Frickin’ Freezing: How to Care for Your Body in Arctic Temps

This is a time to abandon your fashion aspirations. I mean it. When the wind chill dips into single digits and your eyelashes are freezing together on the walk from your car to the front door, nobody is judging your outfit. They’re too busy trying to survive.

To protect your body from the cold, you need to tune in—to what you’re wearing, what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, and how your body is responding. The ancient Chinese were emphatic on the topic of keeping cold at bay. There’s even a whole school of thought called the Shang Han Lun—the Treatise on Cold Damage—one of the oldest clinical texts in the world, compiled before 220 AD. It discusses in meticulous detail how cold invades the body, stage by stage, and how to stop it. That’s how seriously Chinese medicine takes this.

Having been to Siberia—actually, this weekend in New York was colder—it’s time to take different measures to protect oneself. And many of these stem from things your mother may have said, like “don’t leave the house with a wet head” and “please wear a jacket.” But this goes well beyond that.

Layer Like You Mean It

When cold hits your body, your blood vessels constrict to preserve core heat. Your metabolism kicks into high gear—shivering alone can increase your metabolic rate by five to six times. You’re burning real calories just trying to stay warm. So give your body every advantage.

This goes beyond just putting on warm clothes. We’re talking:

• Hand warmers in your wool socks. Yes, inside your socks.
• Multiple pairs of socks—and not cotton ones (more on that in a moment).
• Long underwear under your clothes, ideally wool or a wool-and-silk blend.

Some people who have chronically dry skin find that wicking fabrics make their skin dry and even itchy. If that’s you, a silk base layer may be gentler on your skin while still keeping you insulated.

The point is this: dress for survival first, style second. Your body will thank you.

Warm from the Inside Out: Hot Drinks and Warming Spices

One of the most powerful things you can do in brutal cold is warm yourself from the inside. I even have a little thermos of hot tea I’m toting around in my purse to sip during the day. It makes a bigger difference than you’d think.

When it comes to food, of course we want warm or hot food temperature-wise. But the spices really matter too. If you’re someone who likes food that has some heat to it—perhaps Silk Road Aleppo chilies, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper—you name it—these can add that yang factor, that warming heat that we need when things are so glacial.

In Chinese medicine, yang represents warmth, activity, and metabolic fire. When it’s arctic outside, we need to stoke that internal flame. And modern science backs this up: ginger consumption has been shown to enhance the thermic effect of food, meaning your body generates more heat as it digests. Cinnamon has demonstrated similar thermogenic properties, actually raising skin temperature after ingestion.

The Warming Herb Pantry

In addition to those fiery peppers, there is a whole host of culinary herbs that warm the digestive tract. Let me name them: star anise, cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, fennel. These are many of the ingredients that are in pho, if you happen to love that oxtail-based Vietnamese soup. This is a perfect time of year to eat that—and a lot of it.

In Chinese medicine, these herbs don’t just taste warming. They are warming. They’re classified as herbs that warm the interior and expel cold, with affinities for the stomach, spleen, and kidneys—the very organ systems responsible for digestion and generating body heat.

Here’s your cold-weather spice cheat sheet:

• Ginger — The queen of warming herbs. Add it fresh to soups, teas, and stir-fries. Research confirms its anti-inflammatory and thermogenic effects.
• Cinnamon — Sprinkle it on oatmeal, add a stick to your tea, or stir it into warm milk.
• Star anise — Beautiful in broths and slow-cooked dishes. I added a bit to my oatmeal this week—transformative.
• Cardamom — Lovely in chai, baked goods, or stirred into warm honey water.
• Cumin and coriander — The backbone of countless warming soups and stews.
• Fennel — Gentle on the stomach and wonderful as a tea on its own.

If you’re looking for what to eat in midlife that also keeps you warm, these spices are a great place to start.

Put Down the Smoothie. Please.

Many of my clients are still drinking smoothies, which makes me bananas (no pun intended). There’s nothing good about adding cold pureed fruit to your system, no matter how much protein powder you put in. This is not a super idea—especially right now.

In Chinese medicine, cold foods and beverages require extra digestive qi (energy) to warm them to body temperature before your body can properly break them down. That means your system is working harder just to process what you’ve consumed, potentially impairing the spleen’s ability to transform and transport nutrients efficiently. When it’s already spending energy keeping you warm, the last thing you need is to divert more resources to heating up a blueberry smoothie.

