Dr. Forbush Thinks

I am not a medical doctor, so I certainly don’t know the intricacies of what happens in my body. But, I am a scientist and I do make observations for a living. This being the case I often wonder why my body reacts the way it does. For example, when I get sick I observe the symptoms and note how they correspond to the symptoms that my family members had days earlier when they were inflicted with the same virus. By knowing how a virus developed I begin to anticipate what I am in for.

Over the last few years I have gradually increased my stamina, lost weight and become generally more healthy. So, when I think about the changes in my body over these last few years I still have memory of what life was like before this happened. I remember the struggle I had trying to climb the cinder cone at Lassen National Park, which in my mind was the initial event that sent me in this direction.

One of the striking changes in my body is how it responds to temperature. Four years ago I sat outside on a cool fall night here in California to listen to a concert. The outdoor temperature was in the low 50s, and I was unfazed by the temperature. Some of my friends were also there and were obviously quite cold in their buttoned up jackets, but I remained comfortable through the concert. One of my friends commented about how the temperature didn’t seem to bother me. I told them that I had effective insulation.

On another day a few years later I found myself struck in traffic in the Texas summer heat without air conditioning. I sat there praying for the traffic to break up so I could get back to my apartment to cool off. And, while I sat there I remembered my first trip to Texas where the high heat and high humidity weren’t quite as uncomfortable. At the time I wondered why I had become less accustomed to the heat. But, today I realize that I had also put on some extra weight between those two events. Insulation is a good thing when you want to keep the heat inside, but it is a bad thing when you want to get rid of the excess heat. My body certainly works this way.

But I also know that body heat is more than just insulation. It is also about metabolism. Metabolism has to do with how a body uses energy. For example, when a body burns calories it generates heat. This happens during exercise, but it also happens in an effort to maintain body temperature. And, when a body has an excess layer of insulation it doesn’t need to generate as much heat to maintain body temperature. And, so the body learns to conserve energy and slow metabolism. Or, at least that’s what I’ve observed in my body. The ramifications of this is that as someone puts on body fat they increase insulation and no longer need to burn as many calories to maintain body heat. If one eats the same amount and exercises the same amount, then they are likely to produce less heat and have a lower metabolism rate. Of course there are certainly other factors here and I am not making a blanket statement, but this seems to be the case with my personal experience. But, the interesting thing is that by exercising one increases their metabolism for not only the period during the exercise but for some time afterward.

This is something that I personally noticed. When I started exercising I did not exercise regularly at first. But I did go to work everyday regardless of whether I exercised or not. So, I woke up, exercised then went to work or I woke up did not exercise and then went to work. I noticed that on days that I exercised I was much warmer in my office than on days that I did not exercise. My office temperature was basically the same temperature, so my warmth was related to whether I exercised or not. I made this observation over many days and thought about whether I ate differently on different days at breakfast or at lunch or during the day. The fact that I exercised in the morning had the most important effect, until I lost quite a bit of weight. So, the fact that I exercised and burned calories in the morning was part of my weight loss equation. I also boosted my metabolism so that I continued to burn more calories during the day as well.

When my body fat percentage dropped, I became more sensitive to temperature. Of course I had less insulation, or fat to burn. So, at this point it didn’t matter if I exercised or not I was still cold in my office. As I thought about this I wondered what would happen if I ate something for lunch. I soon found that by eating a high calorie snack I began to feel warmer. Putting the sugar in my blood stream tended to increase my generation of body heat. Of course, this made quite a bit of sense.

Any way, those are just a few observations on my personal physiology…



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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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Exercise, Health