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20×102mm Vulcan
Dealing With Hypothermia by Joe Alton, MD and Amy Alton ARNP
Joe and Amy are authors of The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide For When Help Is Not On The Way and Alton’s Antibiotics And Infectious Disease: The Layman’s Guide To Available Antibiotics In Austere Settings. They also run doomandbloom.net which is an excellent source for austere medical knowledge.
The environment plays a large role in your success as medic in survival settings. If you don’t take weather conditions and other factors into account, you have made the environment your enemy, and it’s a formidable one. Different areas may pose special challenges. If you live in Miami, you might be treating a lot of people with heat stroke. If you live in Siberia, you’ll be treating a lot of people with cold-related exposure. In many places, you’ll be at risk for both, depending on the time of year.
Illness related to cold temperatures is known as ‘Hypothermia”. Normally, the body core ranges from 97.5 to 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit (36.5-37.5 degrees Celsius) when taken orally or rectally. Rectal temps tend to be slightly higher than oral, and oral temps slightly higher than skin readings, such as those taken in the armpit. Hypothermia begins when the body core drops below 95 degrees.
The body loses heat in various ways:
Evaporation – Perspiration (sweating) from physical exertion or other reasons releases heat from the body core.
Radiation – the body loses heat to the environment when the ambient (surrounding) temperature is below the core temperature. For example, you lose more heat if exposed to an outside temperature of 20 degrees F than if exposed to 80 degrees F.
Conduction – The body loses heat when its surface is in direct contact with cold temperatures, as in the case of someone falling from a boat into frigid water (think “Titanic”). Water, being denser than air, removes heat from the body much faster.
Convection – Heat loss where, for instance, a cooler object is in motion against the body core. The air next to the skin is heated and then removed, which requires the body to use energy to re-heat. Wind Chill is one example of air convection: If the ambient temperature is 32 degrees F but the wind chill factor is at 5 degrees F, you lose heat from your body as if it were actually 5 degrees F.
Identifying Hypothermia
Guest Post: Dealing With Hypothermia by Joe Alton, MD and Amy Alton ARNP - SurvivalBlog.com
Joe and Amy are authors of The Survival Medicine Handbook: The Essential Guide For When Help Is Not On The Way and Alton’s Antibiotics And Infectious Disease: The Layman’s Guide To Available Antibiotics In Austere Settings. They also run doomandbloom.net which is an excellent source for austere medical knowledge.
The environment plays a large role in your success as medic in survival settings. If you don’t take weather conditions and other factors into account, you have made the environment your enemy, and it’s a formidable one. Different areas may pose special challenges. If you live in Miami, you might be treating a lot of people with heat stroke. If you live in Siberia, you’ll be treating a lot of people with cold-related exposure. In many places, you’ll be at risk for both, depending on the time of year.
Illness related to cold temperatures is known as ‘Hypothermia”. Normally, the body core ranges from 97.5 to 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit (36.5-37.5 degrees Celsius) when taken orally or rectally. Rectal temps tend to be slightly higher than oral, and oral temps slightly higher than skin readings, such as those taken in the armpit. Hypothermia begins when the body core drops below 95 degrees.
The body loses heat in various ways:
Evaporation – Perspiration (sweating) from physical exertion or other reasons releases heat from the body core.
Radiation – the body loses heat to the environment when the ambient (surrounding) temperature is below the core temperature. For example, you lose more heat if exposed to an outside temperature of 20 degrees F than if exposed to 80 degrees F.
Conduction – The body loses heat when its surface is in direct contact with cold temperatures, as in the case of someone falling from a boat into frigid water (think “Titanic”). Water, being denser than air, removes heat from the body much faster.
Convection – Heat loss where, for instance, a cooler object is in motion against the body core. The air next to the skin is heated and then removed, which requires the body to use energy to re-heat. Wind Chill is one example of air convection: If the ambient temperature is 32 degrees F but the wind chill factor is at 5 degrees F, you lose heat from your body as if it were actually 5 degrees F.
Identifying Hypothermia
Guest Post: Dealing With Hypothermia by Joe Alton, MD and Amy Alton ARNP - SurvivalBlog.com
