Imagine forgetting your fuzzy woolly hat at home today. As a result, would most of your body heat be lost? While many continue to think that the majority of body heat dissipates through the head, some people saying even up to 80% is lost this way, this has been found to be a myth.
If this myth were true, then wearing nothing but a hat would as sufficient in defending from the cold as wearing clothes and no hat. Dr. Richard Ingebretsen, a professor at the University of Utah, says:
“The real reason we lose any heat through our head is because most of the time when we’re outside in the cold, we’re clothed. If you don’t have a hat on, you lose heat through your head, just as you would lose heat through your legs if you were wearing shorts.”
Photo Courtesy of Flickr commons by sand_and_sky
In fact, with the head having about 7% of the total surface area of the body and keeping in mind that temperature change of any object is dictated by the ratio of its surface area to its mass, we can deduce that the head should not lose any more than 10% of total body heat, even with the assumption that the body is equally insulated. Therefore, even if you were to forget your favorite woolly hat, it would not make much of a difference.
While the amount of heat you lose is proportional to the skin exposed, it also depends on a variety of factors, such as the type of clothing you wear, type of physical activity being done, and the various bodily functions that govern temperature regulation. Although, it is possible to have a situation where you lose most of your body heat through your head (such as when it is the only part of the body being exposed) it is not true to say that the amount of heat loss is dependent on the head alone.
In conclusion, the head is not a significant area of concern for major heat loss, at least no more than if the equivalent amount of skin on other parts of your body were to be exposed.
For more information, check out this video by regarding how temperature is regulated by the body.
