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VERIFY: Does living in Florida actually thin your blood?

"Just wait until your blood thins out." You hear Floridians say it to new residents all the time, usually when they try to convince you 55° isn't cold.

“Just wait until your blood thins out.” You hear Floridians say it to new residents all the time, usually when they try to convince you 55° isn’t cold.

“I'm not sure how scientifically accurate that is,” said Kelsey Erikson, who wore a leather jacket and a beanie in 54° degree weather Friday.

“It might be true,” Andrea Pressley who wore gloves and a sweater. “I don’t know.”

First Coast News checked in with Dr. Andre Dias, Baptist Heart Specialist at Baptist Heart Hospital.

"No, I think that's a myth,” Dias said.

Your blood doesn't actually get thicker or thinner depending on where you live, Dias said, but that doesn't mean your body doesn't adjust when you move from the north to the south.

"For instance if you move from the northeast to Florida, you're going to dilate your vessels," Dias said. "You’re going to sweat more to maintain the body temperature.”

And if you, for whatever reason, did decide to move back up north, your body would adapt.

“Your body is going to adjust to that by constricting the vessels in your skin, making sure that it conserves the blood supply to important areas, important organs like the brain and the heart,” Dias said.

So does living in Florida, actually thin out your blood? First Coast News can't find any hard evidence anywhere to back that up.

The phrase might be a Floridian oversimplification of something that's much more complicated, because when it comes to your body, adapting and getting used to different climates in different parts of the country, First Coast News can verify that actually does happen.

And that is the cold, hard truth.

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