How to Warm Up if You’re Always Cold

What to do for ‘Always Feeling Cold’ and need to ‘Warm Up’

With Empty Cold you have deficiency of Yang energy. You need a ‘to do’ list:

1. You need to avoid anything that exhausts yang (like cold food and over-exertion)
2. Do things that boost yang
3. You may need treatment over a period of time to clear any remaining Cold, and also to help Warm your Yang

Ifs and Buts

Just a few, mainly because you could have some of the symptoms of ’empty cold’ from other causes.

For example, cold hands are usually from yang deficiency, but they could also come from 

• Blood deficiency, say from anaemia in Western medicine, or from poor digestion or poor food choices or bad nutrition. If you also get palpitations and faintness or even dizziness, then you’ve probably got a particular kind of Blood deficiency called Heart-Blood deficiency.
• Qi Stagnation, arising from emotional tensions. This usually improves when the causes go. This applies to fingers and toes more than legs and arms.

Cold feet could also be from Blood deficiency, and in women a likely cause is Liver Blood deficiency. But the main cause of cold feet is usually Kidney Yang deficiency.

Even that’s not quite all, as Phlegm can disrupt the flow of Qi along the channels, leading to cold hands and, yes there are other causes too, but I expect your mind is beginning to wander so let’s leave it at that!

Important! What type are you?

To warm up there are various things you can do and they work – short-term – for most of us. But long-term, there are too many variables to be able to  give the ‘correct’ answer and know it applies to everyone. We’re all too different!

Take one ancient and one modern way of classifying people. Ayurvedic medicine possibly noticed it first (the ‘vata’, ‘pitta’ and ‘kapha’ types: see more under Tridosha), but American psychologist William Sheldrake came up with something pretty similar in the 1940s. He called it ‘somato-typing‘.  In both systems there were the three broadly similar types.

Most of us are a mixture of different types, though some of us are clearly just one type.

It’s pretty well impossible to change your ‘type’ but once you understand it you’ll know what to do.

• Vata people have what Sheldrake called ‘ectomorphic’ physiques. They are slim and without much musculature. They are restless people and do lots so they burn up energy fast. Lacking fat, they lose heat quickly. They suffer from cold and nervous diseases.
• Pitta people have mesomorphic bodies. Their metabolisms burn fast and warmly and they have enough muscle and fat to keep it inside. So they tend to be warm people and suffer from hot diseases. We needn’t worry about them for this page! (However, even pitta types can overdo it, when they may lose their ‘fire’ and get cold. But because they regenerate fire quickly, they soon get warm again.)
• Kapha people have endomorphic bodies, rather heavy or well-padded. They put on weight very easily and it’s hard to get rid of it. They tend towards sluggishness and congestion eg of phlegm. Their metabolisms are slow but, if they build muscle, muscle activity will quickly warm them and then, because they have good layers of fat, they’ll stay warm.

Short-Term vs Long-Term Practice

In the short-term, all three types would warm up – though at different speeds – from the advice below.

But to stay warmer for longer, in other words to improve our metabolisms, the long-term advice is different for each type. There’s more on this below. 

The Effect of Time and Age

It’s also important that we start early! As people age, their systems lose efficiency and slow down. So a 20 year old starting today to put the right habits in place has far more chance of succeeding than an 80 year old! That’s because the 80 year old body won’t respond so well as the 20 year body.

Also, the 20 year old has more time to correct mistakes. (Still, it’s probably never too late to make the effort to start …!)

General Advice for Empty Cold and building Yang to warm up

Short-term advice, for EVERYONE

First, make an appointment with a practitioner of Chinese medicine or acupuncture. They have access to several thousand years of experience and know-how. Why experiment when someone probably already knows the answers!

• • Avoid cold food/drink. Eat warming food/drink. Improve your nutrition.
  • Avoid over-exertion and overwork: practise self-restraint with sex! Men, maybe read our page on sexual energy.
  • Take gentle exercise to move qi: not exhausting! Enough to get you breathing heavily for 20 minutes daily. Also, reduce time spent sitting still, such as at a computer. Get up and move around more often, say every half-hour, for 5 minutes.
  • Improve your sleep habits. Your body repairs itself during sleep. You need quality and quantity sleep. Read our page on insomnia.
  • Read my book Yang Deficiency
  • If feeling cold, whether from sitting too long, or because you’re outside and feeling cold, do short bits of vigorous exercise, like the nitric oxide dump.
  • Wear more – put on more layers. Several layers of thin clothing will keep you warmer than a single layer of thick clothing. Don’t get cold. When outside, wear something warm on your head and warm gloves on your hands.

