How is shivering useful

David C. Wright, corresponding author on the study, commented on the future direction of the work 'In this study we show that exercise training helps build limb muscle and in turn offers better protection against cold conditions.

We would now like to determine if the responses that we saw in males also occurred in females. It would also be interesting to determine if obesity impacts the effects that we saw. Journal The Journal of Physiology.

What Causes Shivering with Fever? Medically reviewed by Stacy Sampson, D. Causes Treating a fever Managing shivering with fever Seeking help Outlook People typically associate shivering with being cold, so you may wonder why you shiver when you have a fever.

Why we shiver. How to treat a fever. What to do if you have shivering with fever. When to seek help. Read this next. Medically reviewed by Cameron White, M. Medically reviewed by Judith Marcin, M. Medically reviewed by Mia Armstrong, MD. Understanding Familial Mediterranean Fever. Medically reviewed by Stella Bard, MD.

Medically reviewed by Alana Biggers, M. Should You Sweat Out a Fever? Brown fat makes up only a small percentage of our total fat stores. But unlike more common white fat, brown fat is more useful to us because it easily keeps us warm. If the mice got tired, they could have perhaps simply begun making heat by burning off stores of brown fat, but that doesn't seem to have been the case.

The sedentary mice were colder than their fit counterparts, meaning that their brown fat stores couldn't quite make up the difference. Being able to shiver well seems to play an important role in staying warm. The researchers didn't directly measure how active the mice's muscles were during the experiment, so they say there's still further work ahead to directly prove their theory that exercise leads to better shivering and protection from the cold.

And the experiment was in mice, so there's no evidence of this in humans yet, either. If there's anyone out there who might be willing to test it, however, it's probably Wim Hof. The Dutch daredevil has held records for sitting and swimming in icy water and has run marathons barefoot above the Arctic Circle. He attributes his abilities to regular exposure to the cold and to a special breathing regimen.

Exactly how he withstands the cold — and if other people could ever truly do the same — is uncertain, though one study did find higher levels of brown fat. That jibes with studies finding more brown fat in people exposed to the cold.

A crucial part of his "method," however, also seems to be exercise, and as this most recent research indicates, being fit is probably another big boost to our bodies' furnaces. Perhaps he'd like to step up and volunteer?