So THAT'S Why You Get Cold More Easily As You Get Older

Maskot via Getty Images Thinning skin and less muscle make it harder to feel warm as you age. “The skin thins as we age, it loses some cells, but in addition, it loses fat padding,” explained Dr. June McKoy, a geriatrician at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. This fat loss happens particularly in the legs and arms, said Dr. James Powers, the program director for the Geriatric Fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Center for Quality Aging. “Very rarely, feeling colder can be part of a health condition — so, not part of normal aging,” said Dr. Ariel Green, an associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and vice chair of the American Geriatrics Society’s clinical practice and models of care committee. “We all tend to feel colder if we’re sedentary, and so if you already, with aging, have a tendency to feel colder, just keep moving,” Green added.