To tell you not to run around if caught in snow- exercise cools you down

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I am quite alarmed at the level of ignorance shown about this, so just in case anyone here gets caught in snow today

Please don't exercise to warm up - or tell your children to - this cools you down and leaves you vulnerable to hypothermia

Insulate yourself as well as you can, and huddle as close together as you can instead.

Well, yes, but going out in all weathers in inappropriate clothing is clearly not a good idea.

If it's cold, just put an extra layer on and take it off if you need to - tie it around your waist or dump it behind a hedge or something and collect it on the way back, or just roll up the sleeves of a long sleeve top. I do that without needing to carry a full change of clothes in a bag.

And all this is besides the point that what the OP is trying to claim is nonsense.

Ok, I am wondering why OP isn't providing any evidence? A story about people dying of hypothermia in cold water isn't going to cut it.

Is there any actual evidence?

If you have spare clothing, roll around in the snow naked to absorb water from your skin.

From Bear Grills himself.

Not sure I’d recommend doing this if you’re only a 5 minute walk from home though.

I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong.

You've not provided any scientific evidence for what you are claiming.

Exercising causes carbohydrates in your body to be converted into muscle movement and heat. As posters have said, it may lead to other risks, like getting sweaty and hence cooling faster when you stop exercising. But fundamentally, exercise warms you up.

They died because they were in a cold river.

Kicking their legs or not would have made fuck all difference to that.

I'm afraid that is unlikely in cold water.

After (maximum)10 mins, the amount of limb motion under voluntary control is so sharply reduced it would make no material difference. It's very, very rapid irrespective of attempted movement. The advice to surface float/hang on to something is not because it makes any difference to rate of cooling, but because you don't have full control of limbs within minutes and could end up doing something counterproductive (leaving you face down in water and unable to turn back over)

I guess it also depends on how long you are going to be stranded.

You want to keep your blood circulating but you don’t want to lose the fat that’s insulating you or the electrolytes that help keep you alive.

This is really interesting to me as I don’t actually know the right answer.
I’m guessing it will probably be in the middle and be light exercise or something.

To suggest putting trousers on to go out in the snow http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4759014-to-suggest-putting-trousers-on-to-go-out-in-the-snow

Here's the argument op had yesterday.

My guess is the answer to which is the best course of action is, it depends.

If you are trying to stop hypothermia for a short time it's almost certainly better to run around.

If you are trying to stop it for a long time then probably better to stay still.

From a purely energetic perspective, it is better for your body to use energy to keep itself warm than it is to move itself about, but that doesn't take into account that you need to keep your core temperature above a certain level.

If you are huddled up in relatively warm clothes it is probably better to use the energy to shiver and keep warm. If you are not in warm clothes then the immediate issue is keeping your body temperature up and the only way you can do that is to move around.

So IMO it's arguable.

A person who thinks they will be rescued quickly in thin clothing needs to move quickly to keep themselves alive until the rescue takes place, otherwise their core temperature will drop and they will die.

A person who wants to survive the longest in warm clothes is probably better huddling up and using their energy to shiver to keep themselves warm as long as possible in the hope rescue may occur. Energy is better used for shivering than running around in circles.

So IMO it's arguable

what’s is not arguable though is o/p’s assertion that exercise cools you down do the point of hypothermia.

I don't understand this.... Pushing the pram fast in this weather makes me sweat under my big coat I feel warm.

(Incidentally no snow in London to get stuck in... It's just cold and wet)

Whereabouts was the kayaking tragedy? I'd like to Google it and see what happened. I've found a similar incident in Lyme Bay in the early 90's, the reports into the incident mentioned lots of shortcomings from the instructors but kicking legs wasn't mentioned.

They would likely still have caught hypothermia if they'd remained still in the water.

I'm a winter hiker and climber. I have a number of friends in the mountain rescue. One story that sticks in my mind is a friend that had a winter callout, two separate groups had become stranded in whiteout conditions in the same group of hills in winter. One of the parties hunkered down together and waited for rescue, the other party continued to walk in a loop throughout the night, they knew they weren't going anywhere but they kept moving. The party who walked all night survived and all members of the other group died. Maybe the first party would have survived also had they managed to dig a bunker for themselves in the snow to shield themselves from the elements, but it's not as simple as just saying 'don't exercise if you're caught in snow or freezing conditions' and what you're saying could potentially be incredibly dangerous to people caught in situations like this.

The last time I saw it was a teenage girl from a different school who had come litter picking in a city park on a cold rainy day without a coat. At the time I saw her she was fairly coherent, and I walked her over to a member of staff from her school, who arranged transport back to her school for her, but she deteriorated while waiting for the transport, and an ambulance was called

surely it was the lack of coat which caused the hypothermia here, not the gentle exercise of walking round picking up litter.

Where I'm from, at 8 years old we used to go by ourselves to the local parks and woods and Strand ourselves in knee deep snow in -22 Celsius playing for 4 hours straight.
Arrived back home sweaty, heaps of snow inside the boots and dangling from our butts. Happy and red-cheeked.
Ah, the good times!

Well it could do.

Exercise makes you sweat. The whole point of sweating is to get rid of excess energy through the evaporation of water.

If you are trying to stay alive in the cold, you don't want to get rid of energy, you want to preserve it solely to maintain your body temperature.

It's better to shiver than to sweat.

What a strange thread. Movement is recommended as a way of preventing hypothermia. Strenuous exercise to the point of sweating is not. Not that the exercise cools you down, but sweating does.

Even if this were true: water is a conductor, air is an insulator. That’s why if you’re in a room where the air is 10’c and you put your hand into water that’s 10’c then the water feels colder. The opposite is true if the water is warmer than body temperature. It’s why warm-blooded creatures do better on land and cold-blooded creatures do better in water.

If you cared so much about keeping people safe, you’d prioritise being accurate and giving correct advice.

And it’s better to move than to shiver. Which is what OP is explicitly saying not to do.

That still doesn’t address the theory that exercise cools you down.

it doesn’t. It may waste energy, but it does so by wasting heat. Exercise does not in itself cause your body temperature to drop below normal, however much you sweat.

Here's the argument op had yesterday.

I think wearing trousers in the snow or cold is a very sensible thing to do.

You’re meant to be trying to preserve your body heat which is exactly the reason why costs, gloves and hats etc were even invented.

And I also remember taking some lemonade with us in a 1.5l bottle to drink and it was frozen through in an hour, so nothing to drink. We used to suck on icicles in those situations.

People are weird here.
I thought the British liked their winter-short-wearing tough image?

Brilliant 😂

If you exercise to the point of generating excess heat, you sweat. In a situation where hypothermia is a risk, then it's unlikely you are going to be able to exercise hard enough for any length of time to actually generate heat.

OP is basically confusing two issues.

Firstly, exercise fundametally heats the body. It doesn't cool it. The OP claiming otherwise is just bullshit of the highest order.

Secondly if you are at risk of hypothermia the key thing to do is to remove yourself from that situation, find shelter of some sort and conserve heat, but this is enterely seperate from this batshit suggestion that exercise cools you down.

We don’t live in the Himalayas, OP