November 29, 2016 • 36 mins
Up to the 1950s most reports of frostbite came from the world’s militaries, but as outdoor sports have gotten more popular, so have frostbite cases. Learn about how frostbite wreaks havoc on your extremities, even literally freezing off your tookus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We're
also looking at you, Oakland. We are coming out to
Sketch Fest this year again for the second year in
a row, and we're doing it rare Sunday afternoon jam,
so that is Sunday, January one pm. You can come
see us live and tickets are gonna go fast, So
go to s F Sketch Fest dot com and just
(00:22):
click on the little ticket links or look at the
lineup and follow us there and we can't wait to
see everyone. It's one of our favorite cities to perform in.
And uh go to s F Sketch Fest dot com Oakland,
San Francisco. We will see you soon. Welcome to Stuff
you should know from the house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:48):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. And it is
really cold here in the studio. It is Election Day,
Part two. We're recording on Election Day. It's right, Jerry's
got on her pants suit, yeah, which means that she's
uh gonna make America great again. She's got on her
(01:12):
pants suit and her hat that says making American creating. Yes,
I early voted, so I wasn't out there today, but um,
I heard people saying like, oh, I want to wait
till the real day because I just I get more
out of that experience. It's like, no, it's like Christmas now. Well,
I mean that's just one day. It's spread out over
weeks to each their own of course. But when I
(01:34):
really voted, they were uh, plenty enough people there for
me to feel, um like, I was like, I enjoy voting.
It's it's a fun experience. And it wasn't like I
showed up early and it was they were just like
getting their vote. I don't care a contact. No, they
had like still a grand old flag blaring on the
(01:55):
speakers at the doorway and all that. Yeah, and hey,
well this is for the next life. Jenna should have
said this weeks ago. Thank an election volunteer. Okay, just
go up and say thank you to somebody. That's a
lot of hard work and they only make about twenty
five bucks an hour on a lot. I imagine it's
not fun in a lot of precincts. And uh, anyway,
(02:18):
the good people doing good work and that's all nice.
Try to say about that. Are you ready? So let's
talk about frost bite. When when you were standing in
line for early voting, was it cold out? No? It
was um, late October, so it was very, very like
a hundred degree Well, you're very lucky that it wasn't
(02:38):
cold out because had it been very cold out, chuck,
And had you been wearing what you're wearing now a
T shirt you know, and me Andy's yeah, and that's it.
That's it. Uh, and tennis shoes. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's terrible. Look. Uh,
you would have been a likely candidate for frost bite
depending on the temperature and arrested. Yeah, perhaps probably, It
(03:04):
depends on how cool your election volunteer was, you know.
So here's a little tip if you're looking into frostbite
for one reason or another. Oh, I know what you're
gonna say, don't look at images of frost bit No need. Yeah,
I like them. It's like they're like balloon animals, you know. Yeah,
(03:27):
we're not making light because it's this is something that
affects people to the point of amputation. Yeah, it definitely can.
But um, you don't need to go look at the
pictures of blackened toes and blistered fingers and things. But
if you do and you want to cope with the horror,
just pretend again that they're balloon animals. Okay, all right,
(03:50):
So have you heard of this dude, Rulong Gardner. I
had not until this. So he was a wrestler, and
I'm not surprised you hadn't heard of him, especially if,
um you if we were talking in the nineties, because
he was virtually a nobody. He was a professional Olympic
level wrestler Greco Roman, of course, but he was um yeah,
(04:13):
not like WWF Olympic wrestling, they should do that, but
uh more like a team fox catcher style wrestling, right. Uh, sure, okay,
But in the two thousand Olympics in Sydney, this guy
came out of nowhere. He never placed like higher than
either fourth or fifth, I think, and he came out
of nowhere in the two thousand Olympics and won the gold.
(04:35):
He became like the reigning world champion of Greco Roman wrestling. Right,
and he was just this cool, nice farm boy from Wisconsin, No,
from Wyoming. Okay, and uh a couple of years after
his win, his big win in the Olympics, he was
snowmobiling out around his house, I guess, and he got
(04:56):
stuck up there in like a seventeen thousand foot elevation
in um mountainous area close enough, still pretty high, and
it was cold out. It was, I mean super cold,
chuck eight degrees below fahrenheit. That's crazy negative sixty two
degrees celsius. And he's stranded, like he's out there. So
(05:17):
when you're like this, unless you have um prepared to
spend an extended amount of time outdoors in that weather.
Even if you have sometimes yeah, but if you haven't,
you're in big trouble. You're definitely you're probably going to die.
At the very least, you're gonna you're going to get
some serious frost bite. And that's all that Rulan Gardner
(05:39):
ended up with, with serious frost bite. And they're actually
he's a really good example, as we'll see of how
a person or why a person could survive in that
kind of weather and just get frost bite. Right. Yeah,
he did not bad, No, not bad for being out
there for um it was a seventeen hours in negative
(06:01):
eighty degree fair high. I'd be like, just the moment
I stepped outside, I'd just fall over and die. I wouldn't.
I wouldn't even make it onto my snowmobile. They're like, Josh,
you can probably make it, and you're like, oh, leave me,
You're still in the living room. So he actually came
back in one of bronze with the toe missing. Yeah,
missing it. So it's pretty good. Yeah. And I saw
(06:24):
he was on that Biggest Loser show. I think he
he gained a lot of weight. So if it was fat,
that's not good for frost bite. If it was muscle mess,
it's like Mr Frostbite Fighter. I think he put on
fat weight and went on the Biggest Loser and I
think perhaps lost that weight. Uh, I'm good for him. Boy,
(06:46):
he's just a winner all over, didn't he sounds like it? So, Um,
frost bite, it turns out, is not a an extensively
studied malady. It's it called a cold weather injury, right,
cold temperature injury. It's not tracked very well either. No,
and up until the reason why it is because up
until about the fifties, Um, if you got frostbite, you
(07:10):
were probably a soldier. That's where most cases of frostbite
came from. We're from the militaries around the world. You're
a cross country skier or a soldier, right. And then
as cross country skiing got more popular, and then downhill
skiing game popularity, and then snowbarning came along, and outdoor
winter sports increased, and mountain climbing is another big one too.
(07:33):
Incidents of frostbite went up as well. So it was
really just the last few decades that frost bitt's really
become a lot more prevalent. It's become like significantly prevalent,
But it hasn't. It's it's just our understanding of it
isn't as um a widespread as you would think. Yes,
saysn't here ten percent of casualties American casualties and w
(07:56):
W two and Korea we're frostbite. Yeah that crazy. And
a lot of those I saw were high altitude frostbite
cases where they were up in a plane and the
plane wasn't insulated enough. So I don't interested, poor guys
just got frostbite. Yeah. Uh, cold weather injuries. Uh, and
this includes frostbite and other stuff. Um. That says that
(08:19):
men between thirty to forty nine it's most common. Uh,
and it it just makes sense. It says they're more
likely to be the ones and engaging in these kind
of outdoor extreme uh temperature activities tell that the peek
a boo street. Yeah, that's what I say. Uh. And
then of course if you live in a warm or
hot weather country, um, and maybe you're a soldier or something,
(08:44):
then you're gonna be more likely to get frostbite. Yes.