Try This Instead: Warming Oatmeal

If you don’t have an aversion to grains, this is a great time to eat oatmeal. Yes, this is a bit of a throwback. Here’s how I make mine:

1. Take steel-cut oats or even rolled oats and put them in a saucepan on high.
2. Toast them dry for just a couple of minutes to add a nutty flavor and more yang to them.
3. Add your liquid—milk, oat milk, water, whatever you prefer—and cook.
4. If you’re someone who needs to be thinking about bowel regularity, add some flax seeds.
5. Cut up a teeny bit of vanilla bean and add cinnamon. I added a bit of star anise in my oatmeal this week and cooked it for quite a while.
6. Finish with a little bit of maple syrup—because why not? It turns out some sugar is helpful because we are just burning a fair amount of calories in this cold.

This kind of warm, slow-cooked, spiced breakfast is exactly what your body craves when the temperature drops. It supports your gut, keeps you satiated, and sends warmth radiating through your core.

The Cold Feet Problem (and What to Do About It)

A lot of women get cold, sweaty feet, especially in the winter. If that’s you, you’re not imagining it—women are up to nine times more likely than men to experience Raynaud’s phenomenon, a condition where small blood vessels in the fingers and toes spasm in response to cold, severely restricting blood flow.

Even without Raynaud’s, the stress response plays a role. When you’re cold and stressed, your sympathetic nervous system kicks in, releasing adrenaline and constricting blood vessels in your extremities. Less blood flow means colder toes. And here’s an interesting connection: if your toes are warm, you may actually feel a little less stressed and anxious. The warmth-calm loop works both ways.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Carry an extra pair of socks in your purse. When your feet get clammy, change into fresh, dry socks.
• Add toe warmers—the kind people use for skiing—into the bottom of your boots.
• No cotton socks. I repeat: this is not a time for cotton socks. You are not going to the gym. Cotton absorbs moisture rather than wicking it away, which means your feet get wet and then cold. If you are out in the world, you need ideally wool socks or wool-blended socks to keep these toesies warm.

Merino wool is especially good—it can absorb up to 30% of its own weight in moisture before it even feels wet, and unlike cotton, it continues to insulate when damp.

Choose Your Tea Wisely

Just a word about hot teas: teas also have their own thermic nature in Chinese medicine, and this matters more than you might think.

Although green tea is a panacea for many things—and many oncologists at Sloan Kettering will tell you it can help prevent cancer—the energetics of green tea are actually cooling. In Chinese medicine, green tea is minimally oxidized and classified as cool in nature. That makes it wonderful in spring and summer, but less ideal when you’re trying to generate warmth in February.

So if you’re opting for a caffeinated tea, try a chai. It has warming spices built right in—cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves—all those herbs we just talked about, steeping together in black tea. Black tea is fully oxidized and considered warming in its own right. It stimulates blood flow and is gentler on the stomach than green tea, especially in cold weather.

Other warming tea options:

• Fresh ginger tea — Slice ginger root, steep in boiling water, add honey.
• Cinnamon stick tea — Simple and surprisingly satisfying.
• Fennel tea — Soothing for digestion and gently warming.

Stay Hydrated (Yes, Even Now)

Lastly, make sure you stay hydrated—of course with warm fluids. Dehydration taxes the body even more in the cold, and most people don’t realize how much fluid they’re losing.

In cold temperatures, your blood vessels constrict to preserve heat, which actually decreases your thirst response while simultaneously increasing urination. You’re also losing moisture every time you exhale into that frigid air—you can see it in the little cloud of vapor leaving your mouth. The result? You can become dehydrated without ever feeling thirsty.

Keep that thermos close. Sip warm water, broth, or tea throughout the day. Your kidneys, your skin, your energy levels—everything works better when you’re properly hydrated.

The Bottom Line

When it’s this cold, your body needs you to pay attention. Layer with wool and silk. Warm your core with spices and slow-cooked meals. Swap the smoothie for oatmeal. Choose chai over green tea. Keep dry socks in your bag. And for heaven’s sake, listen to your mother—wear a jacket.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about tuning in. Your body is working overtime to keep you warm and well. The least you can do is meet it halfway.

If you’re feeling the effects of this cold—low energy, tight muscles, digestive sluggishness, or just a general sense of depletion—acupuncture can help reset your system and restore warmth and vitality from the inside out. I’m here when you’re ready.