Good afternoon everybody, I hope you're keeping super well this week. Welcome to another episode of Shameen's Model Health Podcast for those looking to optimize their long-term health and weight goals. I am Shameen Lini, I'm a fitness and nutrition expert and a biohacker. I'm very, very grateful to have you back here again with me this week as always.
And I just want to highlight that the content in these podcasts is not to be taken as medical advice and is for informational purposes only. So this week's podcast, we're looking at low body temperature and what does it mean? So I did a post a while back about low body temperature and what it could mean in my Facebook biohacking group. And I was pretty astounded by the amount of comments it got.
So there was people saying their hands and feet are always cold or they have to wrap up in layers, even when their environmental temperature is not that bad, that their husband is always cold, I'm always freezing when I go to bed and those sort of comments. And that post of course inspired this week's podcast where I wanted to just touch on some root causes for your low body temperature and a little bit of direction on where you would be looking to address it. So temperature is probably one of the best indicators of your metabolism because the more energy you have, the better your temperature is. And so typically you're going to have symptoms of cold temperature, which are going to be cold hands or cold feet or those kind of things.
You're struggling to get the heat into yourself. You might be fatigued. Maybe you'll get all these symptoms if your body is having an issue, make an energy. So that would make me firstly think of per-mitochondrial function.
So really quickly, mitochondria are the little powerhouses in your cells that create ATP or energy. When mitochondria are not working properly, they cannot produce energy efficiently. There's many things that can affect per-mitochondrial function such as nutritional imbalance, lack of exercise, environmental toxins, maybe hormone imbalances, and even a lack of sunlight. And even sitting under fluorescent lighting for extended period stroke a day can have a detrimental effect on your mitochondria.
So if this is the root cause behind your low body temperature and it's not a genetic mitochondrial disease, adapting to a healthier lifestyle can help to address this. One where you've got your nutrition balance, you're getting some nice movement, maybe you're getting some natural sunlight and fresh air each day, but that's the direction you'd want to go if you're struggling with mitochondrial issues. The next would be low muscle mass. So low muscle mass is another reason why you might have low body temperatures.
And this obviously makes sense because muscles contain mitochondria. So the more muscles you have, the more mitochondria you have and the more energy your body produces. Energy being heat, of course. So adding in a good strand program, two or three times a week maybe can help you add even a little bit of lean muscle which can make a whole difference and turn up your internal thermometer.
So if everything else is looking good for you, you don't have tea, your nutrition is on point, you do get movement. Your movement is mostly cardio based. You might want to look like if you notice you don't carry a lot of muscle, you've low lean muscle mass, you might want to look in the direction of adding in some strength or weight training to your exercise routine. So next would be thyroid.
So low body temperature can be a symptom of hypothyroidism. Now you would have to check if you have other hypothyroidism symptoms or get tested before you get a sure diagnosis, but we know that thyroid hormone has a major effect on our metabolism and our metabolism is the sum of all chemical reactions in our body. So if we have maybe elevated reverse T3 or low free T3 or we've got the conversion process happening where you take the inactive T4 hormone and you convert that to the active T3, but let's say something along the way gets messed up, then this of course will have a spillover effect into your metabolism and your body temperature. There's also certain nutrients that have a major effect on thyroid conversions.
We know things like selenium are super important for thyroid conversion. Someone may have a decent, it may look like they have decent thyroid levels from a T4 perspective, but they may not have that conversion. And of course that's super important. So it could just be the lack of trace nutrients like selenium, zinc, even vitamin A, things that have an important role in thyroid hormone activation.
Stress hormones will also affect thyroid conversion. So that would make me look at cortisol. So if cortisol is very high, that will affect T4 to T3 conversion, so that inactive to active thyroid hormone. And cortisol dysregulation are being too low, so your cortisol being too low from say adrenal fatigue, we'll see your metabolism struggle there.
So you really have to be careful with what you're doing. Getting tested of course is going to be important and look at all your other symptoms. So if you're looking at my body temperature is low or my hands and feet are always cold, you kind of look at a couple of different symptoms and then try and make an educated diagnosis or work with a health professional. And like we just mentioned stress there, the next heading would be stress.
So if you've got chronic stress and chronic stress could be anything from a good infection, it could be emotional stress, it could be chemical, it could be too much exercise. I see this all the time, which can lead to adrenal stress and of course heavy metals from your environment can be a stress too on your body. It could also be circadian rhythm stress if you're working night shifts. I see or I work with several nurses that struggle with this.
And that could be enough to change how your body produces energy. So next we look at blood sugar imbalances. That can be a big player in fluctuations or low body temperature. If your blood sugar is too high, this can cause an imbalance in your metabolism and it can not only affect your temperature, but your body's pH.
Your metabolism is pH driven as much as we've heard about being alkaline as optimal. Unfortunately, that may not be the healthiest thing to do. So if our pH becomes too alkaline or even too acidic, like your blood pH, which it exists in a very fine tune range already right around 7.35 or so. And if that pH shifts up or down, that can affect how all of your enzymes in your body work and that can affect temperature too.
So making sure you've got a nice pH balance in your blood and your doctor would be able to test for that. And that can be something really simple to address too. But blood sugar levels can swing in both ways, of course. Too high of fluctuations can be dangerous, but too low can also cause problems, especially if you have a high muscle mass.
