I kept cranking the heat but still felt cold — experts explain the surprising cause

The radiator groaned like an old dog, rattling in protest as I twisted the knob toward its final, angry red notch. Outside, January wind worried the windows and shuffled dry leaves down the street. Inside, the little apartment should have been toasty, a cocoon of central heat and soft lamplight. Instead, my toes felt like ice coins pressed into my socks. My shoulders were tense, my hands stiff around a mug of tea that kept cooling faster than I could drink it. I kept cranking the heat, watching the thermostat climb, but somehow my body stayed stubbornly cold—as if my own internal climate had quietly declared winter and refused to budge.

The Night the Thermostat Lied

That night, I did what so many of us do when comfort slips a little out of reach: I blamed the thermostat. Maybe it was broken. Maybe the radiators were clogged. I clicked the temperature up again—one more degree, one more little leap of faith. The air coming from the vents was warm. The thermostat number marched obediently upward. But my body didn’t seem to care; the shiver under my skin crawled on, slow and steady, like a tide coming in.

Outside, the streetlights painted long amber rivers on the wet pavement. I watched a couple hurry past my window, bundled in big coats, talking, laughing, leaving little bursts of frosty breath in their wake. They looked cold too, but in a different way—animated, moving, alive in their discomfort. I felt more like a stone someone had left in a freezer and forgotten about.

It took me a while to realize this was more than a drafty room. I’d slept badly for days, my appetite had gone oddly quiet, and I kept zoning out mid-conversation, as if my brain was wading through syrup. It wasn’t just that the air was chilly. It was that my body seemed to have lost interest in producing its own warmth.

When the Chill Isn’t in the Air

Later, sitting in a café wrapped in an oversized scarf, I told all this to a friend of mine, an environmental physiologist who studies how the human body responds to weather. She nodded slowly, the way someone does when they’ve heard a version of your story many times before.

“You know,” she said, “we keep thinking we live in the same world as the thermostat. But your thermostat reads the room. Your body reads you.”

She slid a napkin toward her and drew a little stick figure with heat lines wavering around it. “Your internal temperature regulation isn’t just about the air outside you. It’s about sleep, stress, hormones, blood flow, what you’ve eaten, even what you’ve been thinking about. The room can be warm, and you can still be cold because your body is making different decisions than your thermostat.”

I thought about this as a family wandered in from the street, stamping snow from their boots. The kids shook off their jackets and immediately started climbing on the furniture, radiating body heat like little suns. The parents hovered at the doorway, still bundled, still rubbing their hands together. One room, one air, but four different climates walking around inside four different bodies.

The Body’s Quiet Weather System

Your body doesn’t just sit there passively soaking up whatever temperature the room happens to be. Deep inside, there’s a quiet control tower—primarily in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus—constantly measuring and adjusting, like a tiny weather service dedicated entirely to you.

When you step into a cold room, nerves in your skin whisper the news up to your brain: “It’s chilly out here.” The hypothalamus listens and decides what to do. Maybe it tightens blood vessels in your hands and feet, conserving heat near the organs you absolutely can’t live without. Maybe it makes your muscles shiver, burning fuel to generate warmth. Maybe it nudges you to move around more or to reach for that sweater hanging from the back of the chair.

But that control tower is also listening to a lot of other reports at the same time: hormone levels, stress signals, energy reserves, even your emotional state. On some days, that background chatter changes the forecast more than any open window or drafty door ever could.

Hidden Factor	How It Makes You Feel Cold	What You Might Notice
Stress & Anxiety	Shifts blood flow away from skin and extremities.	Cold hands and feet even in warm rooms.
Lack of Sleep	Disrupts hormonal control of temperature.	Feeling oddly “chilled” and foggy after late nights.
Poor Nutrition	Less fuel for your body’s internal furnace.	Shivering easily, low energy, lightheadedness.
Hormone Imbalances	Slows metabolism or alters blood flow.	Chill that lingers despite warm surroundings.
Sedentary Time	Muscles aren’t moving, so they’re not generating heat.	Getting cold at your desk or on long couch sessions.

The Surprising Culprit: It Wasn’t Just the House

When I finally spoke with a few experts—physicians, a sleep researcher, and a psychologist who studies stress—they all circled back to a shared idea: feeling cold in a warm place often has less to do with your walls and more to do with your lifestyle, your emotions, and your hidden health.

Stress: The Invisible Draft

Think about the last time you had to make a nerve-wracking phone call, or open a difficult email. Did your hands get clammy? Did your feet turn cold? That’s not your imagination. Acute stress activates your fight-or-flight response, routing blood away from your skin and toward your core and big muscles, as if you were about to sprint away or square up to something with teeth.

