Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra is inarguably one of the Congress’s biggest events in recent history. Images of the Congress leader trudging along the streets of India have wowed social media buzz almost on a daily basis. The last set of photos, however, have sparked some political controversy and led to many wondering: Does Rahul Gandhi not feel cold in extreme winter?
The photos, of the former Congress chief walking around in a t-shirt in bone-chilling Delhi cold, have rocked the political spectrum, with one side calling it a gimmick, while the other hailing Gandhi as a superhuman.
This piece is not about it.
This piece is about the science behind why some of us do not feel cold (or hot for that matter) even during extreme weather. It has got to do with evolution and unique changes within the genomic code that have taken place in a subset of human beings.
Our nervous system has a specific set of nerve cell receptors that direct the brain towards acting in case of external environmental changes. A study in 2021 revealed genetic mutations impacting the functioning of these receptors can led to unique changes in some people, making them develop a higher tolerance to heat and cold.
1.5 BILLION PEOPLE DON’T FEEL TOO COLD
The ability to work and thrive in extreme temperatures is believed to be found in around 1.5 billion of the world’s 8 billion population. According to a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, this is due to the absence of a protein called a-actinin-3 in their fast-twitch skeletal muscle fibre.
Skeletal muscles are a combination of slow-twitch fibre and fast-twitch fibre, where twitch determines how fast or slow the muscle moves. While the slow-twitch muscles are responsible for endurance and energy, the fast-twitch muscles are the reason behind the sudden burst of energy that helps athletes cope with external stimuli changes. These fast-twitch muscles create energy anaerobically, without oxygen.
“Some humans lacking a-actinin-3 are superior in maintaining their core body temperature during cold-water immersion due to changes in skeletal muscle thermogenesis,” researchers from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, found.
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IS THIS HARMFUL?
ACTN-3, also known as the gene for speed, encodes the protein alpha-actinin-3, which plays an important role in the generation of explosive and powerful muscle contractions. The gene has been responsible for exercise adaptation, exercise recovery, and sporting injury risk. Alpha-actinin-3 proteins are only found in fast-twitch muscle fibres.
Meanwhile, the lack of functioning ACTN3 does not cause muscle disease. However, it is detrimental to power and sprint activities.
“Temperature in the body is controlled by the thermoregulatory center in our brain and the cold tolerance physiologically depends on basal metabolic rate, the composite of body fat and medical conditions that one has. It is an autoimmune phenomenon thyroxin hormone is also responsible for generating heat and building temperature tolerance,” Dr. Prabhat Ranjan Sinha, Senior Consultant, Internal Medicine, Apollo Healthcare told indiatoday.in.
The unique changes in the physiology among some of us on the planet is not a sudden development, but millions of years of an evolutionary process that has made some extremely susceptible while others are extremely tolerable to the changes in external stimuli.
