Freezing to death

In the winter months of 1987, as many as 1000 persons froze to death in the United States. The statistics in 2006 and 2007 aren’t nearly as frightening.

When it becomes cold outside, the surface temperature of our bodies drop but because our blood is 80 percent water, our blood streams come to our rescue and for this reason our body heat (37C) is absorbed by our blood and taken to the surface of our skin where it is wafted away by the cooler air surrounding us. But once our skin is exposed to freezing temperatures, far more body heat is lost by this means.

The pores in our skin (2 million of them) close in order to prevent most of the heat from our bodies escaping into the cold air surrounding us. The blood capillaries close to our skin become narrow as the cold outside increases. Our blood is re-shunted back to our internal organs.

The first sign of real trouble is uncontrollable shivering. In mild forms, it is just the rapid involuntary tensing and relaxing of a few muscles throughout the body. Each time a muscle fibre squeezes itself, millions of ATP molecules--the body's main source of quick energy-- creates energy, and this shivering which creates heat, extends to the lower jaw which explains the chattering of teeth. However, shivering stops taking place when the body temperature goes below 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

When our body temperature gets even colder, the blood stops flowing in our extremities such as toes, fingers, nose and ears and when that happens, we are frostbitten. It begins with a gradual numbness and then a hardness as the fluid in the tissues
begin to freeze.

The nerves that carry the messages to the brain and which are normally filled with fluids, are deadened because the fluids change into a chilly paste. A person in that condition will speak with a slurred voice. Often persons walking past someone lying on a sidewalk or next to a building in freezing temperatures will presume that after listening to the person talk in a slurred manner, that person is drunk. But the person may be completely sober. If you ask him where he is or who he is, the effect of the freezing temperatures will have dulled his memory to such an extent, that he can't answer you correctly. His slurred speech and memory loss is a direct result of him slowly freezing to death. He is in effect, dying.

At this stage of freezing, it gets harder and harder to manipulate the fingers or to wiggle our toes. This is when the real danger hits us. Without any feeling in our extremities, such as our fingers, it is easy to forget them. Without blood circulation, the fingers and other extremities will soon be lost to us forever.

Filaments in the muscles just under the skin freeze and crack, which in itself isn't so serious but the walls of the blood capillaries near the surface of the skin also freeze and subsequently crack open. What this means is that if the warm blood is ever restored to that immediate area, the blood will flow into the leaky capillaries and not actually reach the frostbitten areas where the damage is at its worst. Without any blood reaching these damaged areas, the cells in those areas that are beyond the cracked capillaries will be starved for oxygen. They will die and turn gray, then black and rigid. The blood that has leaked out of the capillaries will swell into a series of discoloured sensitive blisters and the white clear plasma in the blood turns into ice crystals, both which can be extremely painful. But after awhile, the pain goes away--a sign that the extremities and possibly the limbs are dying or already dead.

It may be possible to save the extremities or limbs of a frostbitten victim if the afflicted person can be placed in a warmer environment as soon as possible but there are certain things that should never be done to such victims. Rubbing snow against the frostbitten areas is extremely foolish because it will shatter capillaries that were perhaps only weakened. The same applies to having the victim sit too close to a stove or immersing in hot water. These latter risky remedies will produce a breeding ground for wet gangrene and clostridial infection by spore bearing bacteria. The proper treatment is to remove the clothing covering the frostbitten parts and immerse the effected parts in very lukewarm water (no higher than 100 F--37.8 C) and place the victim in a warm room away from direct heat and get the victim to drink warm fluids with a high sugar content, such as fruit juice.

For those who remain outside in the freezing weather, things get invariably worse. The body temperatures in their extremities sink below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4C). Their hearts cannot withstand this drop in temperature. The cold blood coming from the areas that are frostbitten run parallel with the warm blood heading towards the extremities so that by the time the colder blood is ready to enter the heart, it has been warmed up considerably, but at a cost. As the blood courses to the inner organs, such as the heart, liver, etc., the extremities and limbs are abandoned so that the interior of the body can remain warm. And when the interior begins to cool down, the body directs what remaining warm blood is still circulating, towards the brain. When the blood in the brain begins to cool down, the victim begins losing consciousness. As mentioned earlier, first comes the slurring, then the loss of memory, then unconsciousness followed by coma and finally, death.

The greatest drop in body temperature anyone has ever survived was that of a black woman in the United States who was buried in a snowdrift for several hours. Her body temperature dropped to 66.4 degrees Fahrenheit, Of course she was unconscious before that-as a matter of fact, consciousness is generally lost when the body temperature drops to around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is often the wind chill factor that causes death by freezing. For example, when the temperature is zero Centigrade, that point when freezing begins, and the wind is blowing a mere 10 kilometers an hour, one can be reasonably comfortable if properly dressed. And yet, if the wind increases in velocity at that temperature to 35 kph, the wind chill factor is such that staying outdoors becomes a very unpleasant experience. If the temperature drops to 15 degrees Centigrade below freezing with that wind velocity, exposed flesh, such as one's nose, ears and face will begin freezing. If the temperature drops to minus 30 degrees Centigrade (minus 22 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale) and the wind is blowing 40 kilometers an hour, exposed areas of the face and the ears and nose will freeze in less than a minute. Breathing in the cold air under these conditions will damage the delicate linings of the lungs. If the wind increases in velocity to 50 kph and the temperature is still minus 30 degrees centigrade, exposed flesh will freeze in 30 seconds.

If children are warmly dressed, they will be relatively safe but when the temperatures drop or the wind blows quite severely, it is better to keep the children indoors and if they must go outdoors, it should be only briefly. As for the homeless, they should try and get indoors and if that is not possible, they should seek shelter from the wind.

It's a sad commentary of our society that most people would bring a cat or dog inside on a bitterly cold night and yet close the door on a fellow human being who is desperately seeking warmth so that he or she may live through the night. Perhaps if we understand what cold can do to us under adverse conditions, we will have more compassion in our hearts.