In our mostly desk-bound lives, those stress sparks usually arrive while we’re sitting very still: at the computer, behind the wheel, in bed scrolling on a glare-bright phone. Your body secretly gears up for motion, then gets none. Blood hangs back from your surface, your muscles don’t warm you, and the end result is a familiar, creeping chill.

Over time, chronic stress can nudge your entire system toward this cooler, conservation-focused state. You become the person who always has a sweater, who hugs hot mugs just to feel the warmth seep slowly into your fingers. The room doesn’t change. Your stress does.

Sleep Debt and the Drained Furnace

Then there’s sleep—the quiet architect of almost everything that feels right or wrong in your body. Temperature regulation runs on a rhythm, rising during the day and dipping at night as part of your internal clock. When you shortchange your sleep, that rhythm frays.

Study after study shows that even one night of lousy sleep can blunt your body’s response to cold. You may shiver later than you should. Blood vessels may not react as quickly. Hormones that help your cells churn out heat—like thyroid hormones and certain stress hormones that follow daily cycles—can drift off schedule too.

The result, according to the sleep researcher I spoke with, is a weird combination of fatigue and fragile warmth. “People describe it as feeling ‘thin-skinned’ to the weather,” she told me. “They’re not just tired. Their internal climate control is tired.”

What You Eat, What You Do, What You Feel

On a gray afternoon, I sat in a quiet park watching people navigate the borderland between seasons. Some walked briskly, jackets open, cheeks flushed. Others huddled into scarves, shoulders hunched as if trying to retreat from the air itself. The thermostat would have read the same number for all of them. But each body had its own story.

Fuel for the Inner Fire

Your body is always burning energy, even when you’re doing nothing. A warm, stable internal core temperature of about 37°C (98.6°F, more or less) doesn’t just happen—it’s paid for in calories. And not just any calories, but a steady trickle of energy your cells can access efficiently.

Skip meals regularly, heavily restrict what you eat, or rely mostly on ultra-processed foods that spike and crash your blood sugar, and your body starts to economize. One of the easiest levers it can pull? Dialing down the funds it spends on staying warm.

It doesn’t mean your core temperature plunges dangerously every time you get hungry. But repeated under-fueling can leave you with less metabolic “cushion.” You may notice that you become cold faster than the people around you, or that a light breeze on a fall day bites more sharply than it used to.

Protein, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates all matter here. They break down over different time scales, feeding that inner furnace in a gradual, dependable way. A bowl of hot, slow-cooked grains, a hearty soup with beans or lentils, a handful of nuts—all of these are more than just cozy clichés. They’re literal warmth, stored in a form your body knows how to use.

Stillness Is Its Own Season

There’s another quiet thief of warmth that modern life has perfected: stillness. Long stretches at a desk, afternoons ghosting through emails, evenings flattened against the sofa under the dim blue wash of a screen. Muscles are nature’s space heaters. When they contract, even gently, they spill heat into your tissues and your bloodstream.

So when the experts say, “Move more,” they’re not just talking about heart disease and long-term health—they’re talking about how your world literally feels, today, in your skin. Short walks, a lazy set of stretches, a habit of standing up every thirty minutes to refill a glass of water or look out the window—these tiny rituals are like tossing more logs onto the fire.

Emotions That Change the Air From the Inside

The psychologist I interviewed put it this way: “We talk about feeling ‘chilled to the bone’ by bad news, or ‘warmth’ when we’re with someone we love, as if those were just metaphors. But they’re not. Emotions speak directly to your nervous system, and your nervous system governs how warm you feel.”

Loneliness can make a room feel colder. Anxiety, especially if it’s chronic and humming in the background, can keep your body in low-level fight-or-flight, prioritizing survival over comfort. On the flip side, laughter, trust, and even a good old-fashioned hug can change your perception of temperature in a measurable way. There’s research showing that people literally rate a room as warmer when they’re reminded of emotionally warm experiences.

So when you’re huddled under a blanket on the couch, socks doubled, heat turned up, and you still feel cold—some of that may be about what’s happening outdoors. But some of it might be about what’s happening in your relationships, your mind, and your history of safety and connection.

When the Chill Is a Whisper From Your Health

Of course, there are times when feeling cold is more than a mood, a habit, or a season of stress. Your body can use cold as a kind of language, a subtle symptom that something underneath needs attention.

