98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive Page 8

  5. Stay hydrated.

  Drink cool to cold liquids if possible; urine should appear “clear”; shut mouth and breathe through the nose; limit talking.

  6. Stay aware of what’s happening.

  Be conservative. Don’t take unnecessary chances. Cultivate and maintain a “Party On” attitude.

  10

  YOUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE

  Statistically speaking, your first line of defense is to regulate core body temperature. In one of my lectures, I have students define their needs from their wants. The situation is this. You’ve been invited to Fantasy Island to achieve your lifelong dream of the ultimate camping trip. Tattoo and Mr. Rourke beckon you to enter the island’s mega-camping store. Inside, you find all the outdoor gear your heart could desire. Gear galore waits in every corner—it’s expensive, shiny, and it’s all free as Rourke is footing the bill. Using this image, my students brainstorm every piece of camping gear imaginable as I write furiously on the blackboard to keep up. These are the wants. All good Americans worth their credit cards know the world is full of wants. Very few are truly aware that they will never be satisfied.

  I then propose the scenario of regulating body temperature. What from the list of wants would they need to regulate core body temperature? I don’t give a specific situation or agenda. The time you’re not going to find yourself in a compromising dilemma is when you plan on being in one. You won’t have just consumed a big bowl of cereal after ten hours of beauty rest.

  “Survival situation? Hmmm, let me check my day planner. Oh yes, I have an opening at three next Tuesday.”

  You won’t be able to choose your emergency. It’s just gonna happen! That’s part of what makes it a survival situation. So, I ask my students, what do they need to regulate body temperature? Out of the massive list on the blackboard, past the toaster oven, the bicycle, and the RV, appear two simple, sacred items: clothing and water.

  Your body generates 300 BTUs of heat every hour. A BTU is a British Thermal Unit, the amount of heat it takes to bring one pint of water up 1°F (-17°C). So who cares? One strike-anywhere kitchen match burned completely through is a BTU. There are 250 strike-anywhere kitchen matches per box. Your body generates the equivalent heat of over a box of wooden kitchen matches every hour! That’s a lot of heat.

  Cold Weather

  In a cold-weather situation, the simplest means of staying warm is to trap this heat using insulation or dead air space in the form of clothing, adding or subtracting layers as outdoor conditions warrant. In addition, physical exercise, fire craft, shelter, and calorie-rich foods all help to keep the survivor’s core temperature at a lively 98.6°F (37°C). Even mild cold affects the body by impairing nerve functions, decreasing sensation, and reducing manual dexterity. Cold muscles work slower and with less efficiency, which greatly retards the ability to perform seemingly simple tasks—another plug for packing gear with limited bells and whistles. While there are variations, the critical temperature for retaining manual dexterity is a balmy 54°F (12°C) while touch sensitivity is 46°F (8°C).

  Hot Weather

  Alternately, there is a reason the Bedouin nomads in the Middle East wear long, flowing woolen robes in extreme desert temperatures. Your skin is the largest organ of the body. Burn it, and you severely compromise your body’s ability to cool itself, as even a moderate sunburn causes a decrease in the responsiveness and capacity of the sweat glands. Chemical sunscreens were discovered in 1926 and sold to the general public in 1928. Long before this, southwestern people used alternatives such as prickly-pear cactus slime and carbon from a spent fire. Carbon, the black stuff leftover after putting out a fire, works especially well as a total sun block when finely ground and rubbed onto the skin. Clothing protects your skin from direct solar radiation as well as radiation reflected off particles in the atmosphere and the ground. Ground reflection can be major and varies from 2.5 percent for grass, to 20 percent for sand, and on up to 100 percent for certain bodies of water. The most important factor in determining how a fabric will repel ultraviolet radiation is the tightness of its weave followed by its color and if the fabric is wet or dry. Specialized, sun-protective clothing is becoming more common and, in the United States, is actually regulated as a medical device. Manufacturers have various strategies to keep out the sun’s rays, including tightly woven nylon, chemically treated cotton, cotton/synthetic blends, clothing bonded with ultraviolet-radiation-absorbing devices, and chemical shields added to laundry detergents. In short, clothing helps prevent sunburn.

