As we shiver through the first weeks of winter, here's a fact to give you goosebumps: more people die from the cold in Australia than in Sweden. According to a new study published in medical journal The Lancet, cold contributed to about 3.9 per cent of deaths in Sweden, but 6.5 per cent in Australia.

And here's another one. Even in balmy Australia, cold weather claims more lives than hot weather. The same study concluded that heat contributed to only 0.5 per cent of deaths.

The single biggest boost to growth came from household spending. Credit:Rob Homer

How can the "sunburned country", a land known for its asphalt-melting heatwaves, claim more people through cold than heat? And why are our relatively mild winters more fatal than Sweden's below-zero ones?

The answer is that it's not the extreme events like blizzards that cause the most deaths from cold. Rather, it's things like increased blood pressure from constant exposure to low temperatures.