So apparently if you are of African descent, Arab descent,
or Pacific island or descent, you are likelier to get
frostbite than uh, like a Caucasian or an Asian person.
And that's because of your just what your body's used to.
(09:05):
They don't know, no one's ever said uh any any
explanation of it tends to be armchair and traps is
very quickly into like racism, you know. So science is like,
we've documented that it's definitely true. I think, um, African
American soldiers get it like four times, more like four times,
(09:26):
they're four times likely or to get it than their
Caucasian Caucasian soldiers in the same study. But they're like,
we have no idea why. We just can't say why,
Like what are you saying? Like we're not saying anything,
We're just saying it you just documented it. Uh, all right,
So let's talk a little bit about the symptoms. Um.
(09:46):
Like we said before, even if you are addressed for
the weather, it's this prolonged exposure and I can I went,
I had the worst. What's the worst cold weather experience
of your life? Do you remember? I do? All Let's
let's share these real quick. When I was four, maybe five,
I had these this pair of cowboy boots that I loved,
(10:10):
and I got him when I was maybe three. Well,
you started to grow significantly between three and four and five,
so I'd outgrown the cowboy boots. But my parents had
neglected to buy me replacement cowboy boots, and it neglected
to take away the ones they were now too small.
So I went outside and I wanted to wear my
cowboy boots, but I couldn't wear socks with them, right,
(10:30):
And it is the middle of winter and Toledo, Like,
I'm sliding around on ice in my cowboy boots with
no socks. And I got home and I lost three toes.
I didn't lose the toes, but everything else was was
That was my first brush with the concept of frostbite,
because my mom was like, you could have gotten frostbite,
Like this is you're you're a dumb kid. That was.
(10:53):
That was a really eye opening experience for me. I
went to a Cleveland Browns game, if you years ago
in Cleveland, possibly the most miserable sporting event I've ever
not possibly I've never understood why, far and away, why what?
Why people do that to themselves? Well, they were like
(11:14):
a badge of honor in those cold weather states, you know,
like you know, yeah, they love that stuff. I don't
know if they really love it or if they just
it's they've all gotten so used to dealing with it
that that's their way to deal with it is by
putting down people who don't have to deal with it, right, Like,
(11:35):
you know, they'll come to Atlanta and it'll be like,
you know, twenty eight degrees, which is cold and just
like summer to us. No, it's below freezing. Like anyway,
the Browns Dolphins game of a few years ago was
truly miserable. It was that stadium in Cleveland is right
(11:55):
next to the lake and the water. The wind just
whip soft that water into the stadium. Man, and I
was I remember walking in there thinking like, man, I
am toasty. I'm gonna be just fine. I was layered
like eight layers deep, had pocket warmers like this, I've
got this. And as the game went on, just slowly
(12:17):
and slowly and slowly, they just started to creep in
through all those layers. And I'm talking long John's thermals, sweatshirts, sweaters,
hoodies and like the the Big Parka. It sounds like
you did everything, everything right and it's still just cut through.
And by the end of the game, my internal core
was freezing, right, And that's the big problem, right, because
(12:41):
the frost bite is your body's natural response to staving
off hypothermia, which is an even bigger problem. You're not
gonna die from frostbite because there's only certain areas of
the body and they're really ultimately not that important to
keeping you alive. But hypothermia, that's the that's the money problem, right,
(13:02):
That's the one that's going to kill you, because with hypothermia,
your core temperature drops and you end up freezing to death.
Frostbite is your body's reaction to that and what it does, right,
you dummy, Once you go this one's on TV. That's
not even blacked out, like go watch it on TV dummy.
But we can lose a toe, right, and that's fine.
(13:24):
It will be a badge of honor and you can
go to Green Bay with that thing. So your your
body says, all right, fine, well we'll lose a toe.
Then I'm gonna stop sending blood to your extremities, including
your toe, and I'm gonna save it for your core, right.
And it's not like your core needs more blood at
that point. But when your blood goes out to like
(13:44):
your skin and your fingers and your arms, and your
ears and your nose and your penis, you can get
frostbite on your penis. Did you come across that, Uh,
what do you mean, come across the Browns game in
your research? Did you see that? No? I didn't. You
(14:05):
can right, Well, that's definitely not something I will google.
So when blood goes out to these extremities, it's it's
being exposed to that cold air or whereas if it
stays circulating in the core, then it's able to just
keep the core warm because the blood is not getting
cold and coming back into the core and robbing the
core of its warmth to reheat the blood. I would
hope that wee Wei is close enough to your core.
(14:27):
I saw amongst joggers it can be a real problem.
Well that's because they're wearing those little dolphin running shorts, right, yeah,
in Green Bay, and I should finish up that story
about that game. It was not only miserable because of
the weather, but that field was wet and frozen and
it was the Browns Dolphins and it was literally like
(14:49):
I think it was like a six to nothing game.
Oh man, it was just awful. Did you at least
get some good nachos out of the deal? I don't
think so you're too cold to eat? Now? Well, I
mean I was with my in laws and sister in law,
my father in law. They don't need to my cousin
in law. Cousin in law. Yeah, so that was fun, okay,
(15:10):
But by the end of the game, I was like,
you people are crazy. This is miserable. I know everyone's drunk,
which is a bad move as far as Frostbike goes.
As we'll see. That's right. But let's get back to
this some bit about sending warm blood to the extremities.
There is um and this is something I did not know.
It's pretty neat though, but your hands and your feet
(15:32):
have these little junctions between arteries and veins that you
can shut off like a faucet, uh, called arterio venus
and astomoses, and you na, that's literally what happens is
your body starts to get cold and they say, you
know what, I'm gonna shut shut it down for your
(15:52):
hands and feet, so sorry, but we need to keep
your internal organs and you're we we nice and warm. Right,
there's the there's actually something called the hunting response, and
the hunting response is where your arterio vanous ennis demosis
shut off, So the blood to your extremities is shut off,
(16:13):
but then every ten to fifteen minutes you're they get
turned back on so that there's blood going back to
your extremities again for a few minutes, and then you
get shut off again. So it's it's keeping it going
just enough so that your your extremities aren't actually going
to free interesting. But then that hunting response is only
(16:34):
good down to about zero degrees celsius. They're freezing right
once it hits that you're hunting response turns off and
you're the circulation to your extremities is shut off entirely.
It's not coming back on anymore. Yeah, and at this point, Um,
your skin is literally freezing. Between this the space between cells,
(16:56):
ice crystals are forming. It's going to dehydrate the interior
or those cells and damage that tissue. And you're in
bad shape at that point, yeah, because ice crystals are
literally forming in between your cells, right, and if that
damages the cells, that's bad enough. But when ice is forming,
as anybody knows, ice is less dense than water, right,
(17:21):
and as it forms, it takes that water and sucks
it up. And since cells love homeostasis, they want to
regain that balance of salt of um solution between the
outside of cell and inside of cell. So water is
drawn out of the cells. That stuff freezes too, and
all of a sudden, your cells are dehydrated and the
(17:42):
stuff in between them is ice crystals. So it's it's
a bad jam in there. And we'll we'll get further
into the cells after this. So check the extracellular matrix
(18:18):
is frozen into ice crystals. Your cells are dehydrated, um,
and your skin is literally freezing, and you're watching the
browns in the dolphins right exactly. It's bad. What you've
just entered is um the first degree, or the I
should say not the first degree, but the first part
(18:38):
of um of frost bite. That's right, And actually that's
probably called frost nip. I think frost nip comes before that.
