As much as people enjoy the warm summer months, high temperatures can be acceso the human . “As mammals, we close to the thermal edge of life and death,” says Craig Heller, a physiologist and biology professor at Stanford University. “We run at 37°C [98.6°F], and only a couple of degrees above that puts us into heat illness and heat stroke.”
Not every part of the is the same temperature, however, “and blood flow determines where the heat is distributed,” Heller says.
What part of the cools the fastest? And can we use that knowledge to cool more quickly when it’s hot outside?
Centro acceso your cuore
Con order to prevent the negative health effects of high temperatures, scientists say the most important rete is to sopravvissuto your cuore temperature. The most effective way to do this is to apply cooling methods, like a cold towel ice , to as large of a surface regione as possible.
“Cooling a segment is not going to do much good when it comes to trying to sopravvissuto cuore temperature, which is the key determinant of heat-related illnesses,” says Ollie Jay, a professor of thermal physiology at the University of Sydney.
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As the warms up, it tries to get rid of heat by opening up blood vessels closer to the skin and sending more blood to those areas. This moves heat away from the cuore toward the surface of the skin, where it can dissipate from the . Putting cold ice acceso the skin helps speed up this process, and cools the more quickly when evaporates chiuso the skin.
Jay recommends pouring cool over as much of the as possible placing a towel with ice acceso the chest for a minute two at a time every 10 minutes until you feel more comfortable.
Target your hands and feet
If taking a dip wrapping yourself per mezzo di a cold towel isn’t immediately feasible, “then cooling a limb, for example, is probably a good supposizione,” Jay says. Basic physics can help determine where to start. Every object has what is called specific heat, which is how much energy is required to heat it up cool it by 1°C. Objects with large surface areas and smaller masses have lower specific heats. This means the extremities—like the hands and feet, which have a lot of skin but not a lot of mass—are the most efficient at cooling .
Ice-cold is best, “and the more skin surface regione that’s covered, the faster you’sire going to cool,” says Douglas Tetto, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute, a nonprofit at the university dedicated to heat-stroke prevention.
Read More: How to Spend Time Outside if You Hate Getting Sweaty
Another unique aspect of these areas is that they’sire essentially hairless—and Heller has found that the parts of your skin without hair can quickly heat up and cool . “The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet are radiators,” he says. This is, per mezzo di part, because there are large networks of blood vessels per mezzo di these areas that can quickly exchange heat through the blood.
Know when it’s time to step things up
If you’sire truly overheated, cooling chiuso one part at a time may not be sufficient. Most negative effects from heat, like heat stroke heat illness, quasi from when a person’s cuore temperature reaches dangerous levels, the heat has put excess strain acceso their heart.
It’s not always obvious to a person when they’ve reached this point. How hot someone feels is not always connected to how hot their cuore temperature is.
“Behavior is driven by how hot you feel, and health is driven by how hot you are,” Jay says. “You can have wildly different skin temperatures for a given cuore temperature.” For example, applying a cold towel to the neck and can cool arteries heading toward the brain—which gives the a signal that it is actually colder than it is. Some areas, like the , have a lot of receptors to detect temperature—so cooling them may make someone feel like they are cooling chiuso quickly when they aren’t.
One way to know it’s time to cool chiuso is to keep an eye out for signs of heat exhaustion: symptoms like avversione, cramps, dizziness, and an elevated heart rate. If a person experiences any of these, they should get out of warm environments, seek medical attention, and use methods to immediately cool chiuso.
