Adapting to Cold and Dry

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Cold and Dry

The cold, dry air of the arctic causes life to slow to a crawl. The slow decay and sparse plant life contributes to poor soil quality. Plant life grows briefly in Summer and then must prepare for the icy hibernation of winter. Every animal in these environments must adapt. They insulate themselves in fat and burrow underground to create warmer microclimates.

In the arctic life itself seems to escape with every breath. The air pulls water and heat out of your skin. In the arctic, people need to stay warm and moist. As northern peoples eat nutritionally dense foods, it providing more metabolic heat. It creates a tropical greenhouse inside, serving as a climate barrier against the frigid landscape. To help maintain this barrier they use pungent foods such as leeks garlic or hard liquor to maintain warmth. Where pungent foods are scarce, sweat baths achieve similar effects. Smokehouses and saunas can be found throughout the Arctic circle from Scandinavia to Alaska. These saunas provide a climate barrier and also help people generate nitric oxide. This helps them to maintain gut balance. When people have free circulating nitric oxide then cold exposure can stimulate their body to begin turning fat into heat and usable energy. Without developing nitric oxide production through hard physical work or saunas and having cold exposure, this can rich diet can lead to gut dysbiosis, colon cancer and obesity.

Signs of Cold Dryness in the Microbiome
Thirst	Desire for warm drinks
Skin	White, patchy, and dry
Temperature	Cold limbs, easily chilled, dislike of wind or cold weather
Emotions	Tired or lethargic
Lips	Tendency toward pale and chapped lips
Mouth	If the body becomes too cold, the mouth may develop thrush
Pulse	Slow
Urine	Frequent and clear
Stools	Tendency toward diarrhea with undigested stools
Tongue color	Pale
Tongue coating	White