I think as your skins is, it's getting closer and
closer to zero degrees. It says here frost nip is
mild frost bite. Only skin freezes, and skin appears yellowish
(19:01):
or white but feels soft to the touch. Tingling and
burning sensations. But there's no like, the extra cellular matrix
is not actually freezing and forming ice crystal. I don't
think at this point. Yeah, in frost nip once it
just sounds cuter, one, yeah it does. Then you just
got a little frost nip. Yeah, some marshmallows will clear that, right. Uh.
Once the ice crystals forming the extra cellular matrix, you've
(19:23):
hit frost bite though, for sure. Yeah. Um, so can
we talk about the degrees now? All right? First degree, Uh,
superficial wounding and underlying of the skin and the underlying
tissue and nom to the sensation that might be frost nip. No,
frost nip has tingling. Still, frost bite is where you're numb,
(19:44):
all right, Yeah, and your hands supposedly feel like blocks
of wood or your leg or your penis whatever whatever
is being frost bitten. And it's horrible, feel like a
heavy block of wood. Second degree, Uh, still so official,
just like you don't want to hang around. It's not
very deep in conversation, very superficial. Uh. And the skin
(20:07):
blisters and the tissue freezes. A third degree, you're going
to get that deep tissue and skin wounding, um blisters,
blood filled blisters, permanent tissue damage. And then finally fourth degree,
no good at all. You're gonna lose a digit or
a limb because of all the dead tissue. Severe severe
(20:27):
tissue damage. Yeah, yeah, almost certainly going to result in
the amputation because you're you've got necrosis, you've got cellular
cellular death, like extensive cellular death. When those things get
dehydrated and cut up by the crystals, the ice crystals,
they're toasts, no coming back, no, And it's even worse,
it turns out when it freezes and then thaws and
(20:52):
then refreezes. Yeah. I did not know that, and it will.
It makes sense though, because like you've got the initial
damage from those ice crystals that for and then they
thought and then they formed new ice crystals and do
even more extensive damage. It would make sense that your
cells would be like you had one shot, you blew
it if you thought and then refroze. Who does that?
(21:13):
It's like skunky beer. Yeah, all right. So I just
gave myself away and said that I did not know
that about the rewarming. But I also and I wrote
articles on cold weather survival. Oh yeah, and I don't remember.
I thought the way to treat frostbite was too very
and I think I might have been thinking hypothermia was
too very. Gradually rewarm your hand or whatever. Not with frostbite,
(21:37):
it makes you totally thought like, no, you don't want
to shock your your frost bitten hand. You know you
do with warm water. But that's exactly what you want
to do. Yeah, and you it has to be warm water.
And the reason why is because direct heat from like
a heating pad or something like that can actually really
damage the damage that's already done. It can it can
take it and finish it off well, because you you
(21:59):
don't have that feeling in your hands, so you might
be burning yourself and not even know it, right, But
I get the impression that also direct heat itself actually
on a cellular level is problematic for the tissue damage. Right,
So you want indirect warmth through water? Oh, interesting, and
you plunge your hands. Let's say, so, I keep going
to hands because I think that's probably the most um
(22:20):
hands and feet probably sure, um, let's say its feet. Right.
You get a couple of buckets of hundred and four
degree fahrenheit temperature water, and you plunge your hands and
your feet in them and just leave them in there
until they're rewarmed. Yeah, you don't want to uh, you
want to make it too hot? No, And this is
there's some really important points to say here, Like, first
(22:42):
of all, we're not doctors. No, we're not lawyers either,
but we know enough to say that we're not doctors.
That's correct. So if you are, if you find yourself
in a cold weather injury survival situation like this, or
you come across somebody from what I've seen, you don't
actually want to do this until like you're down off
the mountain. Well yeah, because of the whole thing with
(23:05):
following and refreezing. That's one part of it said, like,
don't start this process unless you know you can complete it, right,
and unless that you know that it's not going to
freeze again because you got the freeze thaw freeze injury
that comes about. But also one of the other things
you're gonna find is that, like I was saying earlier,
your extremity that's frost bitten. Once it thaws, it's going
(23:28):
to resemble a balloon animal very quickly. And if you're
hiking out of a of a like a mountain area,
somebody came to get you finally, Um, you're actually better
off walking out on your frost bitten feet then you
are rewarming them and trying to walk out on those
(23:48):
because they're going to just balloon up and you will
not be able to walk on them afterwards, at the
very least of their frost bit and you can't feel
them and they're not swollen. But part of the thawing
process is what's called perfusion reperfusion, and there's something called
a reperfusion energy where blood and oxygen comes back to
the site and it actually leads to inflammation and the
(24:09):
tissue damage from the body going back to its normal
processes can actually make the whole thing way worse. Yeah,
And and that also ties in nicely with One of
the things you recommend is to keep moving if you're
stranded somewhere, even if you don't leave the area, get
up and walk in circles, like anything you can do
to try and get circulation going to those extremities. Again. Yeah,
(24:32):
and we talked about it kind of in the Hibernation
episode where when you UM make your muscles move, it
requires energy and it burns that a t P and
creates heat as a byproduct. So anytime you can move
your muscles, you're actually generating heat, which is what the
shiver responses. That's right. Uh. One thing that they said
(24:52):
UM in two thousand seven, though, was an issue in
Archives of Surgery, that Hot Hot publication. UM. They said
that they had some pretty good results promising at least
from a study about UM anti clotting agents like blood
denning agents to help that blood flow. But I don't
know where that's gone since then. And it said that
not everyone's a candidate for that. And you know, this
(25:14):
is something that you would obviously not have if you
were out there trying to survive, something you would get
maybe in the emergency room, sure, right. And the other
big thing is infection after you've rewarmed that tissue. Uh,
infection is a big problem waiting to happen. Huge problem. Um,
Like you're a prime candidate for tetanus. Yeah, when your
(25:36):
feet swell, the skin can very easily crack your toke
and just fall off. And you don't have to worry
about amputation anyway, right. Um. And again, a lot of
this is what's called a perfume, reperfusion and injury. So
when this immune response or this inflammation response comes and
puffs up your your foot or your hand or whatever
(25:58):
it has been frost bitten. Um, if you're out in
the field, you would be very smart to have ala
very gel on you because it actually prevents what are
called um prost glandens from entering the site. And they're
part of the inflammatory response. So the more you can
keep your your frost bitten hand or foot from being inflamed,
(26:20):
the better off You're gonna be another thing that you're
not supposed to do. H And it says here, the
thing that you've seen in movies where you clap your
frozen hands together, I've never seen in my life. What
is that? I don't know, I don't know what that is.
