there too.
Though reductionist, the human body is a thermodynamic system. Moving around breaks down molecules for their energy; some of this energy becomes waste heat and you are warm again. Until you stop. And as the body is a non-linear system, it may choose to conserve energy over movement to compensate such that those who exercise are colder afterward.
The most painful experience I’ve been through was colonoscopy preparation. If one rapidly loses weight and blood they will likely be told to get one with. The instructions that the gallon-plus of prep fluid be refrigerated for a better drinking experience; in all fairness, drinking warm slimy snot does not sound lovely. However, let us remember energy balances. Say one has lost 55 pounds such that they are now 110 pounds and are asked to drink copious amounts of cold fluid. Furthermore, let us suppose a practically-neutral environment due to a broken furnace so energy transfer to the air is $\sim 0$.
\[q_{\text{out}} = q_{\text{in}}\] \[-m_{\text{hazel}} C_{\text{hazel}} (T_{\text{end}} - T_{\text{start, hazel}}) = m_w C_w (T_{\text{end}} - T_{\text{start, w}})\] \[-50\text{ kg} \cdot 2.98\text{ kJ}/\text{kg}\cdot^\circ\text{C} \cdot (T_e - 37^\circ\text{C}) = 3.79\text{ kg} \cdot 4.184\text{ kJ}/\text{kg}\cdot^\circ\text{C} \cdot (T_e - 2^\circ\text{C})\] \[T_{e,\text{hazel}} = 33.6^\circ\text{C}\]From the Cleveland clinic: “Mild hypothermia means your body temperature is between … 35-32°C”
Imagine yourself in the fetal position in a burning-hot shower, still unable to warm yourself because the pure sensation of cold has grabbed you by your distended-by-one-gallon stomach and refuses to let you go. You’ve gotten frostbite before; far as your extremities are fine. Instead your heart is beginning to make fluttering palpitations as it begins to feel like it’s missing beats. Even under multiple electric blankets warmth cannot come fast enough. The cold makes it difficult to move. It is 3 am in Cleveland, Ohio and your broken window is letting 50°F air in as your broken radiator fails to live up to the challenge and you have to get a tube stuck feet up your ass in four hours. You haven’t eaten in twenty hours. The colonoscopy finds colitis that may develop into something later. Judging by the fact that you’ve shot blood and undigested food for the past months you could guess that.
This is not meant to provoke sympathy; this blog post is not about cold. The above is a physical description of the vicious cycle between autoimmune fits and eating disorders. When you lose a lot of weight due to being sick and people begin to treat you differently it convinces you that you ought to preserve that. Not eating is unhelpful for generating body heat; hemolysis-caused anemia does one no favors in the fight against the environment. A year or two later when one is simply shitting undigested food and mildly anemic, a first gust of cool dry autumn air blows across your face and you feel a pit of anxiety for the coming cold year-round - thoughts of a worse time.
“Hey why did you write this”
I am afraid of writing about eating disorders because they are mentally transmissible and reinforcing. However, I would like to write about my life and this framing seems unpleasant enough. To anyone struggling with either, I am praying for you.