  In a hot-weather situation, when ambient temperatures are near or above body temperatures, limiting heat loss through vasodilation, your body relies on one main mechanism to cool itself. This involves the sacred substance called water, entering your mouth and ending up in the large intestine where it’s absorbed and circulated through the body, and, when necessary, deposited on the skin in the form of sweat. This wonderful, liquid nectar, which is 99 percent water with a pinch of sodium chloride (salt) and potassium, is the only way your body cools itself when subjected to elevated temperatures. Even at a paltry 1 percent, long-term sweating without the ability to consume salt poses serious problems. People acclimated to hot weather produce more sweat, but with a lower concentration of lost salts.

  Sweat glands are found in the skin in concentrations from 650 to 4,000 per square inch and occur most abundantly on the forehead, scalp, face, neck, front and back portions of the trunk, and the top of the hands and forearms. The face and scalp alone account for an incredible 50 percent of the body’s total sweat production! In fact, the only skin areas that don’t have sweat glands are the lips, nipples, and external genitals. Sweat cools the skin and, the blood flowing through it. The cooled blood returns to the body’s core via the veins where it picks up more heated blood and returns it to the skin’s surface for cooling. Any liquid that evaporates from the skin will work, so don’t be shy about peeing on your clothing or soaking it in scummy water.

  Every drop of sweat that rolls off your body and hits the ground has been wasted. It has been wasted because it failed to accomplish its purpose by cooling your body through evaporation. The conversion of a liquid to a vapor requires a certain amount of energy or heat called the heat of vaporization and is directly responsible for wicking away the high temperatures that threaten to bake your brain.

  High humidity levels, especially those 70 percent or higher, severely restrict the evaporation process. Regardless of how much water you have available, if your body can’t get rid of excess heat, you risk dying of dehydration and hyperthermia. Personal humidity levels close to the body’s surface may skyrocket if you wear poorly ventilated clothing, as it reduces airflow over the skin. High water-vapor pressure, a.k.a. humidity, causes sweat to simply drip off the skin instead of evaporate. Many folks in humid environments commonly experience taking a shower, drying off, then drying off, and then trying to dry off again. High temperatures combined with high humidity levels can kill and are responsible for summer heatwaves in eastern North America that wipe out hundreds of people.

  Not only does clothing insulate you from heat and cold, it allows the sweat upon your skin to evaporate slowly and efficiently, making maximal use of whatever water you already have. With cotton, the same hydrophilic properties that kill you in a winter scenario make cotton a wonderful choice in desert heat. Believe it or not, I know folks who feel the same way about wool. The trick is to find out what works best for you in hot and cold weather.

  The Layering System

  Using the layering system, clothing for both hot and cold environments can be categorized into the following three sections: base layers, insulation layers, and environmental layers. Base layers are used against the skin, trapping air close to the body. They should be made from a fabric that insulates while transporting (wicking) water vapor away from the body and should be nonirritating and nonconstricting. Insulation layers are added or subtracted between the base and environmental layers as outside temperatures warran
t. Environmental layers protect against outdoor elements such as wind, rain, snow, sun, and brush, and should be lightweight, durable, loose fitting, wind- and water-resistant, and easy to vent excess moisture buildup. “Water-resistant” and “waterproof” are two entirely different concepts. The former “breathes” to a certain extent to let body moisture escape, and the latter is a vapor barrier that, although useful in some applications, requires advanced thought and the right conditions to be used successfully. Telling the difference between the two fabrics is easy by blowing on the fabric in question from the inside out and feeling for your escaping breath on the other side. If you feel warm air, it’s water-resistant material. Waterproofing and breathability are the oil and water components most coveted by outdoor enthusiasts in an environmental layer. Unfortunately, if you work at an intensity greater than 50 percent of your maximum oxygen uptake, a level of activity that a physically fit person can continue for hours, no fabric on the market can do ideal justice to both concepts.