That was like the Karate Kid, I think is the
movie that maybe, but it also says here, don't walk
(26:40):
on your frozen feet, and um, that sounds counter to
what we were saying. I think what we were talking
about earlier is if like the only way out of
the woods is you to save your life. Yeah, yeah,
but if you've got you know, like rescue people, oh yeah,
don't walk. Yeah yeah. If you've got people that will
carry you down a mountain, go with that exactly. I
think what this guy was saying was, if you are
(27:02):
up on the mountain and yeah, the person needs to
walk down, you probably shouldn't start the thawing process because,
got you, they're not going to be able to walk
after their feet or thought, because we're gonna balloon up, gotcha.
All right, Well let's take another break and we'll talk
a little bit about prevention right after this. All right,
(27:47):
stay out of the cold the end. That's the prevention.
It literally says that in our own article. Um, that's
obviously the common sense thing to tell people. But uh,
if you were a hot is an outdoor cold weather hobbyists,
if you're gonna be out there, or if you're a
(28:07):
reindeer herder, well also saying you might have a job
too though you're a mail carrier or roadworks, reindeer herder,
reindeer herder, farm oil. The oil industry has a lot
of frostbite. Uh sure I could see that. Um. So
there's a lot of industries obviously where you're forced to
be out there and hopefully you're being taken care of
(28:29):
uh through the company work for but you should also
take care of yourself by layering, like we talked about. Um,
use that thermal underwear on the bottom and then layer
on top of that. Yeah, and you want to you
want to wear something that, um that is tight, well,
not necessarily tight, it's it's fitting, but not compression. I
(28:53):
saw specifically several places do not wear compression clothing and
cold water, cold weather situations, all right, Um, and you
want stuff that's not going to make you sweat or
is going to trap sweat. You want stuff that's gonna breathe,
because if you sweat and it traps the sweat, that's
gonna your clothes are gonna freeze your body. So comfortable wicking. Yes,
(29:14):
clothing layered upon layer upon layer, preferably with modal it's
very soft. Um. What else you can keep your your
body in shape. Um, Diabetes and other circulatory diseases, thyroid conditions,
they can all lend themselves to be more apt to
(29:36):
get frostbite. Yeah, and um, a common myth I thought
this was the case too. But a common myth is
that if you're overweight, if you have layers of fat,
it will protect you on the cold. And actually not true. No,
it's not true. Supposedly, um, layers of fat tend to
deaden your nerve endings, which would tell your body to
like get some blood going. And if they're deadened, then
(30:00):
are not going to be doing that. One thing you
should do, though, right is if you have a little
whiskey and a cigarette, Just nip on that and smoke
a cigarette and that will warm you right up right.
It's not true. Maybe if you know for a fact
that no one's coming for you might as well have
a last drink and the last smoke. But if you're
trying to warm yourself, no, those are that's the opposite
of what you want to do. Yeah, it's um. I
(30:21):
think we did another show on avalanches. Maybe that was
right A long time ago. Yeah, because I remember the
drinking alcohol it gives you, Um, it's so, and it
also talks about other illegal drugs. Um but booze is
a sort of a double edged not double edged sword,
the double hammer hammer. It's a two headed hammer because
(30:46):
it makes you feel warmer, but you're actually getting colder.
And it's it's also going to affect your you know,
and judgment. Yeah, yeah, you might stop walk can around.
You might be like, oh, it doesn't matter, yeah, stupid mountain.
I'm just gonna sit down. This is what this vodka
is warming me up? Yeah. And the reason why did
(31:08):
you say? Because it carries the blood to your skin
for a second, so it makes you feel flushed. But
when it's doing that, it's carrying away from your core.
So it's a really bad move in a very cold
weather situation to drink bad And the same with smokes. Uh.
Cigarette does not warm you up in any way. And
(31:29):
Yale University said that the smokers have a greater risk
for frostbite because nicotine just slows everything down and it's
even gonna make your blood pump slower and make it
harder to get your digits and your wee wei. Yeah,
so chuck, I feel like we uh, we probably saved
some lives here today, I got another little thing. I
(31:49):
found an infographic that was cute that had a couple
of things that I didn't know. And this isn't frost
bite necessarily, but I just thought it was interesting. Uh,
do you know why your nose runs when it's cold? No,
in trying to warm up cold air on the way
to the lungs. Extra blood flow within the nostrils leads
to more mucus. Oh, that's cute. Eyeballs don't freeze. I
(32:15):
didn't know that, thankfully, But but your context can free
see your eyeballs though. Oh yeah, and think about that.
But your eyeballs don't freeze because they're inside the head. Uh.
And your head is not one of your extremities, Like,
that's part of the core they wanted. Your body wants
to keep your head and warm, um and what else.
(32:36):
Ears are great risk because there are no muscles in
the ear to produce heat, no major muscles. And finally,
your cheeks are gonna turn red because again those surface
blood vessels dilate when it falls below ten degrease celsius.
I saw that your buttocks are actually at risk as well,
especially if you're like watching a football game on aluminum
(32:58):
bleachers or something like that. Oh yeah, because it's that
material is going to wick the heat right out of
your butt. Yeah, right out of your tuckas yep. Yeah,
so that's frost bite. To stay indoors, drink some hot chocolate. Yeah,
watch that Brown's game on your big wide screen, and
drink a hot toddy. There you go. Emily had a
(33:20):
toddy last night because she's sick. Oh yeah, it was work. Yeah.
Her big push now is on natural remedies, and so
she looked up like a good old fashioned toddy recipe.
Does she like it? She loved it. They're really great
when you're sick. Yeah, I imagine takes the edge off.
She had a little ginger water to hers and um,
(33:42):
it was nice and spicy, hot and warm to the touch.
So let's hope she stays sick for a while. Well,
feel better at Molly's not gonna enjoy those as well?
Are you one for you? One for me? Actually, I
just had a bourbon. I know, you don't have to
be sick out of the hot toddy. They do help
when you are the Yeah. Uh. If you want to
(34:03):
know more about frost bite, you can type that word
in the search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
Since I said search parts time for listener mail, I'm
gonna call this Ham Radio, I guess, oh burglar tape.
Oh yeah, Hey guys, A big fan of the podcast.
I was excited to share some knowledge from my area
of expertise in the Ham Radio. You mentioned burglar tape.
(34:26):
I've worked in the electronic security and fire protection industry
for sixteen years. You can remember my first exposure to
burglary tape. Back before motion detectors and acoustic glass brake detectors,
burglar tape tape was used to trigger an alarm if
a window was broken. Didn't that what we figured? Or was?
It is essentially a thin foil tape that was glued
(34:46):
to a window using a clear liquid glue. The tape
was applied around the perimeter of the window, directly on
the glass. The foil tape would then be tied down
to a two wire circuit at one of the corners
of the window frame. The foil completed the circuit, so
if the oil was severed from the window breaking, the
circuit would open and initiate an alarm. Technology has left
burglar tape behind. Is there much less invasive means to
(35:09):
detect a window breaking today, but as far as being
a ham radio antenna makes perfect sense. Nice. That is
from Josh Hines. Hey Josh, all right, fellow Josh, where
you go? Uh? If you want to get in touch
with us like Josh did, you can tweet to us
at Josh um Clark or at s Y s K podcast.
