METEOROLOGY
METEOROLOGY WITH TONY BUTT
PHOTO: CARLOS TORO W W W.W H I T E WAV E S.E U
CO L D WAT E R , PA R T 1
This issue Tony strays a little away from Meteorology and takes a look at the effect that the weather can have on our bodies…
So, I thought it might be interesting to have a quick look at what happens to your body when you get cold in the water. In this, the first part, I’ll have a look at how the body tries to defend itself against the cold, and why the mechanisms it has evolved are more of a hindrance than a help.
I spent the first few winters of my surfing life on the south coast of England. Not the coldest water in the world by any means, but the temperature was certainly a major factor. In the winter, the main reason you would get out of the water was not that you were tired or bored, but that you were just too cold to carry on. I remember always having numb hands and feet, and sometimes coming out of the water violently shivering.
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The human body, just like a machine, is designed to function within a certain temperature range. If the working ‘core’ of the machine becomes too cold, it will not function properly. So it has built-in control mechanisms to keep it at the right temperature, despite the outside being colder. For example, in cold conditions, a car engine works harder and burns more fuel, and the water is circulated straight back to the core instead of being pumped to the radiator where the outside air would cool it down. In a human body, the metabolic rate is increased to generate more heat, and the blood is circulated back to the vital organs instead of pumped to the hands and feet. When we start to get cold, we shiver. When we shiver, large groups of muscles produce random contractions exclusively to produce heat. In this way, extra heat energy is available to avoid your core temperature going down. In other words,