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by James Hubbard, MD, MPH
Winter can do a number on your skin. Add the cold to the dry air, mix in a little wind, and it can be downright dangerous—potentially life-threatening if you tend to ignore it and don’t properly treat the damage.
How many of us have gone out to play on a cold winter’s day, only to go to bed that night with a red, raw, painful face?
It can be from sunburn or windburn, but usually it’s both. Cracks in the dry skin—even blisters—can occur. If the skin gets infected, that can be dangerous. If you can’t get to a medical facility, it could be even deadly. But there are simple things you can do to prevent this damage. Basically, just keep your skin well-seasoned, like a cast-iron skillet.
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by James Hubbard, MD, MPH
I thought when I moved to Colorado, people would know how to walk in the snow without falling. They’re used to it, right?
Not so. In fact, in every area of the country I’ve practiced, some of the worst breaks, bruises, cuts, and dislocations come from people slipping down in the snow. Sometimes they’re in a hurry, like shopping, or like you would be in an emergency.
Okay, I’ll admit it. Many years ago, I was running to an ambulance, slipped on the one piece of ice still left over from a freeze, and broke my ankle. I wasn’t much help after that.
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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
CDC. A family of four found is found dead in a two-room tent with the propane heater still running. The cause of death: carbon monoxide poisoning.
A father and son fall asleep in their charcoal-heated tent. They don’t wake up.
Your choice of heat can kill you without singeing a hair.
Carbon monoxide is colorless and orderless—a silent killer. It’ s the leading cause of poisoning deaths. How can you ensure you or your family isn’t its next victim? When you’re camping or the heat goes off, remember that unless you have a working chimney, makeshift heating may be your greatest danger.
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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
In my last post, I talked about how Olympic gold-medal winner Rulon Gardner saved most of his foot despite severe frostbite. The main thing is, he didn’t rewarm it while there was still a chance of the tissue refreezing. (If it had refrozen, it would have been dead meat—literally.) And of course, he was able to get to a medical facility.
But what if you can’t get expert care? What if you’re stranded in some shack or tent? Here are some first-aid dos and don’ts for severe frostbite when help is not on the way.
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Rulon Gardner (in blue) wrestling at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, two years after a dangerous bout with frostbite.
by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
Relatively speaking, losing just one toe and a couple of toe tips was pretty much a best-case scenario for Rulon Gardner. He could have lost his entire foot—and some people would have in the same situation.
As I talked about Tuesday, the Olympic gold-medal wrestler survived being stranded on a mountainside for seventeen hours in 2002. His right shoe was frozen to his foot. I imagine the tissue was gray or white and hard to the touch, frozen with severe frostbite. But Rulon did a few things that saved his foot—things anyone in the same situation could do, high-level athlete or average joe.
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American wrestler Rulon Gardner accepts his bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics, two years after losing a toe to frostbite. Photo (cropped) courtesy, USA Wrestling.
by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
Rulon Gardner is one megatough dude. He’s a local celebrity here in Colorado (Olympic wresting gold medalist and The Biggest Loser participant). A giant of a guy, he was stranded for something like seventeen hours on the side of a mountain after a snowmobile accident in 2002. You can read his story in Sports Illustrated.
They found him almost dead from hypothermia. His right shoe was frozen to his foot. He survived and is back to competitive wrestling. He lost the tips of both big toes, all of his right middle one, and a lot of skin. But it could have been so much worse. We can learn a lot about frostbite from his experience.
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World War II poster from the U.S. National Archives warning about trench foot.
by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
Trench foot, also called immersion foot, was common in soldiers who had to spend hours upon hours standing in trenches with cold water up to their ankles or knees. But it can occur in anyone who stands in cold water (33 to 59 F) or wears wet socks or shoes for long periods in the cold. It usually takes ten hours or longer of these constant conditions—the cooler the quicker. Think campers or water-related disasters.
The constant cold wetness injures the tiny blood vessels that bring nutrition to your feet, leading to foot-tissue damage. Problems range from burning and aching to muscle, nerve, and skin destruction. Trench foot can trigger years of painful, swollen feet, or even partial loss of a foot or feet. There’s no real cure for trench foot, so prevention is essential.
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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
Real case. A doctor falls through an ice hole while cross-country skiing. They find her body many yards away. It’s been under the ice for over an hour. She is resuscitated. After the ICU, she spends many months in rehab, but in a year she’s back to practicing medicine.
A snowmobile accident submerges a man in icy water for an hour. He lives, with no apparent brain damage.
It’s rare, but it happens. In normal circumstances the brain can’t go without new oxygen for over six minutes without developing significant damage. How can some people survive an hour of total submersion–seemingly drowned in cold water?
Part of the answer is that the rapid cooling can trigger the mammalian dive reflex.
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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
In my post “How to Survive If You Fall Into Cold Water,” I wrote about what to do if you fall through the ice. My second-born, Beth Nelson—a paramedic in Alaska—sent me this YouTube video after she read that post. She used to teach EMTs and said she’d show this to her students.
Please have everyone in your family read my post and watch this video. Doing both may seal the techniques better in your memory. You could use many of them for any fall in cold water, such as a tumble out of a boat. Every state in the union has had cold-water drownings.
The video, from Discovery Channel Canada, is very entertaining. I mean, anyone who’d purposely get in ice-cold water ….
Meet Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht, also known as Dr. Popsicle.
by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.
A few days ago, in a nearby town, a man in his forties drowned. Apparently he was chasing his dog, and they fell through the ice. He got the dog out but not himself. Horrible And, although I don’t know any details, it makes me think of the many deaths like this that are preventable.
Of course there’s the obvious: Don’t walk on thin ice. The weather’s been pretty warm here in Colorado, and the ice on the ponds is never very thick anyway. But, according to one article I read, our firemen and rescuers spend a fair amount of time chasing people off iced ponds.
So what can you do if you or someone else takes an accidental plunge? It helps to know what happens when you fall into cold water.
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