(35:30):
You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
Bryant on Facebook and at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff podcast
at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined
us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(35:52):
other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com
Hey, everybody in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We're
also looking at you, Oakland. We are coming out to
Sketch Fest this year again for the second year in
a row, and we're doing it rare Sunday afternoon jam,
so that is Sunday, January one pm. You can come
see us live and tickets are gonna go fast, So
go to s F Sketch Fest dot com and just
(00:22):
click on the little ticket links or look at the
lineup and follow us there and we can't wait to
see everyone. It's one of our favorite cities to perform in.
And uh go to s F Sketch Fest dot com Oakland,
San Francisco. We will see you soon. Welcome to Stuff
you should know from the house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:48):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. And it is
really cold here in the studio. It is Election Day,
Part two. We're recording on Election Day. It's right, Jerry's
got on her pants suit, yeah, which means that she's
uh gonna make America great again. She's got on her
(01:12):
pants suit and her hat that says making American creating. Yes,
I early voted, so I wasn't out there today, but um,
I heard people saying like, oh, I want to wait
till the real day because I just I get more
out of that experience. It's like, no, it's like Christmas now. Well,
I mean that's just one day. It's spread out over
weeks to each their own of course. But when I
(01:34):
really voted, they were uh, plenty enough people there for
me to feel, um like, I was like, I enjoy voting.
It's it's a fun experience. And it wasn't like I
showed up early and it was they were just like
getting their vote. I don't care a contact. No, they
had like still a grand old flag blaring on the
(01:55):
speakers at the doorway and all that. Yeah, and hey,
well this is for the next life. Jenna should have
said this weeks ago. Thank an election volunteer. Okay, just
go up and say thank you to somebody. That's a
lot of hard work and they only make about twenty
five bucks an hour on a lot. I imagine it's
not fun in a lot of precincts. And uh, anyway,
(02:18):
the good people doing good work and that's all nice.
Try to say about that. Are you ready? So let's
talk about frost bite. When when you were standing in
line for early voting, was it cold out? No? It
was um, late October, so it was very, very like
a hundred degree Well, you're very lucky that it wasn't
(02:38):
cold out because had it been very cold out, chuck,
And had you been wearing what you're wearing now a
T shirt you know, and me Andy's yeah, and that's it.
That's it. Uh, and tennis shoes. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's terrible. Look. Uh,
you would have been a likely candidate for frost bite
depending on the temperature and arrested. Yeah, perhaps probably, It
(03:04):
depends on how cool your election volunteer was, you know.
So here's a little tip if you're looking into frostbite
for one reason or another. Oh, I know what you're
gonna say, don't look at images of frost bit No need. Yeah,
I like them. It's like they're like balloon animals, you know. Yeah,
(03:27):
we're not making light because it's this is something that
affects people to the point of amputation. Yeah, it definitely can.
But um, you don't need to go look at the
pictures of blackened toes and blistered fingers and things. But
if you do and you want to cope with the horror,
just pretend again that they're balloon animals. Okay, all right,
(03:50):
So have you heard of this dude, Rulong Gardner. I
had not until this. So he was a wrestler, and
I'm not surprised you hadn't heard of him, especially if,
um you if we were talking in the nineties, because
he was virtually a nobody. He was a professional Olympic
level wrestler Greco Roman, of course, but he was um yeah,
(04:13):
not like WWF Olympic wrestling, they should do that, but
uh more like a team fox catcher style wrestling, right. Uh, sure, okay,
But in the two thousand Olympics in Sydney, this guy
came out of nowhere. He never placed like higher than
either fourth or fifth, I think, and he came out
of nowhere in the two thousand Olympics and won the gold.
(04:35):
He became like the reigning world champion of Greco Roman wrestling. Right,
and he was just this cool, nice farm boy from Wisconsin, No,
from Wyoming. Okay, and uh a couple of years after
his win, his big win in the Olympics, he was
snowmobiling out around his house, I guess, and he got
(04:56):
stuck up there in like a seventeen thousand foot elevation
in um mountainous area close enough, still pretty high, and
it was cold out. It was, I mean super cold,
chuck eight degrees below fahrenheit. That's crazy negative sixty two
degrees celsius. And he's stranded, like he's out there. So
(05:17):
when you're like this, unless you have um prepared to
spend an extended amount of time outdoors in that weather.
Even if you have sometimes yeah, but if you haven't,
you're in big trouble. You're definitely you're probably going to die.
At the very least, you're gonna you're going to get
some serious frost bite. And that's all that Rulan Gardner
(05:39):
ended up with, with serious frost bite. And they're actually
he's a really good example, as we'll see of how
a person or why a person could survive in that
kind of weather and just get frost bite. Right. Yeah,
he did not bad, No, not bad for being out
there for um it was a seventeen hours in negative
(06:01):
eighty degree fair high. I'd be like, just the moment
I stepped outside, I'd just fall over and die. I wouldn't.
I wouldn't even make it onto my snowmobile. They're like, Josh,
you can probably make it, and you're like, oh, leave me,
You're still in the living room. So he actually came
back in one of bronze with the toe missing. Yeah,
missing it. So it's pretty good. Yeah. And I saw
(06:24):
he was on that Biggest Loser show. I think he
he gained a lot of weight. So if it was fat,
that's not good for frost bite. If it was muscle mess,
it's like Mr Frostbite Fighter. I think he put on
fat weight and went on the Biggest Loser and I
think perhaps lost that weight. Uh, I'm good for him. Boy,
(06:46):
he's just a winner all over, didn't he sounds like it? So, Um,
frost bite, it turns out, is not a an extensively
studied malady. It's it called a cold weather injury, right,
cold temperature injury. It's not tracked very well either. No,
and up until the reason why it is because up
until about the fifties, Um, if you got frostbite, you
(07:10):
were probably a soldier. That's where most cases of frostbite
came from. We're from the militaries around the world. You're
a cross country skier or a soldier, right. And then
as cross country skiing got more popular, and then downhill
skiing game popularity, and then snowbarning came along, and outdoor
winter sports increased, and mountain climbing is another big one too.
(07:33):
Incidents of frostbite went up as well. So it was
really just the last few decades that frost bitt's really
become a lot more prevalent. It's become like significantly prevalent,
But it hasn't. It's it's just our understanding of it
isn't as um a widespread as you would think. Yes,
saysn't here ten percent of casualties American casualties and w
(07:56):
W two and Korea we're frostbite. Yeah that crazy. And
a lot of those I saw were high altitude frostbite
cases where they were up in a plane and the
plane wasn't insulated enough. So I don't interested, poor guys
just got frostbite. Yeah. Uh, cold weather injuries. Uh, and
this includes frostbite and other stuff. Um. That says that
(08:19):
men between thirty to forty nine it's most common. Uh,
and it it just makes sense. It says they're more
likely to be the ones and engaging in these kind
of outdoor extreme uh temperature activities tell that the peek
a boo street. Yeah, that's what I say. Uh. And
then of course if you live in a warm or
hot weather country, um, and maybe you're a soldier or something,
(08:44):
then you're gonna be more likely to get frostbite. Yes.