• Wear socks in bed, and with footwear, make sure it is large enough that you can wear several pairs of socks at the same time, rather than one thick pair of socks. (Of course, footwear should be waterproof!)
• As you improve, get into the habit, gradually, of taking cold showers the right way. This stimulates your body to produce yang energy.
• But, if you get cold from exposure to cold read our page on external heat and cold. Particularly, read the bit about a hot bath and how long to stay there. It’s about half-way down that page.
• An acupuncturist would almost certainly use Heat as part of the treatment. Traditionally  this is by moxibustion on acupuncture  points that help your body’s metabolism work more efficiently.
• To some extent you may help yourself by applying a microwavable personal warmer such as a wheatybag or hot water bottle to your lumbar back and to your abdomen. (With the wheatybag you first warm it in a microwave: but take care to read the instructions. It’s easy to cause a fire. See this page on the matter by ‘Which?’, from the British Consumers Association.) When placing the bag or hot bottle on the skin take great care not to burn yourself – it’s easily done! It’s best to wrap it in several layers of cloth, try that for a while, then if you need to, only gradually and cautiously remove layers as you get used to it. Old people in particular should be cautious because old nerves don’t convey ‘too hot’ efficiently and may burn before they notice.
• Further down this page is a summary of what Western medicine offers. Some of it may apply to you. If for example you are hypothyroid you may benefit from thyroxine.

Longer-term Advice on Warming up for YOUR type

Vata ie Ectomorphic types

1. 1. 1. 1. Routine: regular good habits really help you. But your type is so open to new ideas and ways of doing things that establishing good habits, and sticking to them, is very difficult. But, if you survive, age and maturity will incline you to what works.
         2. The Vata type often likes high intensity sport, running, triathlons, cycling, that get your adrenalin going, but these can easily over-exhaust you, and generally better, for you, are activities that require physical focus and directed effort. Although the slow, steady movements and poses of yoga are good for you, if you don’t know what you are doing you’ll either do them wrong or, in cold climates, you’ll get cold and discouraged. To increase your metabolism, poses that require effort and concentration like the plank, are often best. In warmer climates, the slow deliberative poses of hatha yoga are great for you. However, and this may surprise you …
         3. … you may be astonished how effective a bit more muscle will make to how warm you feel! Find a gym with experienced personal trainers and begin weight-lifting. Because of the type of person you are, you’ll tend to overdo it! You’ll expect your body to be able to train daily. Take my word for it: don’t. Train several times a week, leaving several days between training. If you over-extend yourself, (see above under reasons for yang deficiency) you’ll put yourself back. Worse still, you’ll lose heart. But, when muscle builds up, you’ll find you stay warmer for longer – up to several days after exercising!
         4. Don’t expect to put on muscle as fast as pitta and kapha types. It just won’t happen and you’ll get demoralised. Believe me, you will get results even if you weight-lift only twice a week, spread out. Again, please mark my words! You really can cause yourself months of lowered energy by over-doing it.
         5. Don’t spend too much time on warming up exercises like running or pacing. Yes, you shouldn’t begin on the weights until you are warmed and stretched, but too much cardiovascular work will get you out of breath and can exhaust you before you begin. However, once warm, under instruction, take to the weights, but not too heavy to begin with (indeed, not too heavy to end with either!).
         6. To put on muscle and weight you must eat more. Because you won’t (trust me) put on huge amounts of muscle, overdoing the protein is a waste of money – though you’ll be tempted! Too much protein powder or meat will just snarl up your digestion, make you smell, give you either constipation or diarrhoea, and make you irritable! What you need are vegetables, grains and some protein, which could come from lentils and beans. Make sure what you eat is cooked and WARM, not cold, when you eat it. You also need fluids, and Clogstoun Congee was made for  you. Beware Cold Foods. Prefer Warm foods – read our page on Hot foods but don’t eat those marked as very hot. (Once again – listen! You do not need and your body won’t accommodate 10 (ten) eggs for breakfast every day. That’s what crazy pitta or kapha-type people eat, and it doesn’t really do them much good either, but it takes longer for them to realise.)

            

