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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Re: warm cold colder
Posted By: Ian Johnston In Response To: warm cold colder (tom)
Date: Sunday, 9 January 2000, at 7:56 p.m.
> Ian About heat and hypo. Not a doc but I do have a bit of a background in
> this area. It generally is not considered to dangerous to reheat someone
> if they are still shivering. This is of course not absolute-you would not
> know if they are just about to stop shivering and are just on the edge of
> sever hypo. The other problem is you might not know what if any other
> medical problems they might have. If they have left the shivering stage
> behind reheating becomes something best done in hospital. The idea is if
> they are no longer shivering your job is to stop them from any further
> heat loss while help is summoned. However, if you are in a wilderness
> situation I suppose one would have little choice but to try and rewarm. A
> quick little note is that you should never move quickly or be rough in any
> way with a true hypo patient in that the heart is very unstable. tomI agree with everything you have said. Reheating should be done with the body heat of another person.
My understanding is that a large percentage of hypo victims die of massive heart attacks while being rewarmed. The heart is very vulnerable like you say.
My sister just sent me a copy of a book put out by B.C. Hydro for their employees. It is called Wilderness Survival Manual and has some excellent ideas and information in it. Hydro repair employees are often flow to remote areas in the winter to restore power on their lines. Unfortunately, some of these flights have problems and survival quickly becomes the main issue.
This book has a very complete explanation of hypothermia, heat loss, wasteful practices, etc., and has cleared up many grey areas for me.
The explanation of food consumption required to maintain body reserves is a real eye opener.
Another area that was a surprise to me was in heat loss do to water chill. I had read in another book that heat loss in water was 27-28 times that of still air. This book states that the factor is actually 240 times that of still air!!
If you are interested the book can be purchased from;
BC Hydro International Limited 6900 Southpoint Drive, C03 Burnaby, B.C., Canada V3N-4X8 Attn: Marketing Manager, Training Materials Ph. (604)-528-3427
Ian
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