So apparently if you are of African descent, Arab descent,
or Pacific island or descent, you are likelier to get
frostbite than uh, like a Caucasian or an Asian person.
And that's because of your just what your body's used to.
(09:05):
They don't know, no one's ever said uh any any
explanation of it tends to be armchair and traps is
very quickly into like racism, you know. So science is like,
we've documented that it's definitely true. I think, um, African
American soldiers get it like four times, more like four times,
(09:26):
they're four times likely or to get it than their
Caucasian Caucasian soldiers in the same study. But they're like,
we have no idea why. We just can't say why,
Like what are you saying? Like we're not saying anything,
We're just saying it you just documented it. Uh, all right,
So let's talk a little bit about the symptoms. Um.
(09:46):
Like we said before, even if you are addressed for
the weather, it's this prolonged exposure and I can I went,
I had the worst. What's the worst cold weather experience
of your life? Do you remember? I do? All Let's
let's share these real quick. When I was four, maybe five,
I had these this pair of cowboy boots that I loved,
(10:10):
and I got him when I was maybe three. Well,
you started to grow significantly between three and four and five,
so I'd outgrown the cowboy boots. But my parents had
neglected to buy me replacement cowboy boots, and it neglected
to take away the ones they were now too small.
So I went outside and I wanted to wear my
cowboy boots, but I couldn't wear socks with them, right,
(10:30):
And it is the middle of winter and Toledo, Like,
I'm sliding around on ice in my cowboy boots with
no socks. And I got home and I lost three toes.
I didn't lose the toes, but everything else was was
That was my first brush with the concept of frostbite,
because my mom was like, you could have gotten frostbite,
Like this is you're you're a dumb kid. That was.
(10:53):
That was a really eye opening experience for me. I
went to a Cleveland Browns game, if you years ago
in Cleveland, possibly the most miserable sporting event I've ever
not possibly I've never understood why, far and away, why what?
Why people do that to themselves? Well, they were like
(11:14):
a badge of honor in those cold weather states, you know,
like you know, yeah, they love that stuff. I don't
know if they really love it or if they just
it's they've all gotten so used to dealing with it
that that's their way to deal with it is by
putting down people who don't have to deal with it, right, Like,
(11:35):
you know, they'll come to Atlanta and it'll be like,
you know, twenty eight degrees, which is cold and just
like summer to us. No, it's below freezing. Like anyway,
the Browns Dolphins game of a few years ago was
truly miserable. It was that stadium in Cleveland is right
(11:55):
next to the lake and the water. The wind just
whip soft that water into the stadium. Man, and I
was I remember walking in there thinking like, man, I
am toasty. I'm gonna be just fine. I was layered
like eight layers deep, had pocket warmers like this, I've
got this. And as the game went on, just slowly
(12:17):
and slowly and slowly, they just started to creep in
through all those layers. And I'm talking long John's thermals, sweatshirts, sweaters,
hoodies and like the the Big Parka. It sounds like
you did everything, everything right and it's still just cut through.
And by the end of the game, my internal core
was freezing, right, And that's the big problem, right, because
(12:41):
the frost bite is your body's natural response to staving
off hypothermia, which is an even bigger problem. You're not
gonna die from frostbite because there's only certain areas of
the body and they're really ultimately not that important to
keeping you alive. But hypothermia, that's the that's the money problem, right,
(13:02):
That's the one that's going to kill you, because with hypothermia,
your core temperature drops and you end up freezing to death.
Frostbite is your body's reaction to that and what it does, right,
you dummy, Once you go this one's on TV. That's
not even blacked out, like go watch it on TV dummy.
But we can lose a toe, right, and that's fine.
(13:24):
It will be a badge of honor and you can
go to Green Bay with that thing. So your your
body says, all right, fine, well we'll lose a toe.
Then I'm gonna stop sending blood to your extremities, including
your toe, and I'm gonna save it for your core, right.
And it's not like your core needs more blood at
that point. But when your blood goes out to like
(13:44):
your skin and your fingers and your arms, and your
ears and your nose and your penis, you can get
frostbite on your penis. Did you come across that, Uh,
what do you mean, come across the Browns game in
your research? Did you see that? No? I didn't. You
(14:05):
can right, Well, that's definitely not something I will google.
So when blood goes out to these extremities, it's it's
being exposed to that cold air or whereas if it
stays circulating in the core, then it's able to just
keep the core warm because the blood is not getting
cold and coming back into the core and robbing the
core of its warmth to reheat the blood. I would
hope that wee Wei is close enough to your core.
(14:27):
I saw amongst joggers it can be a real problem.
Well that's because they're wearing those little dolphin running shorts, right, yeah,
in Green Bay, and I should finish up that story
about that game. It was not only miserable because of
the weather, but that field was wet and frozen and
it was the Browns Dolphins and it was literally like
(14:49):
I think it was like a six to nothing game.
Oh man, it was just awful. Did you at least
get some good nachos out of the deal? I don't
think so you're too cold to eat? Now? Well, I
mean I was with my in laws and sister in law,
my father in law. They don't need to my cousin
in law. Cousin in law. Yeah, so that was fun, okay,
(15:10):
But by the end of the game, I was like,
you people are crazy. This is miserable. I know everyone's drunk,
which is a bad move as far as Frostbike goes.
As we'll see. That's right. But let's get back to
this some bit about sending warm blood to the extremities.
There is um and this is something I did not know.
It's pretty neat though, but your hands and your feet
(15:32):
have these little junctions between arteries and veins that you
can shut off like a faucet, uh, called arterio venus
and astomoses, and you na, that's literally what happens is
your body starts to get cold and they say, you
know what, I'm gonna shut shut it down for your
(15:52):
hands and feet, so sorry, but we need to keep
your internal organs and you're we we nice and warm. Right,
there's the there's actually something called the hunting response, and
the hunting response is where your arterio vanous ennis demosis
shut off, So the blood to your extremities is shut off,
(16:13):
but then every ten to fifteen minutes you're they get
turned back on so that there's blood going back to
your extremities again for a few minutes, and then you
get shut off again. So it's it's keeping it going
just enough so that your your extremities aren't actually going
to free interesting. But then that hunting response is only
(16:34):
good down to about zero degrees celsius. They're freezing right
once it hits that you're hunting response turns off and
you're the circulation to your extremities is shut off entirely.
It's not coming back on anymore. Yeah, and at this point, Um,
your skin is literally freezing. Between this the space between cells,
(16:56):
ice crystals are forming. It's going to dehydrate the interior
or those cells and damage that tissue. And you're in
bad shape at that point, yeah, because ice crystals are
literally forming in between your cells, right, and if that
damages the cells, that's bad enough. But when ice is forming,
as anybody knows, ice is less dense than water, right,
(17:21):
and as it forms, it takes that water and sucks
it up. And since cells love homeostasis, they want to
regain that balance of salt of um solution between the
outside of cell and inside of cell. So water is
drawn out of the cells. That stuff freezes too, and
all of a sudden, your cells are dehydrated and the
(17:42):
stuff in between them is ice crystals. So it's it's
a bad jam in there. And we'll we'll get further
into the cells after this. So check the extracellular matrix
(18:18):
is frozen into ice crystals. Your cells are dehydrated, um,
and your skin is literally freezing, and you're watching the
browns in the dolphins right exactly. It's bad. What you've
just entered is um the first degree, or the I
should say not the first degree, but the first part
(18:38):
of um of frost bite. That's right, And actually that's
probably called frost nip. I think frost nip comes before that.
