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The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

bbc.com

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Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#21

Post by nbardy »

allovernow wrote: post #19
JSeymourATL wrote: post #2

Surprisingly, no mention of Wim Hoff - The Ice Man > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XKcsm3dKs

All the videos I've seen about Wim are incredibly frustrating - none of them are remotely technical and none of them go into any kind of depth as to how to actually practice the method - just a bunch of montages of Wim doing Wim stuff and talking about his magic breathing. Granted, I haven't searched in a few years now, perhaps things have changed.... I want to believe but I don't have enough information to try anyth…

A lot of his techniques come from Tummo(Inner Fire Breathing)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#22

Post by [deleted] »

vaultconsulting wrote: post #11
js2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow runner here. For God's sake man, carry an emergency blanket with you at least. https://www.amazon.com/Emergency-Blanket/s?k=Emergency+Blank...

also a great make-shift Faraday cage for those pesky non-removable-battery phones

[deleted]

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#23

Post by lobotryas »

starpilot wrote: post #16
eveningcoffee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the style of modern story writing. Words, a lot of words. Just too many of them. I have tried to read such stories and most of the time there are just words and not much substance.

It's amazing how we used to read entire stacks of bound leaves of paper. Some contained dozens of events and interwoven narratives. I don't have time for that.

There’s a difference between reading for pleasure and for extracting some information. Some people might read this article for pleasure and that’s fine, but for most they just want the bare facts. An executive summary, if you will, because we have a lot more information vying for our attention than at any previous moment in history.

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#25

Post by guruparan18 »

buserror wrote: post #17
magic_beans wrote: post #13

> Gasping and panicking, they inhaled water. Friðþórsson, by contrast, managed to control his breathing. He later described remaining clear-headed throughout his swim. I wish the article had gone into Friðþórsson's breathing a bit more. It seems like this and/or his body fat are what kept him alive.

You get used to that cold shock, I take a cold shower every day for many many years, and quite frankly I don't feel a "cold shock" anymore, even in winter. It's really just requires a bit of training to get less sensitive to cold; on the other hand I also have a tendency to get warm a lot quicker, which can be a bit annoying sometimes. I keep my house at 18C and no warmer, when many people I know want 21C or sometime…

I used to take cold showers when I was in moderate temperature zone, now I am in US/Canada, and recently started having cold showers (for the last 2 months) almost after 10 years.

I agree to all of the things you said, once you get used to the cold showers, in fact you would want more and more cold water running over you. More cold will get to be fine.

However, one thing I find annoyingly bad, given the time of the year is that I feel by body warmer (and feel that I might run a fever) and had to check temperature couple of times to see it is only normal. Not sure if this is going to be a long term thing or I might get used to it eventually.

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#26

Post by germinalphrase »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

> A man in the cold is not necessarily a cold man,” says Tipton. “If you keep moving and you are reasonably insulated you will produce enough heat to stay warm. At maximum exercise, it is like you are running a 2kW fire. When you exercise reasonably hard you can do that in shorts and t-shirt in the cold... I think about this a lot as a runner in the Midwest US. I regularly go out in 20-30F weather in wool socks, runn…

Long distance snow walkers (snowshoes/backcountry skis) will take the opposite approach. Oversized insulation + air permeable shell. Oversized clothing allows for complete ventilation when needed/possible. Air permeable shell allows vapor to escape or freeze onto interior surface and flake off under movement.

As for light/fast: I’ve worn a small running fanny pack with an emergency blanket and whistle at times.

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#27

Post by hourislate »

Here is the story about Guðlaugur Friðþórsson. It was an incredible feat of will and strength.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%B0laugur_Fri%C3%B0%C3%BE...

I remember watching a program where they interviewed him afterwards and from what I remember he had lost an incredible/insane amount of weight during the ordeal.

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#28

Post by gumby »

As it happens I'm leaving for a camping trip in the snow tomorrow morning. It's the sierras (relatively warm) and I'm leading a bunch of inexperienced scouts (so not a particularly grueling trip) but still with opportunities for danger. I was surprised how many of these SV kids signed up and were then pulled by their parents -- 50%! Only a few years ago these trips were immediately oversubscribed, with nobody getting pulled even when it turned out to be blizzard conditions. The kids, at least, are enthusiastic.

Winter conditions in the continental US are, by comparison with the Icelandic conditions in this article, rather clement. The worst I've been in here has been -15 F (-26 C) though that was before the wind...oh the wind! But I have friends who camp out and work in northern Canada, Alaska, and Antarctica. They have to deal with real cold! Me, I go out for a week with my dog and a friend and then presto I'm back in toasty civilization. Not really rugged at all. But it is why I drive a dinosaur-burner.

Re: The human body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the cold

#29

Post by dirtyid »

How much of this is just self-selection bias. Some body's are simply more adapted to the cold. I know people with passive metabolism of furnaces, my smart heater doesn't run as often when the my significant other sleeps over. I've seen steam vaporing off some folks who aren't even working that hard in cold gyms. Me, I sweat profusely when exerting myself, would definitely be one of the first to die in a winter military campaign.
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