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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

#51

Post by noir_lord »

I do wonder how much of this is genetic.

My ancestry is Celtic (Scottish on one side, Irish the other) and I have a high resistance to cold, until I lived with my partner I’d have the the windows ajar even in winter and rarely put the heating on, I’m rarely cold even when cycling long distances on days with the temperature around zero and I wear t-shirts year around, I find jumpers and shirts stifling in any normal temperature room.

I joke that my ancestors evolved for cold drizzle.

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

#52

Post by lamp_book »

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.

Not advocating it, but you could look into Wim Hof's method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof. Critics do wonder if it has to do with his brown fat composition.

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

#53

Post by krsdcbl »

rmcpherson wrote: post #37
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...

The article mentions that plastic bags work better than emergency "space" blankets since they block moisture and thus evaporative cooling. A large industrial trash bag is part of my emergency supplies on cold backpacking trips. It's cheap, weighs almost nothing, and provides protection from both radiative and convective cooling.

The article distinguishes it as a better option _when wet_

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

#54

Post by anthk »

mynegation wrote: post #49

When traveling Tierra del Fuego (Southern tip of South America) I learned about Yaghan people [1] that survived pretty cold winters not wearing much of an essence. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuegians

>Tierra del Fuego

The irony was good on these people.

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

#55

Post by gumby »

Agenttin wrote: post #33
gumby wrote: post #31

> Unable to move far in the deep snow, his plan was to stay put, which under the circumstances was not a bad one. It is almost always the correct decision, no matter what the situation. At his home he had access to all sorts of materials, and was clearly visible from the air. And a shelter in the snow is pretty warm -- regardless of how cold it is outside it will pretty much stay at 0 C. The problem is that you can't…

What do you think of the V instead of SOS? Is it better? Should someone do both?

I think you have nothing better to do with your time and so should do both. Search and rescue pilots are trained to look for the V, but who knows who might be looking.

Destroy the signal when you are rescued of course!

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

#56

Post by gumby »

fouc wrote: post #43
gumby wrote: post #28

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…

The withdrawals sounds more like coronavirus concerns?

Only one parent did give that explanation (I don't care about the explanation -- why put people on the spot?) though frankly being outside away from other people is likely the safest place you could be in that regard!

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

#58

Post by mrexroad »

gumby wrote: post #28

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…

FWIW, did a winter camping trip with kid's SV troop a few weeks back. no one got pulled, and had a few last minute joins. with that said, it was unreasonably warm that weekend (it barely got down to -1 C at night), which was a bummer.

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

#59

Post by tim333 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #32

Has nobody here done snow sports? Just a few weeks ago I was snowboarding in deep powder snow with temperatures down to -20 C and I was overheating to the point of being seriously worried about heat stroke. I had just a ski jacket and a thin under-layer. A few days before that I was "freezing to death" while standing still in a queue outside. It was +3 C and I had three layers on! The level of exercise makes all the…

Snowboarding gear tends to actually be fairly good also. Probably with the three layers you didn't have insulated trousers? It's the non insulated bits that tend to get you.

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

#60

Post by gumby »

pjc50 wrote: post #35
gumby wrote: post #28

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…

Scout trips have been known to go wrong. This discussion brought to mind this very old incident: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/06/fatal-hike-bec...

Lack of preparation and lack of looking ahead causes most problems. Of the three times I have come close to dying in the backcountry (all of them due to stupidity on my part!) two of them were due to failure to look ahead. Both times I was saved by my dog.

Thinking you know what to do is a recipe for disaster. Its the same thing that causes you not to check the return value from a system call "hey, this can't fail".

I teach adults how to be out there safely and how to train and look after kids who of course don't yet have appropriate judgement.

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