A triathlon wetsuit, wakeboarding wetsuit, scuba diving wetsuit, or a surfing wetsuit is designed to keep your body warm. Have you ever wondered how wetsuits keep you warm in cold waters?

Wetsuits are designed to keep or maintain body heat when you are in the water. Water is said to drain your body heat twenty-five times more than air, thus exposure to cold waters without protection can lead to abnormal reduction of body temperature called hypothermia. When body temperature drops to very low levels, the different organs in the body could stop functioning.

There may be slight differences in a triathlon wetsuit from a wakeboarding wetsuit, but their main purpose is to protect you from hypothermia.

The main material in wetsuits that keeps the wearer warm is a waterproofed material called Neoprene. It is a synthetic type of rubber that is filled with small nitrogen gas bubbles that keeps the body warm.

When you are in the cold waters, a little amount of water enters your suit from its openings. When the body warms this water, this will in return protect the body from the cold waters outside. It is important though that this thin layer of water is maintained and no other cold water enters the suit because this will deplete your body heat.

Other manufacturers also attach thin sheets of copper or titanium in their wetsuits to make it warmer than the ordinary ones.

It is important to choose a wetsuit that best suits you. After all, how wetsuits keep you warm depends on how the suit fits you. If a wetsuit does not fit you well, water that seeps in might not be trapped for long and cold water from outside may enter the suit and may result to the loss of body heat.

Wetsuits should fit the body snugly without baggy areas so it will work out just perfectly in protecting you from the cold. Other possible entry points of water like the areas near the zipper and the seams are even sealed tightly to make the wetsuit work properly.

Whatever brand or design you may want to have for your wetsuit, the thing is, they all work in the same way in keeping you warm.

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