  Dressing for extremely cold, sub-zero weather is an art form and beyond the scope of this book in regard to particular gear recommendations. Nevertheless, all clothing systems for any climate involve dead-air space or insulation. Your experience and ability to adjust your particular clothing system is more dependable than specialized gear. Clothing insulation is measured in clo. Technically speaking, one clo is equivalent to the amount of insulation needed to keep a seated person comfy in an air temperature of 70°F (21°C), with a relative humidity of less than 50 percent, and air movement of .2 miles per hour. To make things simpler, a common business suit provides one clo’s worth of insulation. Insulation is much more effective when worn in several thin layers as opposed to one thick layer, as it allows you to not only adapt to changing temperatures, but the air space between the layers of clothing insulates as well while adding no weight, bulk, or cost to the user. The layers should increase in size so as not to constrict the body when worn on top of one another. They should also be easy to pack, easy to put on and take off, and resist moisture accumulation. The best insulation has spaces small enough to prevent convective air currents, ideally no bigger than a millimeter, and should be able to trap air molecules through electrostatic attraction. Insulation types vary according to weight, compressibility, moisture repellence, and cost.

  The ideal scenario in the cold is to regulate clothing layers and activities to allow you to operate at peak performances without wasting water and energy to sweating or shivering.

  For most outdoor recreationists, clothing decisions are based upon factors of cost, weight, bulk, fit, material properties, environmental temperature, and unfortunately, fashion. For all general purposes, your clothing needs to keep you warm, cool, out of the sun, away from bugs, and to be quick drying, durable, and nonrestrictive. What clothing you choose to pack is largely determined by the length of your trip and what climate and season you’re headed for. The layering method allows you to add or subtract layers of clothing at will in response to your increasing or decreasing metabolic output and the environmental temperatures at hand. This ability to fine-tune your wardrobe helps minimize sweating in your clothes. “Running cool” by wearing slightly less clothing than required, providing there’s no need to conserve energy, is an effective way to prevent sweating. In cold temperatures, sweated-out clothing through over-exertion severely compromises your clothing’s ability to insulate. Regardless of physical activity, the skin continually pours out moisture called insensible perspiration. When this or any warmed water vapor reaches cold air, it freezes. Insulation filled with frost and water does little to keep you alive; thus venting excess moisture in cold conditions is of paramount importance. The advantages of not sweating are many, including the fact that the insulation layers stay drier and warmer when activity ceases; clothes remain cleaner longer; and you achieve a lower metabolic rate, which conserves precious energy and water. The ideal scenario in the cold is to regulate clothing layers and activities to allow you to operate at peak performances without wasting water and energy to sweating or shivering.

  In hot climates, clothing protects you against direct radiation from the sun, hot winds, scorching ground temperatures, and a plethora of things that poke, bite, sting, or prick. Loose layers of the appropriate material grant protection from the sun and increase airflow while slowing the evaporation of sweat for superior cooling. The ideal scenario in the heat is to regulate layers and physical activity to allow you to operate at peak performances without wasting energy while achieving protection from the sun and making maximal use of your sweat for cooling.

  The ideal scenario in the heat is to regulate layers and physical activity to allow you to operate at peak performances without wasting energy while achieving protection from the sun and making maximal use of your sweat for cooling.

  Properties of Clothing Materials

  Clothing is a detailed subject to which an entire book could be dedicated. What type of material your clothing is made from is extremely important. In today’s world, there seems to be billions of trendy, new outdoor fabrics on the market, so much so that people fifty years ago must have stayed indoors, terrified of their inadequate clothing. Experiencing all the latest technical fabrics would require a second mortgage on the house and hours of free time. If you’re a gear junkie, have fun and let me know what you think regarding their performance or lack thereof. If you’re a hardcore mountaineer, unless you’re an acclimated Nepalese, you’ll more than likely need special stuff. For this book, however, and for the majority of outdoor folks, I’ll stick to outlining the pros and cons of basic outdoor fabrics that have withstood the test of time. Keep in mind that the properties described are just as applicable for blankets and sleeping bags.

