Translated by Khaled Al-Athmeh:
What does human being – the organism that Allah has created in the very best stature – do when feels cold?
With what has man been equipped in case he is befallen by cold?
How does man defend himself against cold?
What kinds of organs and systems has Allah granted man’s organism in order to withstand cold?
Man’s skin is considered as it were the “Ministry of the Exterior” for the human body. It transmits to the body all temperature changes that take place in outer environment. In the skin there is a special center for transmitting information about fall or rise of temperature.
If the weather gets cold, and if there is nothing to remove cold, what does human body do? It narrows the interior walls of veins and arteries, particularly exterior ones. This causes lesser blood to flow along them, which minimizes heat radiation, and the body preserves its stored heat through burning of food substances.
The complexion of a person who is suffering from excessive cold turns pale, which means that the surrounding exterior blood vessels have been narrowed and the quantity of blood flowing through them has been minimized, and, consequently, the heat that the body loses through radiation of the heat stored in the blood has also been minimized.
Something else also happens as the hypophysis sends a special hormone to the thyroid gland, which, in turn, does a very complicated process, namely the change of food into energy.
The hypophysis sends a hormone-order to the thyroid gland to increase the process of burning food substances, which causes more heat to flow through the body. The rate of hormones in the blood rises, especially those produced by the hypophysis, which orders the thyroid gland to increase the level of burning food substances in the body.
Humans also withstand cold by means of another mechanism. In man’s head there are more than 250,000 hairs, each of which has a vein, an artery, a nerve, a muscle, a fat gland, and a dye gland. If a person gets cold, orders are sent to the hairs of the head to stand upwards, keeping as much hot air as possible.
All the above-mentioned sophisticated processes take place in man’s human body, while he is completely heedless and unconscious: his veins and arteries get narrowed, his hypophysis works to withstand cold, the thyroid gland increases the process of changing food into heat energy, the rate of sugar in the blood increases, the body shivers, the hairs of the head stand up: all this takes place while man is heedless and unconscious.
That’s while other living organisms use other varieties of mechanisms to overcome cold weather. Blessed is Allah, the Best Creator.
