healthmedicinet

Welcome to Ask Healthy Living — in which you submit your most burning health questions and we do our best to ask the experts and get back to you. Have a question? Get in touch here and you could appear on Healthy Living!

“Ask Healthy Living” is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Please consult a qualified health care professional for personalized medical advice.

Am I at greater risk of muscle or joint injury when I exercise in the cold?

In general, cold-weather workouts are almost always safe, as long as you bundle up (layers are key) and pay extra attention to slick, slippery surfaces.

But what’s happening inside?

Cold weather certainly can increase your risk of straining or tearing something. That’s because the lower temps cause our muscles to tighten a little bit more.

“Think about a block of clay that’s been sitting there,” says Polly de Mille, exercise physiologist and coordinator of performance services at the Tisch Sports Performance Center at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. That cold block of clay would tear if you stretched it, compared to how pliable it would be if you spent some time warming it up in your hands first, she says. Our muscles and connective tissue also have less elasticity when the temperature gets lower, she says.

That’s why warming up is more important than at any other time of year, she says. In average temps, when you’re not using your muscles, most of your blood flows to your internal organs. When you start to call on your legs and arms to get moving, blood vessels open up to fuel those working muscles, she says. But when the mercury drops, “you’re amplifying that effect,” she says. If you jump right into a sudden, powerful movement, like sprinting, on a stiffer-than-normal muscle, that force could lead to injury.

The cold may also slow down some of our “sensory mechanisms”, she says. “Your nerves are colder, so there’s slower transmission rate,” making, say, your feet a little numb, which could throw off your balance, she says. It’s possible, then, to be doing damage without being totally aware of it. In warmer weather, you might read a twinge of pain as a signal to ease up; in cold weather, you might push yourself through the twinge toward injury.

The good news is cold-weather exercise injuries are preventable. “If you’re dressed appropriately for the weather and you do a gradual, proper warmup, you can avoid a lot of that,” she says. “Look at the warmup as literally warming up the muscle, tendon and other parts of your body to get ready for the greater forces that you’ll be applying to them in sprinting or jumping or landing.”

Have a question? Ask Healthy Living!

Also on HuffPost:

Loading Slideshow

• Cold Weather Burns Calories

  You may have heard of “brown fat,” a type of fat found naturally in parts of the body that, when triggered, can burn off other “white” fat. In a 2012 study, researchers found that cold weather seemed to set the brown fat into motion, and that a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/health/brown-fat-burns-ordinary-fat-study-finds.html”simply being cold could cause significant calorie burn/a. (Exercise may have a similar effect, as demonstrated in a study from around the same time, the New York Times reported.)

  The study, admittedly, was small — it only included six healthy men, to be exact. And experts caution that the obesity epidemic is not likely to be solved by the creation of a a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/brown-fat_b_1237541.html”brown-fat triggering pill/a. But at least the idea might offer a little comfort when you find yourself chilled to the bone.

• Cold Weather Brings Us Closer

  It can be tempting to spend the coldest mornings safely tucked under the covers; it’s only natural to want to avoid the most brutal temps. But during periods of such weather-induced isolation, we tend to reach out to contact our closest friends and family on the phone, and end up a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121010172126.htm”chatting with them for longer than usual/a, according to a 2012 study.

• Cold Weather Is Less Hospitable For Disease-Carrying Bugs

  During the summer of 2012 — when a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/west-nile-virus-cases-400_n_1916954.html”West Nile cases were climbing/a — much was made of the milder 2011-2012 winter and its effect on the disease-spreading mosquito population.

  The pests a href=”http://www.livescience.com/22748-why-west-nile-virus-bad.html”thrive in milder climates/a, meaning they were able to survive — and breed — all winter, just waiting to feast come spring.

  Freezing or below-freezing temps might kill off some skeeters (and ticks), thereby a href=”http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2010/January/out-in-the-cold”protecting you from the illnesses they are known to spread/a.

• Cold Weather Brings Greater Appreciation Of Brighter Days

  Week after week of balmy weather sounds pretty lovely right about now, but there’s evidence to suggest that it a href=”http://plone.psychologie.hu-berlin.de/prof/perdev/pdf/2008/Denissen_Weather_Mood_2008.pdf”doesn’t necessarily make you emhappy/em/a.

  In fact, some research suggests that if the weather never changes, you start taking that sunshine for granted. Shivering through the cold a href=”http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200510/mood-cold-comfort”makes those warm spring days seem even better/a when they finally come along, according to Psychology Today.

• Cold Weather Can Reduce Inflammation

  There’s a reason putting ice on an injury works. That drop in temperature reduces inflammation in, say, a sprained ankle or stubbed toe. But the theory works on a much grander scale, too — cold temperatures can reduce inflammation and pain all over.

  In fact, athletes and spa-goers even have a remedy of sorts available for muscle recovery. A 2011 study found that, at extremely low temperatures, such treatments, called a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/study-of-the-day-cold-can-help-runners-recover-from-exercise/249951/”cryotherapy/a, did more for athletes to recover from physical activity than simply resting. Runners who were exposed to temperatures as low as -166 degrees F recovered from exercise faster than those who given other therapies or told to rest, The Atlantic reported.

  At spas, cryotherapy chambers appear much like steam rooms — with, of course, the opposite effect. And while the majority of us probably won’t be taking a trip to the a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/22/healthy-spa-trends_n_1216321.html#s622809title=Chill_Out”cold room/a, it certainly beats summer swelling!

• Cold Weather May Boost Your Body Image

  While we certainly don’t advise going all-out on the a href=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/19/healthy-comfort-foods-winter_n_2507627.html”wintertime comfort foods/a, we do appreciate the escape from the pressure to get a “bikini body.” It’s a great time to focus on fitness — hello, New Year’s resolutions — without the pressure to do so for your looks alone.