I think as your skins is, it's getting closer and
closer to zero degrees. It says here frost nip is
mild frost bite. Only skin freezes, and skin appears yellowish
(19:01):
or white but feels soft to the touch. Tingling and
burning sensations. But there's no like, the extra cellular matrix
is not actually freezing and forming ice crystal. I don't
think at this point. Yeah, in frost nip once it
just sounds cuter, one, yeah it does. Then you just
got a little frost nip. Yeah, some marshmallows will clear that, right. Uh.
Once the ice crystals forming the extra cellular matrix, you've
(19:23):
hit frost bite though, for sure. Yeah. Um, so can
we talk about the degrees now? All right? First degree, Uh,
superficial wounding and underlying of the skin and the underlying
tissue and nom to the sensation that might be frost nip. No,
frost nip has tingling. Still, frost bite is where you're numb,
(19:44):
all right, Yeah, and your hands supposedly feel like blocks
of wood or your leg or your penis whatever whatever
is being frost bitten. And it's horrible, feel like a
heavy block of wood. Second degree, Uh, still so official,
just like you don't want to hang around. It's not
very deep in conversation, very superficial. Uh. And the skin
(20:07):
blisters and the tissue freezes. A third degree, you're going
to get that deep tissue and skin wounding, um blisters,
blood filled blisters, permanent tissue damage. And then finally fourth degree,
no good at all. You're gonna lose a digit or
a limb because of all the dead tissue. Severe severe
(20:27):
tissue damage. Yeah, yeah, almost certainly going to result in
the amputation because you're you've got necrosis, you've got cellular
cellular death, like extensive cellular death. When those things get
dehydrated and cut up by the crystals, the ice crystals,
they're toasts, no coming back, no, And it's even worse,
it turns out when it freezes and then thaws and
(20:52):
then refreezes. Yeah. I did not know that, and it will.
It makes sense though, because like you've got the initial
damage from those ice crystals that for and then they
thought and then they formed new ice crystals and do
even more extensive damage. It would make sense that your
cells would be like you had one shot, you blew
it if you thought and then refroze. Who does that?
(21:13):
It's like skunky beer. Yeah, all right. So I just
gave myself away and said that I did not know
that about the rewarming. But I also and I wrote
articles on cold weather survival. Oh yeah, and I don't remember.
I thought the way to treat frostbite was too very
and I think I might have been thinking hypothermia was
too very. Gradually rewarm your hand or whatever. Not with frostbite,
(21:37):
it makes you totally thought like, no, you don't want
to shock your your frost bitten hand. You know you
do with warm water. But that's exactly what you want
to do. Yeah, and you it has to be warm water.
And the reason why is because direct heat from like
a heating pad or something like that can actually really
damage the damage that's already done. It can it can
take it and finish it off well, because you you
(21:59):
don't have that feeling in your hands, so you might
be burning yourself and not even know it, right, But
I get the impression that also direct heat itself actually
on a cellular level is problematic for the tissue damage. Right,
So you want indirect warmth through water? Oh, interesting, and
you plunge your hands. Let's say, so, I keep going
to hands because I think that's probably the most um
(22:20):
hands and feet probably sure, um, let's say its feet. Right.
You get a couple of buckets of hundred and four
degree fahrenheit temperature water, and you plunge your hands and
your feet in them and just leave them in there
until they're rewarmed. Yeah, you don't want to uh, you
want to make it too hot? No, And this is
there's some really important points to say here, Like, first
(22:42):
of all, we're not doctors. No, we're not lawyers either,
but we know enough to say that we're not doctors.
That's correct. So if you are, if you find yourself
in a cold weather injury survival situation like this, or
you come across somebody from what I've seen, you don't
actually want to do this until like you're down off
the mountain. Well yeah, because of the whole thing with
(23:05):
following and refreezing. That's one part of it said, like,
don't start this process unless you know you can complete it, right,
and unless that you know that it's not going to
freeze again because you got the freeze thaw freeze injury
that comes about. But also one of the other things
you're gonna find is that, like I was saying earlier,
your extremity that's frost bitten. Once it thaws, it's going
(23:28):
to resemble a balloon animal very quickly. And if you're
hiking out of a of a like a mountain area,
somebody came to get you finally, Um, you're actually better
off walking out on your frost bitten feet then you
are rewarming them and trying to walk out on those
(23:48):
because they're going to just balloon up and you will
not be able to walk on them afterwards, at the
very least of their frost bit and you can't feel
them and they're not swollen. But part of the thawing
process is what's called perfusion reperfusion, and there's something called
a reperfusion energy where blood and oxygen comes back to
the site and it actually leads to inflammation and the
(24:09):
tissue damage from the body going back to its normal
processes can actually make the whole thing way worse. Yeah,
And and that also ties in nicely with One of
the things you recommend is to keep moving if you're
stranded somewhere, even if you don't leave the area, get
up and walk in circles, like anything you can do
to try and get circulation going to those extremities. Again. Yeah,
(24:32):
and we talked about it kind of in the Hibernation
episode where when you UM make your muscles move, it
requires energy and it burns that a t P and
creates heat as a byproduct. So anytime you can move
your muscles, you're actually generating heat, which is what the
shiver responses. That's right. Uh. One thing that they said
(24:52):
UM in two thousand seven, though, was an issue in
Archives of Surgery, that Hot Hot publication. UM. They said
that they had some pretty good results promising at least
from a study about UM anti clotting agents like blood
denning agents to help that blood flow. But I don't
know where that's gone since then. And it said that
not everyone's a candidate for that. And you know, this
(25:14):
is something that you would obviously not have if you
were out there trying to survive, something you would get
maybe in the emergency room, sure, right. And the other
big thing is infection after you've rewarmed that tissue. Uh,
infection is a big problem waiting to happen. Huge problem. Um,
Like you're a prime candidate for tetanus. Yeah, when your
(25:36):
feet swell, the skin can very easily crack your toke
and just fall off. And you don't have to worry
about amputation anyway, right. Um. And again, a lot of
this is what's called a perfume, reperfusion and injury. So
when this immune response or this inflammation response comes and
puffs up your your foot or your hand or whatever
(25:58):
it has been frost bitten. Um, if you're out in
the field, you would be very smart to have ala
very gel on you because it actually prevents what are
called um prost glandens from entering the site. And they're
part of the inflammatory response. So the more you can
keep your your frost bitten hand or foot from being inflamed,
(26:20):
the better off You're gonna be another thing that you're
not supposed to do. H And it says here, the
thing that you've seen in movies where you clap your
frozen hands together, I've never seen in my life. What
is that? I don't know, I don't know what that is.