  Cotton

  Cotton is hydrophilic, meaning it transfers sweat from your skin to the material itself, thus it sucks at “wicking” wetness away from the skin. In fact, cotton loves moisture and will become damp simply when exposed to humid air. Once wet, it feels cold, loses 90 percent of its insulating properties, is a real bummer to dry out and wicks heat from you 25 times faster than when it’s dry. In summary, wearing cotton clothing in the winter is a death wish. Yet, in scorching summer deserts, it’s my fabric of choice for precisely the same reasons. Add to this cotton’s decent abrasion resistance and its ability to block a reasonable amount of UV radiation, and you have some decent desert duds.

  Polypropylene

  Polypropylene resists absorbing moisture as it’s hydrophobic, meaning it transfers moisture from the skin across the fabric itself to other clothes or the air so it actually drys from the inside out. This quality makes it awesome at wicking sweat away from the skin, thus it’s popular as a base layer. Polypropylene feels soft and is relatively cheap and easy to care for. On the down side, wearing it a few days in a row while exercising will cause you to smell like a troll’s crotch. Being synthetic, it also easily melts to skin while you are singing Christmas carols around the fire. Regardless of stench and pain, polypropylene’s most insidious disadvantage, ironically enough, comes from its superior wicking abilities. In a nutshell, the stuff removes moisture away from skin so well that the wicking action uses more body energy from the survivor than other fabrics. Because of this, polypropylene should only be worn when energy loss is not critical.

  Wool

  Since it is essentially animal hair with empty cells that trap air, wool is a poor conductor. Its natural crimp and elasticity coupled with the fact that wool fibers are hollow make it a great insulator. It’s hygroscopic, and readily absorbs moisture but suspends the water vapor within the fiber itself. While any moisture in wool or other fabrics decreases the insulation value, wool can suck up 35 to 55 percent of its weight in water before feeling cold and wet. Although it’s a drag to dry out, wool actually retains more heat than synthetic fabrics as it dries. This fact, combined with a slower wicking rate, causes wool to use less body energy than polypropylene.

  Various breeds of sheep produce various types of w
ool as not all wool is garment quality. A wool fiber under magnification looks like a heavily barbed, demonic spear tip. Aside from allergies, the barbs from the lesser breeds, along with potential sloppy manufacturing, cause the all-too-familiar “get this damn sweater off of me” itch. These same barbs allow wool fibers to be crafted into felt. Wool is inherently flame retardant: it won’t melt to your skin when you’re sleeping next to a fire and is more forgiving than synthetics when using fire to dry out damp clothing. As if that’s not enough, wool is able to neutralize many types of acids and chemical bases, which helps prevent the buildup of germs. On the down side, wool is bulky when compared to synthetics and requires more space in the pack.

  Sock it to me!

  Cold feet, at one time or another, have been the bane of all outdoor recreationists. At a minimum, cold tootsies make an otherwise pleasant outing a drag. On the other side of the coin, you could lose toes or even your entire foot to frostbite. While I’ll never write a book about footwear, I do have a fair amount of experience with socks. I have worn two to three pairs of “new” (holey socks don’t cut it) wool socks, sans shoes or boots, for years in cold, dry snowy conditions with great results. Put on the smallest pair of socks first, and then one or two larger pairs over the first pair. I reserve the outer sock for the pair that has the most wear. While this might seem like insane behavior, learning more about why feet get cold is all the explanation you should need.

  Why feet get cold:

  1. The feet are located farthest from the heart, away from a warm, circulating blood supply.