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

[Nimbostratus100]

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.

Colder than you were in the first place, perhaps. But if you'd spent that same hour staying still, but still stuck outside, you'd be even more cold.

No, your body doesn't end up colder after exercise. It returns to the same temperature. You exercise, your muscles generate heat. You stop exercising, you stop producing that heat. Basic biology.

You might feel colder after a run if:

1. You are still wearing clothes which are damp with sweat or rain.
2. You don't cool down properly and instead go straight from the cold outside to the warm inside, so your body experiences a rapid change of temperature whilst your HR is coming down. Your body will soon regulate back to normal though.

😂😂😂

You've already deliberately distorted a BMJ study on mental health during lockdown.

And you're also distorting the science behind exercise being a good thing to do during winter months.

Link from Harvard Medical School:

www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-wonders-of-winter-workouts

If exercise cooled you down, then people would be advised to exercise in extreme heat. Instead, government and scientific advice is quite the opposite.

Unless they're just trying to kill us all off, which ...? 🤔

In the examples you have in your OP the only one I'd huddle in would be the car.

You still haven’t cited your scientific source? People have googled but not found what you’re claiming

In most normal situations there's a happy medium. Move around enough to get warm but not so hot that you sweat or that your clothes can't keep most of your warmth in.

I learned about the dangers of sweating in arctic conditions reading Ice Station Zebra as a teen.

Exercise warms you up. It doesn't cool you down and cause hypothermia when it's cold outside. If that was the case thousands of kids and adults would be dropping down like flies each winter. You shouldn't exercise indoors and then go straight out into the cold without putting at least a hoodie on even if you are feeling hot afterwards. That's the time you are more likely to pick something up or at least that's what we were taught in karate.

What nonsense.

What experience do you have of sustained cold weather? Do you snowshoe, do you cross country ski, do you shovel snow?

I grew up in Canada, where cold weather is just a fact of life. The average temperature from December to February was -12C. As children we played outside throughout the winter and at every school break, even in -25C temperatures.

You learn very quickly that if you stop moving, you become uncomfortably cold. I have cross country skied in -30C wearing only a base layer because we were going up a mountain - it’s really hard work and everyone was hot. Had I stopped moving I would have gotten hypothermia in minutes.

I'll remember this thread for the next summer heatwave so I can go out for a run to cool down 😂 who needs air con or a fan.

Those children who died canoeing would unfortunately have died anyway, due to the cold water rushing past their bodies and taking away body heat more quickly than it could have been produced. Kicking their legs or not would have no effect. Your all knowing community were quite wrong.

As an aside, can you link to a local news story or something?

I’m so invested in this weird thread 😂

Hahaha me too.

Someone is wrong on the internet!

OP is this the canoe disaster you mention as I remember it well

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_Bay_canoeing_disaster

There are a huge number of failings, unpreparedness and lack of proper equipment that led to this tragedy but I really don't think kicking to keep warm was one of them?

Are there many people getting stranded that are likely to need this advice?
I assume you mean you'd get cold once you stop moving about? No need to start doing some crazy work out but keeping moving will definitely help keep warm.

If I was going to impart just one piece of advice about staying warm outside it would be stay off the floor but the reality is that staying comfortable and alive in desperate circumstances is that every situation will be different and have different solutions

I'm about to spend two hours in the snow. I'll be sure not to run around, though I'm already overheated just from walking to town.

This is, of course, why you're advised to go for a run during a heatwave... 😂

In all seriousness, it does bug me that people always miss the fact that the body's response is only half of how we deal with thermoregulation.

There are also behavioural responses that a relevant too.

I've actually been trapped in freezing temperatures, and the situation was escalated to a high priority because I physically couldn't move about, whereas the rest of the party could.

Gosh I'm amazed I survived my childhood, my parents were quite happy to send us kids out sledging for hours in the snow!

So when it reaches 34 degrees in a few months' time we should be sure to run around in the sun because it will cool us down? Strange because we have government 'heatwave warnings' when it's over 30 (also pretty frequent) advising older people to stay indoors and avoid exercise...

It snows plenty where I live (a mere 500 miles from the U.K. for those asking where on earth people live where there is a lot of snow. Clue: the USA, Canada, Scandinavia, the Alps...). No snow at the moment but when there is, or when it drops below freezing, I find life continues pretty normally, except I light the fire and wear a winter coat and boots if I go out. Oh and the cats show a remarkable preference for being indoors...

Well I spent a couple of hours in the snow this evening and I can safely say sitting still made me cold, moving around kept me warm, and running made me want to collapse and embrace sweet death but I was very tired by that point.

“Oh shit, i suddenly find myself caught in snow … I best run around” 😂😂

I live in Canada and have never heard this. I have a few problems with your thread. Your opening post says trapped in the snow and then the example you use is in water which is a drastically different survival example. And your refusal to site resources just makes you look like you're talking out of your ass. Perhaps because you couldn't find any resources.

Frankly if you are trapped in the snow you should try to insulate by digging a fort into the snow to protect yourself from the wind.

The students in the freezing water didn't die because they kicked their legs. That's ridiculous and the angry parents were probably just looking for a target to pin their blame and anger on. It had nothing to do with facts. The fact is freezing water makes it impossible for your body to insulate itself. They were doomed from the start.

Now I will get back to the point. You are both correct and incorrect. If you start running around burning energy like crazy you will lose heat faster but only if you are not properly insulated, such as no coat, and if your exercise is excessive. However if you are in a blizzard with a coat on it is a life saving tactic to walk consistently but slowly!

If you stop you will fall asleep and your temperature will drop and you will in fact die faster. Your fingers and toes will go first. But if you keep your blood flowing you can save them and hopefully prevent infection.

Maybe next time if you start a "factual" mumsnet post with such confidence you should be ready in advance with proof especially when it comes to life saving matters.

What i am aware of, is that if someone is suffering from hypothermia, for some reason, their brains tell them they are too warm and they start to take layers of clothes off.
Is that what you mean?