Graham T E
School of Human Biology, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1988 Oct;20(5 Suppl):S185-92. doi: 10.1249/00005768-198810001-00017.
Our understanding of the responses of men and women to cold stress is extremely limited. Various scientists have suggested that there could be gender differences in thermoregulatory responses due to sexual dimorphism in body fatness and its distribution, in body surface area, and in mass. In addition, there are also several lines of evidence supporting the hypothesis that there are gender-specific physiological responses to body cooling. In cold water studies, women cool more rapidly than men when at rest; this potentially greater stimulus does not result in a greater metabolic response by the women. If both groups increase their metabolism by performing a prescribed amount of exercise, there are no differences in body cooling. However, if they exercise spontaneously, the women select a lower metabolic rate and experience greater body cooling. Thus, it appears that women are less thermally sensitive to cold water. In cold air stress women have a lower mean skin temperature than men, but this is not observed in peripheral skin sites. In contrast to cold water, women do not experience greater drops in deep body temperature than men in cold air. Furthermore, men may be more metabolically sensitive than women to cold air stress. Men also respond to cold air with a bradycardia and increased stroke volume, while women show no change in these parameters. Similarly, men show a greater blood pressure response than women to local cooling of a hand or the face. Many of these gender-specific responses cannot be explained fully by differences in body morphology and support the concept that men and women respond differently to the cold.
我们对男性和女性对冷应激反应的了解极为有限。不同科学家指出，由于身体脂肪及其分布、体表面积和质量方面的性别差异，体温调节反应可能存在性别差异。此外，也有若干证据支持这样的假说，即身体降温存在性别特异性生理反应。在冷水研究中，休息时女性比男性降温更快；这种可能更大的刺激并未导致女性产生更大的代谢反应。如果两组通过进行规定量的运动来提高新陈代谢，身体降温方面则没有差异。然而，如果他们自发运动，女性会选择较低的代谢率，并经历更大程度的身体降温。因此，似乎女性对冷水的热敏感性较低。在冷空气应激中，女性的平均皮肤温度低于男性，但在外周皮肤部位未观察到这种情况。与冷水情况不同，在冷空气中女性深部体温下降幅度并不比男性大。此外，男性在代谢方面可能比女性对冷空气应激更敏感。男性对冷空气的反应是心动过缓和每搏输出量增加，而女性在这些参数上没有变化。同样，男性对手部或面部局部降温的血压反应比女性更大。许多这些性别特异性反应无法完全用身体形态差异来解释，这支持了男性和女性对寒冷反应不同的观点。
