Wearing a hat to reduce heat loss through head myth, say scientists

by Michael Smith

Experts claim that it is a myth, an old wives tale in the same category as getting a cold from getting cold, that wearing a hat reduced heat loss from the top of the head. According to them no heat is lost that way. Doh?

It would appear then that everyone who knows that wearing a hat has helped and helps suffers from placebo effect.

One can but be amazed again and again about the garbage that those scientists come up with after spending masses of money on research projects researching silly things. Everyone knows that you lose heat through the top of the head and that wearing a hat, a woolly hat in colder weather, cuts this down to some extent and can prevent hypothermia.

I must say that I am one of those people that can swear to it working. Or why, when I feel cold and put on a hat I feel soon warm as toast. Placebo effect, I guess. To be honest, I do not think so.

Anyone who has spent, like I have done, much of his life in the outdoors, also professionally, knows what a hat does as regards to keeping you warm. So, there you have it.

Where those supposed experts and scientists get their ideas from beats the hell out of me and I guess not me alone, but they do come up with things that really can only be filed under “weird”.

Then again it is more than likely the very same scientists that would also claim that this or that folk remedy does not work, until such a time that someone, as has been done often enough by now, in the field of medical science actually proves conclusively that it DOES work.

As far as I am concerned, and I am sure that there will be many that will follow here, wearing a hat prevents loss of body heat. Something that to me is fact in the same way as it is to any survival instructor and outdoors person. That's the reason we at least carry a har if we not, actually, wear it.

© M Smith (Veshengro), January 2009
<>