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The truth about cold water
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Groxx 16y agoA good complement to the recent drowning-related post. In fact, it's the "prequel". Worth a read, followed by a warm bath.
- kqr2 16y agoFor reference, the original Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492835
- powrtoch 16y agoIndeed. Why does HN suddenly want to make me a lifeguard?
- epochwolf 16y agoBecause the media wants to make you an idiot where drowning and cold water are concerned.
- TGJ 16y agoA very good article that shows some perceived misconceptions about cold water survival. I spent 4 years on 20 different large marine seismic exploration boats with most of them operating in the North Sea. I have taken 3 North Sea Survival courses and a many safety meetings for good measure. Every person that I have worked with has been well aware of the consequences of falling overboard in water barely above freezing. Larger boats take at least an hour to turn around and at least 10-15 min for the rescue boat to hit the water. Then, only if your lucky, will they be able to find you as you bob in and out of view from the waves. All of this of course, relies on someone seeing you fall over in the first place. Never work on deck unless you are working with someone, have an immersion suit, or are attached by a safety chain. Another problem arises when you are rescued as he points out, but the stories I have heard are about the survivors being put in showers to raise their body temperature back up and collapsing and drowning in a puddle of water in the shower. The whole thing, on the other hand, seems fairly moot. It's like telling someone that when you get shot, it's not the bullet that kills you, it's the bleeding.
- sliverstorm 16y ago> Another problem arises when you are rescued as he points out, but the stories I have heard are about the survivors being put in showers to raise their body temperature back up and collapsing and drowning in a puddle of water in the shower. This problem shouldn't even be a problem, you shouldn't leave them alone when they are recovering! Well, IMHO.
- brazzy 16y agoIt's still a problem, because raising the body temperature quickly can be dangerous in itself. To preserve core temperature, the body centralizes circulation, i.e. circulates blood only through the vital organs. If you're warmed up suddenly, it can cause this centralization to end prematurely, mixing still-too-cold blood from your extremities with the core blood and dropping your core temperature suddenly and fatally.
- niels_olson 16y ago> mixing still-too-cold blood from your extremities with the core blood and dropping your core temperature suddenly and fatally. Unlikely. there will be very little of that cold blood to mix. Very little. Adding heat will cause your core temperature rise. What is more likely to happen is that the sudden vasodilation drops your blood pressure, and your heart, possibly still in it's stunned cold state, can't compensate with stroke rate or variability. Then you risk cerebral hypoperfusion in the face of increasing metabolic demand (warm cells run faster, burn more glucose, need more oxygen to burn that glucose)
- rm-rf 16y agoI had something like this happen - except for the 'fatally' part of course. I was in a canoe race on a cold spring day in cold water. At the beginning of the race I ended up jumping into the river in waste deep water. My jeans stayed wet the whole race. My legs were cold wet and immobile for over an hour while my upper body was 'working out' paddling the canoe. All was good until the race ended. I got out of the canoe to walk the 1/2 mile back home. As soon as I started walking I felt the cold blood from my legs rush up to my torso & started seriously shivering. Continuing to walk made it worse. Made it home anyway & collapsed under a hot shower. I felt at the time that if I'd have tried to walk much further I'd have had a real bad day.
- kqr2 16y agoThe video Cold Water Boot Camp linked to at the end of the article strikes home the points very nicely. Volunteers jump into cold water and demonstrate the 1-10-1 rule of cold water exposure. 1 : Initial cold shock will last for about a minute 10 : Physical incapacitation will occur after about 10 minutes 1 : Unconsciousness from hypothermia in about 1 hour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1xohI3B4Uc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1xohI3B4Uc
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- lkozma 16y agoI wonder if people who have training with cold water resist significantly longer. I knew Finns who would go in mid January to swim for ten minutes in a hole cut in the ice of a frozen lake, then sit around for a while, dress up and go on with their day. And that was without sauna.
- wallflower 16y agoLynne Cox, the only person to have swum a mile in Antarctic waters and to swim the Bering Strait. "Dangerous marine animals aside, the [Gulf of 'Aqaba] swim was among Cox's most physically challenging. A battery of scientific studies done on Cox over the years has revealed some startling facts about her physiology. First, the muscle and fat in her body are so perfectly balanced that she has neutral buoyancy, meaning that she neither sinks in water nor floats. As one researcher told her, "You're at one with the water" - a critical energy-saving advantage during long-distance swims. More remarkable, however, was the discovery that Cox's body is superbly adapted to cold temperatures. On entering cold water, a person's surface blood vessels constrict, forcing warm blood to the vital organs at the body's core. Normally, however, this is a stopgap that works for only a short time. By contrast, Cox's vital organs are insulated by an evenly distributed layer of insulating fat. Warm blood shunted to her core remains warm dramatically longer. So effective is this "internal wet suit," that Cox's temperature actually rises during a hard swim in cold water." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Cox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Cox
- mahipal 16y agoBut apparently she had been swimming for decades -- a lot of it in (progressively colder?) ocean water -- and she was studied "over the years." So it seems pretty possible that her physiological adaptations were a result of, not a cause of, all that cold-water swimming.
