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My understanding with adrenaline, is that it will open your capillaries to increase blood flow to your extremities. This may be why you didn't get frostbite. Th

My understanding with adrenaline, is that it will open your capillaries to increase blood flow to your extremities. This may be why you didn't get frostbite. The flip side of this, is that it means your body is transferring internal temp to your extremities, which means that you will "die sooner" if you don't have a way to increase body temp at a faster rate. Now it's possible that adrenaline also increases your body's fat burn to allow for this need of higher metabolism. I don't know. My warning, is that this may be a similar problem to consuming alcohol in the cold. You feel warmer, and even have more calories to burn, but according to myth busters, it tends to be a net loss due to radiative effects. And likely is exponentially worse the colder it gets.

treeman79 5y ago
Wonder if adrenal fatigue would be a problem. Sort of like spending extended time in flight or fight mode will wreck your body.
runnerup 5y ago
I agree that its intuitive that to prevent frostbite, it would be appropriate for the body to increase blood flow through extremities and (assuming core temperature has a narrow functional band) increase heat loss / caloric output in the process. And that this would result in loss of energy stores much faster -- good if you have a large caloric surplus available most days, bad if you are experience extended starvation in the wilderness. Though as with everything relating to health, I'd like to see some data/information to confirm my naive bias/opinion.
amelius 5y ago
Isn't this exactly the sort of question addressed by the research?
- mettamage 5y ago
  From what I recall, part of it is yea. You'd probably know a bit more if you look at all the research. I wonder though if it has been researched fully so that questions like these have a solid answer. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor, all I know is a bit of neuropsychology from my undergrad.
codethief 5y ago
> And likely is exponentially worse the colder it gets. Not quite. If we assume that the human body is a black body, the radiation loss is proportional to (T_body)⁴-(T_outside)⁴, where T_body is the body's temperature and T_outside is the temperature of the surrounding[0]. So not quite exponential but still pretty significant. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law

treeman79 5y ago

Wonder if adrenal fatigue would be a problem. Sort of like spending extended time in flight or fight mode will wreck your body.

runnerup 5y ago

I agree that its intuitive that to prevent frostbite, it would be appropriate for the body to increase blood flow through extremities and (assuming core temperature has a narrow functional band) increase heat loss / caloric output in the process. And that this would result in loss of energy stores much faster -- good if you have a large caloric surplus available most days, bad if you are experience extended starvation in the wilderness. Though as with everything relating to health, I'd like to see some data/information to confirm my naive bias/opinion.

amelius 5y ago

Isn't this exactly the sort of question addressed by the research?

mettamage 5y ago
From what I recall, part of it is yea. You'd probably know a bit more if you look at all the research. I wonder though if it has been researched fully so that questions like these have a solid answer. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor, all I know is a bit of neuropsychology from my undergrad.

codethief 5y ago

> And likely is exponentially worse the colder it gets. Not quite. If we assume that the human body is a black body, the radiation loss is proportional to (T_body)⁴-(T_outside)⁴, where T_body is the body's temperature and T_outside is the temperature of the surrounding[0]. So not quite exponential but still pretty significant. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law