That was like the Karate Kid, I think is the
movie that maybe, but it also says here, don't walk
(26:40):
on your frozen feet, and um, that sounds counter to
what we were saying. I think what we were talking
about earlier is if like the only way out of
the woods is you to save your life. Yeah, yeah,
but if you've got you know, like rescue people, oh yeah,
don't walk. Yeah yeah. If you've got people that will
carry you down a mountain, go with that exactly. I
think what this guy was saying was, if you are
(27:02):
up on the mountain and yeah, the person needs to
walk down, you probably shouldn't start the thawing process because,
got you, they're not going to be able to walk
after their feet or thought, because we're gonna balloon up, gotcha.
All right, Well let's take another break and we'll talk
a little bit about prevention right after this. All right,
(27:47):
stay out of the cold the end. That's the prevention.
It literally says that in our own article. Um, that's
obviously the common sense thing to tell people. But uh,
if you were a hot is an outdoor cold weather hobbyists,
if you're gonna be out there, or if you're a
(28:07):
reindeer herder, well also saying you might have a job
too though you're a mail carrier or roadworks, reindeer herder,
reindeer herder, farm oil. The oil industry has a lot
of frostbite. Uh sure I could see that. Um. So
there's a lot of industries obviously where you're forced to
be out there and hopefully you're being taken care of
(28:29):
uh through the company work for but you should also
take care of yourself by layering, like we talked about. Um,
use that thermal underwear on the bottom and then layer
on top of that. Yeah, and you want to you
want to wear something that, um that is tight, well,
not necessarily tight, it's it's fitting, but not compression. I
(28:53):
saw specifically several places do not wear compression clothing and
cold water, cold weather situations, all right, Um, and you
want stuff that's not going to make you sweat or
is going to trap sweat. You want stuff that's gonna breathe,
because if you sweat and it traps the sweat, that's
gonna your clothes are gonna freeze your body. So comfortable wicking. Yes,
(29:14):
clothing layered upon layer upon layer, preferably with modal it's
very soft. Um. What else you can keep your your
body in shape. Um, Diabetes and other circulatory diseases, thyroid conditions,
they can all lend themselves to be more apt to
(29:36):
get frostbite. Yeah, and um, a common myth I thought
this was the case too. But a common myth is
that if you're overweight, if you have layers of fat,
it will protect you on the cold. And actually not true. No,
it's not true. Supposedly, um, layers of fat tend to
deaden your nerve endings, which would tell your body to
like get some blood going. And if they're deadened, then
(30:00):
are not going to be doing that. One thing you
should do, though, right is if you have a little
whiskey and a cigarette, Just nip on that and smoke
a cigarette and that will warm you right up right.
It's not true. Maybe if you know for a fact
that no one's coming for you might as well have
a last drink and the last smoke. But if you're
trying to warm yourself, no, those are that's the opposite
of what you want to do. Yeah, it's um. I
(30:21):
think we did another show on avalanches. Maybe that was
right A long time ago. Yeah, because I remember the
drinking alcohol it gives you, Um, it's so, and it
also talks about other illegal drugs. Um but booze is
a sort of a double edged not double edged sword,
the double hammer hammer. It's a two headed hammer because
(30:46):
it makes you feel warmer, but you're actually getting colder.
And it's it's also going to affect your you know,
and judgment. Yeah, yeah, you might stop walk can around.
You might be like, oh, it doesn't matter, yeah, stupid mountain.
I'm just gonna sit down. This is what this vodka
is warming me up? Yeah. And the reason why did
(31:08):
you say? Because it carries the blood to your skin
for a second, so it makes you feel flushed. But
when it's doing that, it's carrying away from your core.
So it's a really bad move in a very cold
weather situation to drink bad And the same with smokes. Uh.
Cigarette does not warm you up in any way. And
(31:29):
Yale University said that the smokers have a greater risk
for frostbite because nicotine just slows everything down and it's
even gonna make your blood pump slower and make it
harder to get your digits and your wee wei. Yeah,
so chuck, I feel like we uh, we probably saved
some lives here today, I got another little thing. I
(31:49):
found an infographic that was cute that had a couple
of things that I didn't know. And this isn't frost
bite necessarily, but I just thought it was interesting. Uh,
do you know why your nose runs when it's cold? No,
in trying to warm up cold air on the way
to the lungs. Extra blood flow within the nostrils leads
to more mucus. Oh, that's cute. Eyeballs don't freeze. I
(32:15):
didn't know that, thankfully, But but your context can free
see your eyeballs though. Oh yeah, and think about that.
But your eyeballs don't freeze because they're inside the head. Uh.
And your head is not one of your extremities, Like,
that's part of the core they wanted. Your body wants
to keep your head and warm, um and what else.
(32:36):
Ears are great risk because there are no muscles in
the ear to produce heat, no major muscles. And finally,
your cheeks are gonna turn red because again those surface
blood vessels dilate when it falls below ten degrease celsius.
I saw that your buttocks are actually at risk as well,
especially if you're like watching a football game on aluminum
(32:58):
bleachers or something like that. Oh yeah, because it's that
material is going to wick the heat right out of
your butt. Yeah, right out of your tuckas yep. Yeah,
so that's frost bite. To stay indoors, drink some hot chocolate. Yeah,
watch that Brown's game on your big wide screen, and
drink a hot toddy. There you go. Emily had a
(33:20):
toddy last night because she's sick. Oh yeah, it was work. Yeah.
Her big push now is on natural remedies, and so
she looked up like a good old fashioned toddy recipe.
Does she like it? She loved it. They're really great
when you're sick. Yeah, I imagine takes the edge off.
She had a little ginger water to hers and um,
(33:42):
it was nice and spicy, hot and warm to the touch.
So let's hope she stays sick for a while. Well,
feel better at Molly's not gonna enjoy those as well?
Are you one for you? One for me? Actually, I
just had a bourbon. I know, you don't have to
be sick out of the hot toddy. They do help
when you are the Yeah. Uh. If you want to
(34:03):
know more about frost bite, you can type that word
in the search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
Since I said search parts time for listener mail, I'm
gonna call this Ham Radio, I guess, oh burglar tape.
Oh yeah, Hey guys, A big fan of the podcast.
I was excited to share some knowledge from my area
of expertise in the Ham Radio. You mentioned burglar tape.
(34:26):
I've worked in the electronic security and fire protection industry
for sixteen years. You can remember my first exposure to
burglary tape. Back before motion detectors and acoustic glass brake detectors,
burglar tape tape was used to trigger an alarm if
a window was broken. Didn't that what we figured? Or was?
It is essentially a thin foil tape that was glued
(34:46):
to a window using a clear liquid glue. The tape
was applied around the perimeter of the window, directly on
the glass. The foil tape would then be tied down
to a two wire circuit at one of the corners
of the window frame. The foil completed the circuit, so
if the oil was severed from the window breaking, the
circuit would open and initiate an alarm. Technology has left
burglar tape behind. Is there much less invasive means to
(35:09):
detect a window breaking today, but as far as being
a ham radio antenna makes perfect sense. Nice. That is
from Josh Hines. Hey Josh, all right, fellow Josh, where
you go? Uh? If you want to get in touch
with us like Josh did, you can tweet to us
at Josh um Clark or at s Y s K podcast.
(35:30):
You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
Bryant on Facebook and at Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff podcast
at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined
us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(35:52):
other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com
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