Humans Can Acclimatize to Cold: A Lesson from Korean Women Divers

For over 2,000 years traditional Korean women divers have dived with little clothing, subjecting themselves daily to a severe cold stress that has caused alterations of several thermoregulatory functions. Since 1977 these divers have used wet suits that have eliminated the cold-water stress, and by 1982 their thermoregulatory functions had returned completely to control levels. This indicates that the traditional divers indeed developed cold acclimatization, a phenomenon that has been difficult to document in humans.