Endocrinologists see this a lot with thyroid disorders. The thyroid acts like a master dimmer-switch for metabolism. When it’s underactive, everything slows—heart rate, digestion, energy, and yes, heat production. People with low thyroid function often describe a persistent, bone-deep sense of chill, even in the middle of summer.

Iron deficiency and certain types of anemia can do something similar. When your blood can’t carry oxygen efficiently, your tissues struggle to burn fuel for heat and other functions. The result can be paleness, fatigue, shortness of breath—and a cold that seems to come from the inside out.

Circulatory issues, low blood pressure, some medications, and autoimmune conditions can all play their part too. None of this means every cold-nosed afternoon is a hidden disease. But if your personal winter lasts long past the weather’s, if you’re layering more and more while friends strip down to T-shirts, it might be your body’s way of asking to be checked.

Turning Down the Thermostat, Turning Toward Yourself

On a later winter night, months after my cold spell began, I did something that surprised me: I turned the thermostat down. Not dramatically, just a few degrees—enough to hear the radiators sigh and soften their clanking protest.

In the weeks between those two nights, I’d started sleeping a little more, almost against my will at first. I stopped bringing my phone into bed. I let myself fall into the kind of heavy, dream-thick sleep I hadn’t had since childhood. I made a habit of actually eating a real lunch, something warmer and more substantial than the quick snacks I used to string together over my keyboard.

I also did something else, less visible but just as important: I let myself acknowledge how worn down I was. The endless tension I carried in my shoulders, the low buzz of worry that had become my background noise, the habit of saying “I’m fine” while my body lined my bones with frost.

None of those changes came with instant results. But slowly, the inner season shifted. My hands stopped feeling like small, separate worlds of ice. I noticed I was shivering less while working. I laughed more easily. My cheeks flushed without the help of space heaters and scalding cups of tea.

The thermostat on the wall became less the star of the story and more of a side character. I still appreciated it, of course—I’m not ascetic, and there’s nothing noble about being cold just to prove a point. But I stopped believing it was lying to me. Instead, I realized, it had always been telling the truth about the room. I just hadn’t been listening to what my body was trying to say about me.

Listening for Your Own Weather

You might be reading this right now in a too-cold office, or a rented room with radiators that sound like they’re haunted, or a carefully curated living room with plants and woven blankets and a heat bill that makes your jaw clench. You might be the person always nudging the thermostat up, always slipping on another pair of socks, wondering why your bones never quite thaw.

There are practical steps you can take, of course: layering clothing that actually insulates, sealing drafts, stepping away from your desk for short bursts of movement, choosing meals that fuel instead of just fill. You can check in with a health professional if the cold has become a constant, unnerving companion.

But you can also use that stubborn chill as a kind of invitation. A nudge to look at the less obvious climate you live in every day: your pace, your stress, your sleep, your connections to other people. The quality of your inner life has a way of slipping into your skin, into your fingers and toes, into how the air feels on the back of your neck when no one else seems to notice the draft.

When you sit in a warm room and still feel cold, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or dramatic or broken. It means your body is speaking in the language it’s always used, long before digital thermostats and central heating: a language of shivers and flushes, of goosebumps and sighs, of heat stored and spent. It’s telling you not just about the room you’re in, but about the life you’re living inside that room.

And sometimes, the most surprising cause of your chill isn’t the winter outside your window at all. It’s the unacknowledged winter inside you—one that softens, degree by quiet degree, when you finally begin to listen.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I feel cold even when the thermostat says it’s warm?

Because your body’s sense of temperature depends on more than room air. Stress, sleep, nutrition, hormones, circulation, and even your emotions can all make you feel cold in a space that’s objectively warm.

Could constant coldness be a sign of a medical problem?

Yes. Conditions like low thyroid function, anemia, circulation problems, or certain hormonal and autoimmune issues can cause persistent coldness. If the chill is new, worsening, or comes with symptoms like fatigue, weight changes, or shortness of breath, you should speak with a healthcare professional.

Can stress really make my hands and feet cold?

It can. Stress activates your fight-or-flight response, which redirects blood away from your skin and extremities toward your core and large muscles. That makes fingers, toes, and even the tip of your nose feel cold.

Does improving sleep actually help me feel warmer?

Often, yes. Sleep helps regulate hormones and your internal body clock, both of which influence how well you maintain temperature. Better sleep can improve your body’s ability to respond to cold and keep your core temperature steady.

What are some simple things I can do to feel warmer without just cranking the heat?

Eat regular, balanced meals, move your body throughout the day, manage stress with breathing or mindfulness, dress in layers that trap air, and take warm drinks or showers. If you still feel unusually cold, consider a medical checkup to rule out underlying issues.