Winter is approaching and, inevitably, temperatures drop making us feel colder. Perhaps you’re thinking about donning on a hat to keep warm, as our family members keep on insisting that unless we wear a hat we will get very cold. This popular myth seems to find its origins from a study conducted by the US military in the 1950s. Military researchers exposed subjects to really cold temperatures, exposing only their head, and of course they were found to have lost more heat from their heads.

Another study conducted in 2006 tested subjects in cold water where some test subjects wore wetsuits and others didn’t, with their head sometimes submerged in water and at other times with their heads out of water. The head only makes up seven per cent of the body’s surface area and it was found that the heat lost is fairly proportional to the amount of skin that’s bare. In another study conducted in 2008 it was found that a person at most loses seven to ten per cent of their body heat through their head, a far cry from most of your body heat lost through your head. In order to keep warm, your core temperature must be kept warm and this is proportional to the amount of skin which is left uncovered.

If, on the other hand, you want to cool off, certain parts of the body have special blood vessels that control your body temperature. These include the ears, nose, cheeks, hands and feet and in fact there are special machines that aid athletes when their bodies are overheated by putting their hands in icy water.

In short, you will not conserve half of your body heat if you wear a hat, and nothing else.