On a cold winter day if you aren’t wearing enough warm clothes you start shivering. It’s not something that you start voluntarily and even if you want to stop it, you can’t do much about it. Do you wonder why that happens?

Shivering is an automatic movement of our body muscles. When we shiver our muscles contract and relax very quickly repeatedly. Each time the muscles contract, the muscle cells burn more food which produces heat. So you see now shivering is body’s smart way of keeping you warm!

If you run and play on a cold day, you’ll never shiver because our muscles are already doing the hard work and keeping you warm. In fact, exercise warms up the body so much that one might begin to feel hot. Remember how you feel like taking off a sweater when you start running around in the park with friends!

Does that mean shivering does the same job as that of exercise that is of making the muscles do the hard work? Well, almost!!

Did you know that sometimes you can also shiver if you are scared?