So I would be a prime example for this. So I've seen people go on ketogenic diet and their body temperature will normalize, but I've also seen people go low carb and be freezing. So I would be one of these. When I go low, low, low carb, I just cannot get the heat into myself.
So if people go to low carb, then their insulin can go too low. They may also get per thyroid conversion, but also if you have a high muscle mass, so you carry a lot of muscle, then you go low carb. You're not getting the glucose into the muscles and the muscles will struggle to produce energy. So this can happen.
It won't happen to everyone, but it can happen, especially to people with high muscle mass. So like I just mentioned above, cortisol has a major effect on thyroid conversion, but guess what? Insulin has a major effect on thyroid conversion too. When your insulin levels go low, let's say because of an autoimmune attack to the cells of the pancreas, you will have low body temperature too.
So there's a whole lot goes on there. If you have diabetes, pre-diabetes or family history of diabetes and you recognize you're always cold, you may want to work with some sort of health professional. I tested monitor your blood glucose levels and then go from there. And in a case like that, where there's issues with blood sugar levels and combined with stress so cortisol hormone too, we might look at adding in more carbs probably at dinner time to help soothe the CNS and feed your metabolism.
Next, I wanted to look at medications because medications can also affect your mitochondria. If you just google antibiotics and midocondrial function, you'll find that antibiotics can negatively impact the mitochondrial function and you'll also find that other medications can impact the mitochondria too. And like I mentioned earlier, the mitochondria are like your little powerhouses of your cell where they generate a lot of ATP, which is the currency of energy which your body runs on. So it's really important to have that running optimally.
An important nutrient called carnitine can really help with mitochondria function and help them to utilize fat for energy. They can convert that fat into ATP. And if you're looking at your own medication list, that includes, let's say, acid blockers and you have cold body temperatures, it's probably because you're not digesting your foods. Therefore the thyroid is not getting fed the nutrients it needs.
You don't have to be diagnosed with thyroid issues to have thyroid issues, if that makes sense. Your numbers could still be in the nice range, but if you're not digesting your foods and your thyroid's not getting the nutrients it needs, it's not going to be working optimally. It might be just getting enough to stay in the range, but it's not optimal. So then this brings us to our last point.
And this makes a whole lot of sense. And this would be if you're not eating enough calories, it will cause your body temperature to drop really low. And this is something that's important to recognize because let's just say you eat 2,000 calories a day and then you start working with a health professional and they switch you over. So on those 2,000 calories, let's just say crappy junk foods, and they switch you over to a healthier diet, maybe more protein and green veg based.
Then that might be, let's say, most of your diets, which would be in around 1,500 calories a day. So that would mean that you're at a 500 calorie deficit, so you're 25% calorie deficient. So instead of having the 2,000 calories, you're now having 1,500 calories a day and maybe metabolically you need 2,000 calories. But you're like I said, you're 500 calories in the whole, which means your body is 500 calories deficient in various nutrients.
And this is going to bring your metabolism down because your metabolism will try to adapt to what it's getting to save energy as well. So it'll slow down your metabolism. Kind of like if you had a nuclear power plant and you could only pump out 1500 calories or 1500 gallons of fuel a day, let's say, and then all of a sudden you have to drop down to a 1000, you're not going to try to continue to come down 1500 calories a day. You're going to have to drop it down to 1,000.
And this is where your body will adapt. Same way the nuclear power plant would have to adapt or everything would go to hell. So your metabolism will adapt, especially if you've changed the density of the food that you're bringing in. You're eating a lot of higher carb foods.
Higher carb foods can cause us, some of us, to have a higher metabolism. And I'll say some of us. But if you swap out say 2000 calories of junk food or higher carb foods for let's say 1500 calories of protein and green veg, that is going to have an impact on your metabolism. So whether or not you need to add in another 500 calories of protein and veg or maybe you need to integrate some carbs, you need to take a look at are you eating enough calories?
Because if you're not eating enough calories, this can cause metabolism to drop and then you will not be able to heat your body up. Does that make sense? I hope I didn't confuse everyone there. Anyway, so there's some root causes behind why your body would be cold, why your hands and feet might be cold, how you can start to address them.
Definitely, if you really are lost, look to talking to a health professional or holistic practitioner or someone that may be able to test you if you need to be tested, but give you some more tips. So I do, depending on the client, I do add in some carbs at night, it might help, but others might pull out carbs, it depends on the person. Sometimes just putting some nice, holy socks on at night can be helpful too, as basic as that sounds, it can make a whole host of difference. And then sometimes just getting people more active can make a big difference as well.
Also I found before we go that when people start to increase herbs and spices into their diet, they'll also find that their metabolism can balance out because this herbs and spice is not only do they heat up your internal thermometer or they rev up your internal thermostat, but they can also help balance hormones and they can also help in their own little way to address nutritional deficiencies. So there's a few areas for you to look at and of course if you have any questions, feel free to email me support at www.chamensmottalow.com or find me on Facebook. But anyway, I hope that was helpful. I hope you guys have a very warm, healthy week and we'll chat soon.
Bye.