Baby It’s Cold Outside...Wear a Hat©

 

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Conventional wisdom is that you lose 40% to 50% of your body heat through your head, so wear a hat.  Sometimes conventional wisdom is correct, but sometimes, like in this case, it is nothing but a wives’ tale! 

 

We’ve all been brought up to believe that you lose more heat through your head than anywhere else, but it just isn’t true.  The root of this myth appears to be experiments performed by the U.S. Military which exposed test subjects to frigid temperatures.  The results of the experiment suggested that 40 to 45% of all body heat is lost through the head due to the experiment leaving the subjects heads exposed to the cold.  The conclusions of this experiment were widely reported, and so the wives’ tale began and over time became common knowledge.

 

But the fact of the matter is that heat is lost from the body as a function of the amount of skin that is exposed to the cold, and the head makes up approximately 9% to 10% of your body’s surface area.  According to Dr. Richard Ingebretsen, a wilderness medicine expert at the University of Utah School of Medicine, if your head really lost 45% of your body’s heat, then you would lose about 40 times as much heat from your head as any other part of your body.  This is unlikely!

 

“The real reason we lose heat through our head is because most of the time when we’re outside in the cold, we’re clothed...if you don’t have a hat on, you lose heat through your head, just as you would lose heat through your legs if you were wearing shorts.”  Dr. Richard Ingebretsen

 

According to Dr. Tyler Quinn, an assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at WVU, your body regulates its temperature by moving blood throughout your body.  The cold transfers through your skin by chilling the blood at skin  surface, this chilled blood is then moved throughout the body where it is dispersed.  A similar thing happens, in reverse when it is hot out.

 

 

Your head is highly vascularized, with large blood vessels close to the surface, so heat dispersal to the rest of the body can occur faster there than in less vascularized parts of your body.  Also since there is less fat around your head, your face and head will be more sensitive to temperature changes than the rest of your body.  

  

So wear a hat when you go out in the winter anyways, you’ll feel warmer. 

 

Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Baby It’s Cold Outside...Put Socks On©”, where we will talk about the wives’ tale that if you put on socks, you warm up immediately.

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

Sources

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4667044/pdf/indhealth-53-533.pdf

 

Davis, Susan; “Do We Really Lose Most of Our Heat Through Our Heads?”, January 04, 2011, [© 2005 - 2024 WebMD LLC], https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/do-we-really-lose-most-of-our-heat-through-our-heads, accessed November 8, 2025

 

Headquarters Department of the Army, Survival FM 3-05.70, May 2002, [Washington, DC, 17 May 2002 ], https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-05-70.pdf, accessed November 8, 2025

 

Henrikson, Eric; “Do we really lose most of our body heat through our head?”, January 12, 2024, KXAN, https://www.kxan.com/news/science/do-we-really-lose-most-of-our-body-heat-through-our-head/#:~:text=This%20means%20you%20can%20feel,this%20part%20of%20the%20legend.&text=Copyright%202025%20Nexstar%20Media%20Inc,broadcast%2C%20rewritten%2C%20or%20redistributed, accessed November 8, 2025

 

Pan, Jefferson; “WVU professor explains how much heat is actually lost through the head”, January 9, 2025, WBOY, https://www.wboy.com/news/monongalia/wvu-professor-explains-how-much-heat-is-actually-lost-through-the-head/#:~:text=Quinn%20previously%20studied%20exercise%20physiology,yourself%20in%20cold%20temperatures%20here.&text=Copyright%202025%20Nexstar%20Media%20Inc,over%20the%20next%20few%20years?&text=What%20is%20your%20feedback, accessed November 8, 2025

 

Vreeman, Rachel C; and Carroll, Aaron E; “Festive medical myths More medical myths hit the dust”, BMJ, December 17, 2008, page 337, https://scholarworks.indianapolis.iu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/1a1897df-5cf6-451e-ab06-d9127bf0b22a/content, accessed November 8, 2025

 

Waters, Thomas MD; “Do You Really Lose Most of Your Body’s Heat Through Your Head?”, [© 2024 Cleveland Clinic], https://health.clevelandclinic.org/body-heat-loss, accessed November 8, 2025