Cold weather affects your overall body temperature and can lead to numbness and cold extremities as well as hypothermia. While exercising in winter weather, cold air enters your nose, mouth and lungs. This air, depending on its temperature and humidity, can lead to certain reactions in your body. Pain or numbness in your mouth or nose can occur, as can more serious conditions like asthma. Dress appropriately and cover your head, face and mouth in extremely cold temperatures.
Cold Weather Effects
During an outdoor winter excursion, your body reacts to the external temperature, attempting to maintain your core body temperature. Your organs receive top billing when it comes to blood supply, so your body constricts blood vessels to shunt blood away from your extremities and toward your core. As a result, your fingers, toes and nose can become cold and numb. Shivering may also occur; it is an automatic reaction that creates warmth through muscle movement. Shivering is actually a sign of mild hypothermia, where your body temperature drops from around 98.6 to 97 degrees or lower, podiatrist Dr. Stephen Pribut explains on his website.
Cold in Your Airways
Adding layers of clothing to your body is fairly simple; however, it is difficult to keep your mouth and nose insulated from the cold air. Breathing cold air is potentially painful. Breathing through your mouth does not warm the air before it hits your lungs. The colder and drier the air, the more likely you are to feel the effects. Cold air can feel painful as you breathe it in. It can also trigger bronchospasm; asthmatics should avoid running in the cold or take extra precautions to warm air before it reaches your lungs.
Wind Chill Factor
Wind chill greatly affects the temperature -- making it much colder -- and can make breathing more difficult. The wind can also blow snow and freezing rain in your face, further chilling or chapping your skin. Wearing sunglasses or goggles as well as putting lotion or balm on your face can protect you from wind-driven precipitation. Covering your nose and mouth is essential, as is running into the wind on your way out. Running into a headwind on your way back can chill your body, physical therapist Randall Brown warns on the Marathon Training website, leading to hypothermia.
Combating the Cold
Before you head out on your run, dress properly to keep out the cold. Warming your head and facial muscles is also important; facial "cooling" affects the vagus nerve, which runs down your neck and throat. Stimulus of this nerve can cause pain or tingling in the back of the mouth and throat and may also cause bronchospasm and decreased heart rate, Pribut warns. To avoid mouth pain and other cold weather effects, wear a balaclava -- a hybrid hat and face-covering -- or a mask to warm the air before you breathe.
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