Because I Had To   …   Temperature?
This time of year, I am not sure if it is better for my health to sit in a cooler room or a warmer one. This is an easier question to answer when I am in the car. I think of the car as an extension of outside, of sorts. If it is hot outside, I like to keep my air conditioning on the warm side. If it is cold outside, I prefer to keep the car heat on the low side. This helps keep me comfortable while I drive as I, typically, dress for the temperature outside. If the temperature outside is such that a T-shirt and shorts keep me comfortable, then why would I want to fabricate a temperature that necessitates a sweater? Likewise, if I need a heavy sweater, hat and gloves to retrieve the mail, why would I create an inside temperature that makes me sweat with my extra layers? In my rather short-term past, these questions feel slightly rhetorical. But in my immediate past (as in yesterday), these questions are starting to feel a bit more significant.
Of course, being the innate researcher that I am, I googled this question on the internet. Consensus concludes that an ideal inside temperature for your health when it is cold outside is 68 degrees. Sleeping temperatures should be somewhere between 62 and 66 degrees with an emphasis placed on the lower end of the range. Conversely, the recommended cooling temperature for a house, and in turn my health, in the warmer months is 78 degrees. In considering this information, I can attest that these are the guidelines I have been following for most of my adult, home-owning, life. And although I find myself more willing to keep my a/c thermostat set at 79 degrees in the warm summers, I am finding it harder to adhere to the 68 degrees in the winter. The truth is, I feel cold.  
As the temperature has quite quickly plummeted recently, I am finding that 68 degrees for an inside temperature feels too cold. I am preferring 70 degrees. In the past, I would simply throw on a heavier sweater and enjoy the slightly cool air. I was warm but I could breathe easy, and I felt like the slightly cooler temperature was better for my health. Now, my nose feels cool at 68 and I wonder if this will lead to a cold. I am questioning, has my external thermostat changed or, perhaps, my internal one? Which temperature is, indeed, better for my health?
There is no doubt that the change is me. Even my hot flashes have diminished significantly over this past year… My house temperature preference seems to be, just like everything else in life, mirroring the cyclic changes that are associated with my age. And now, I like it a wee bit warmer. I know that I am not old. But I am also not young, either. I am somewhere in the middle. And so, when I feel a bit chilly, I won’t worry and will simply press a button. Oh, if it were all that simple…
Up? Down? 
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!

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