         7. Your body tends towards coldness and dryness, so food that warms and moisturises you is best. Avoid pungent, astringent and bitter foods which, respectively, dry out, tighten and burn out fluids. For you, foods that are sweet, slightly salty and a bit sour are often best – but not junk food even with those tastes! Root vegetables, seawater fish – especially oily fish like mackerel and salmon, and lightly cooked or steamed green vegetables suit you.
         8. For you, food should be warm, but not too spicy. Too spicy just makes you sweat, losing the valuable heat that you’re trying to engender. So avoid hot curries, peppers and chillies. Turmeric and ginger are usually good spices for you: read more about turmeric and ginger here.
         9. Breathing. Go to a good yoga or QiGong teacher and learn how to breath. In yoga, to increase your metabolism, you might learn the bellows breath, for instance. It’s hard work. But it’s warming. Also it helps your heart work better. (But it does tend to raise your blood pressure, temporarily. However, if you’re eating properly and taking the exercise suggested, with good sleep, they will help to look after your blood pressure.) If you do that breathing technique, finish off with a much slower, steadying breath technique to calm you down.
         10. What about your mind? The form of meditation called ‘counting your breath’ really suits you. It steadies and centers you. Read our page on this form of meditation, but I suggest you build up to only 10 or 15 minutes maximum a day: that’s enough for Vata types.
         11. Herbs? In my opinion, herbs to boost your Kidney Yang energy are less useful than herbs to keep you Spleen working properly. Being a Vata type, you think too much, which tends to strain your Spleen, which in turn makes your digestion less effective and leads to the build up of Damp and Phlegm. The result? You feel heavy and slow.
         12. Ayurvedic practitioners have a list of foods that they believe help you. They include warm milk and honey which Chinese medicine practitioners view with caution. But taken shortly before bedtime you may find they help you sleep more soundly and wake with more energy. Try it. If, however, they give you heartburn and phlegm (suggesting you probably have a more pitta or kapha type metabolism than you thought) desist, or take less.
         13. Finally, please realise that you can’t do this just for a month or two and expect lifelong results. You’ll be doing this for the rest of your life. Also, results won’t come quickly, but if you persist, they WILL come!
         14. Main advice? Protect yourself from cold, and eat warm foods and drinks!

    

   Kapha or Endomorphic types

   1. 1. 1. If you’re a chilly Kapha type who dislikes exercise, this is going to be hard! That’s because you need to build some muscle under those layers of solid body (called ‘fat’ by the ignorant and ‘sturdy’ by the more enlightened). That means an activity like weight-lifting, and that’s hard work.
         2. You should cut down on sweet, salty and sour comfy foods, crisps, pretzels, sweets, refined food, junk food and the rest, which tend to increase your weight but not your muscle.
         3. As to what does suit your type, millennia of experience suggests that pungent and astringent food work for you, such as spicy food, curries and so on. Also bitter foods really suit you, including spinach, cabbage, kale and other collard greens – and the occasional black coffee – but read our page on Coffee first!
         4. Because your body tends to ‘heaviness’, foods that increase Damp and Phlegm don’t suit you (though I bet you like them!): too much oil or fat, dairy food, high gluten foods, cakes, ice-cream and many baked foods like cakes and puddings.
         5. For more on the foods to avoid, read our page on foods that cause Damp, and our page on Phlegm.
         6. Because your digestion is fairly efficient your body does well on less food than you might wish! Aim for warm soups, stews, steamed vegetables and low glycaemic fruit like apples, apricots, cherries and oranges. Avoid dried fruit, like dates and currants.
         7. As to weight-lifting, take good professional advice, and don’t over-strain. Unlike the vata types (see above) kapha bodies have huge reserves and can train more often. Even so, rest for at least a day between training sessions. But, here’s some comfort: kapha bodies put on muscle comparatively easily!
         8. Regular exercise, especially with those muscles you’re building, will help you stay warm for days after the exercise itself. You have in your Kapha body the potential for more stamina than the other types. Your problem is getting going, but once you do get going you’re hard to stop! If possibly find an exercise you enjoy and do it with other people, because usually you get on well with others and their company can drag you out of your lethargy.
         9. Although building muscle instead of fat is best to help you build a warmer metabolism, you also benefit from short blasts of high activity, cardiovascular exercise and rapid resistance, high repetition training. Also ashtanga yoga (which combines poses with breath and movement) and hot yoga.
         10. Sleep: good quality and quantity sleep is vital.  Your body repairs and builds itself during good sleep. Read our page on insomnia.
         11. To increase muscle safely you must eat more of the right kinds of food. Read our page on Blood Building foods. And again, (important reminder!) avoid foods that lead to Damp or Phlegm.
         12. More spice in your food? It warms and helps to increase your metabolism. Such spices include ginger and turmeric. Read our page on Warm Foods, and avoid Cold Foods.

    

   What do I think of the Wim Hof method?

   Click to read about the Wim Hof method.

   Wim Hof looks to me mainly like a Pitta (mesomorphic) type. These generate internal warmth more easily than vata (ectomorphic) and kapha (endomorphic) people.

   However, with application, Kapha types may also benefit from the method.

   I think Vata (ectomorphic) people should be very cautious when embarking on the Wim Hof method. I don’t say that it cannot work for them, but they are naturally slim, lacking both muscle and body fat. That means they don’t warm up easily and they do lose heat quickly. For them, it would mainly be the breathing and internal meditative systems that might work – but they’d find it hard. I would also urge that they continue to wear light clothing. Probably they should build some muscle before embarking on the Wim Hof system.

   Young Vata people would respond faster than when older. Older Vata types might have more self-discipline and persistence, but their bodies are less efficient. If they follow Wim Hof, they should do it cautiously!