I’m gonna be straight up about this one. It’s cold.
Seriously, our great city of Indiana is freezing right now. Our usual precipitation is coming down in gorgeous frozen crystals that look nice as they fall, but can be difficult to stand in or walk on, particularly after a couple hundred boots have smashed them into dirty brown slush. But tripping and falling into an unattractive pile isn’t the only worry or danger of the winter season. While I hate to be the nagging “you should be responsible” type that a lot of care-free college students abhor, I have to lay it out. Hypothermia and/or frostbite are worth spending the time and energy to avoid.
What is Hypothermia:
Hypothermia is when your body temperature goes down below ninety-five degrees. It is worse in older people, as they can catch hypothermia even indoors under the right conditions. That does not, of course, make people our age immune, as some may seem to think. In weather conditions like the ones we have now, anyone’s respiratory system or heart is at risk for failure.
Symptoms:
- Clumsiness or lack of coordination
- Slurred speech or mumbling
- Shivering
- Stumbling
- Confusion or difficulty thinking
- Poor decision making, such as trying to remove warm clothes
- Drowsiness or very low energy
- Apathy or lack of concern about one’s condition
- Progressive loss of consciousness
- Weak pulse
- Slow, shallow breathing
(Source)
To Help:
If a person you know has hypothermia, like a friend or roommate, the best thing to do once you get them out of the cold is to remove any wet clothing from them and to wrap them in blankets. You want to heat them up naturally, not through artificial means like an electric blanket or heater directly by them. Too much heat immediately will hurt sensitive and injured skin. Start warming them up in little bits, to return them to a room temperature before exposing them to true heat like hot tea or coffee or a hot shower. The shock of that much heat can stop an irregular heartbeat.
How to Avoid Getting Hypothermia:
- Bundle up. Wearing the required amount of layers or a seriously thick designed for winter jacket is essential.
- Cover all sensitive areas. Extremities like fingers and toes are more sensitive to lost heat. Frostbite can form quickly in cold weather, and is very painful in addition to dangerous.
- Stay dry. Spill coffee on your jacket trying to lock your front door today? Unlock the door and go back inside, because wet areas in cold weather will freeze you faster than anything else, and that warm winter jacket won’t be even half as effective anymore. To go with this, make sure you wear waterproof shoes when there’s any kind of precipitation on the ground, even slushy messes. If the moisture sinks into your shoes, you will be in big trouble.
- Do not drink alcohol. If you want to drink, that is totally fine, but do not do so when you have to go outside soon. While it may feel like you’re warming up when you drink it, alcohol will cause your body to cool off much more rapidly than it normally does, and that cold will be harder to chase away.
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