- cromulent 16y agoI know a couple of Finns that have swum everyday for decades, no matter what the water temperature (eg through ice). They claim it builds up brown fat. Maybe the ratio of brown fat has something to do with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_adipose_tissue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_adipose_tissue
- jokull 16y agoThere's an Icelandic legend that beat all this crap in 1984. His ship sank with all his friends and co-workers. He swam to shore, walked bare feet on razor sharp lava and walked to town. Guðlaugur Friðþórsson. His descriptions are chilling. "When the ship sank from underneath us and we were submerged for the second time we decided [the three of us] to swim. We decided not to help each other which would have been hopeless. We spotted the lighthouse and started swimming towards it. Soon there was only the two of us left calling between us, but soon enough I stopped hearing any calls." More amazingness: On his way to shore a ship came within 100m of him. He spoke to "múkki" an imagined sailor's friend on the way, told himself jokes and said some prayers. When he came to shore he had to hold onto a rock wall while waiting for the tide to recede. While walking he spotted a bathtub used for lifestock feeding he punched through a layer of ice to get drinking water.
- cromulent 16y agoApparently he survived because he was fat. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=rYIJJP7audkC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=gudlaugur+fridthorsson&source=bl&ots=vaeOLOEykf&sig=cPCPEvKE3pD4hPNM4DAXH0GrmJM&hl=en&ei=BxA3TKSBLI-lOL2IoMEE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=gudlaugur%20fridthorsson&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=rYIJJP7audkC&pg=PA26...
- avar 16y agoI can't find a citation for this now, but I recall reading somewhere that he had a higher ratio of brown fat than is normal. I.e. just being fat isn't enough, it has to be the right sort of fat.
- Loy 16y agohttp://www.vikingrune.com/2009/03/true-viking-grit/ http://www.vikingrune.com/2009/03/true-viking-grit/ However, a startling fact was discovered by the researchers from the University of Iceland: Guðlaugur’s fat is almost like seal fat. It is more solid and two or three times thicker than human fat.
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- pclark 16y agoSo the advice to survive in cold water: wear a life jacket?
- c1sc0 16y agowear a wetsuit
- tomjen3 16y agoAbsolutely (though it may not be enough), but not just for the reasons you think: a life jacket will keep the back of your head out of the water - which will help prevent damage to the brain. You don't want to know where this research comes from, believe me.
- ciupicri 16y agoMaybe he doesn't want to know, but I'm curious. P.S. I'm also curious about what kind of damage can occur to the brain and from what exactly?
- stan_rogers 16y agoI believe he's referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation Much of that has been confirmed more recently by somewhat more humane (and more than somewhat more voluntary) experimentation by folks like Gordon Geisbrecht (U of Manitoba) and the Canadian Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (DCIEM).
- tomerico 16y agoMuch of the knowledge we have about the effect of cold water on the human body comes from the Nazi's human experiments. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/naziexp....
- pge 16y agoA great rule of thumb I learned in Wilderness First Responder training: "1 minute, 10 minutes, an hour" It's catchy and easy to remember, and it means: * 1 minute to deal with the panic response (i.e. first keep yourself alive for the first minute, you have plenty of time, and lots of people die quickly because of panic and inhalation. * 10 minutes - that is roughly the amount of time you have to get yourself in a stable position before you lose motor control. Get yourself in a position with your head out of the water that doesnt require active support anyway you can - flotation, freezing yourself to an ice shelf, etc). * 1 hour - that's how long you'll live (roughly) in 32F water. You may have a lot longer depending on water temp and your body. There's a prof that did a lot of this research on his poor grad students (and you thought your thesis advisor was hard on you!). http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/kinrec/research/people/giesbrecht.html http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/kinrec/research/people/gie... He's the source for much of the recent research.
- jonpaul 16y agoYou have to watch this TED talk where Lewis Pugh swam in the North Pole. It's fascinating. http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.htm...
- unofficial 16y agoThe author, USCG Rescue Swimmer Mario Vittone, is a nut. He once submerged himself in Lake Erie in the middle of winter to prove that it takes about an hour for your body to reach hypothermic levels. After he did it I asked him "How did it go?" He replied. "I survived, but it was close!"