Thin clothes, slippery shoes or stiletto heels are not the best outfit when going home after a festive evening in winter. And a little chill on the bench can seem very tempting on the way home after the pub closes. On Saturday night, a man was found sleeping in the snow in Førde. It was a police patrol that found him, and they drove him straight to the emergency room. But even if you are completely sober, it doesn’t take much before you slip on slippery surfaces and suddenly find yourself lying helpless in the snow in the dark of night. Photo: Alastair Grant / AP The previous Sunday morning, a woman was discovered severely hypothermic in Sogndal. She had probably fallen, fainted and been lying somewhere where no one saw her. She was found by a young woman on her way from training on Sunday morning. Then she was severely chilled after many hours outside and had to be sent to hospital. – She has had as much bad luck as it is possible to have. But fortunately there is nothing to indicate that she will suffer lasting injuries, thank goodness that whoever found her acted quickly and correctly, says Jorunn Furuheim of the police in Sogndal. Cold and alcohol are a bad combination Hypothermia, or hypothermia, is when the core temperature of your body is below 35 degrees Celsius. Frostbite is when ice crystals are formed in the skin, which burst the cells and blood vessels, causing the cells to die. You can get frostbite without your core temperature being too low. It’s cooling down, and not frostbite, researcher and doctor Arne Johan Norheim is most worried about a late winter evening with a little alcohol. – You shouldn’t sit for long on a bench in thin clothes before it gets scary, says Arne Johan Norheim. DOCTOR AND RESEARCHER: Arne Johan Norheim. He is a professor at the University of Tromsø, and researches, among other things, frost damage. You have probably experienced grinding your teeth or shivering when you are cold. These are things the body does to fight the cold. But if you have drunk alcohol, these survival mechanisms do not work as well as when you are sober. – Alcohol is sedating. It complicates things quite dramatically if you are chilled, says Norheim. This is what you should do The most important thing you do to prevent yourself from ending up in such a situation is what you do before you go out. – Pre-construction is the most important thing! Both with dressing well, and looking after each other so that no one goes alone, says Mads Gilbert. He is a senior physician at the University Hospital of Northern Norway. SUPERVISOR: Mads Gilbert is a senior physician at the Emergency Medicine Clinic at the University Hospital of Northern Norway. Among other things, he has helped save a woman who had a body temperature of 13.7 degrees. Photo: Jørn Inge Johansen / news – Bring good clothes to wear over the finstas. Wool and something to stop the wind. Then you’d rather spend an extra five minutes in the dressing room before and after the party. If you find someone who has been sleeping outside or shows signs of being chilled, this is what you should do: Stop heat loss Get the person concerned indoors, into a car or similar. If that is not possible, try to protect them from the weather and wind and get them away from the cold ground. Wrap them in cloth and cover the head. Give off your own body heat by lying close, so-called chamber heating. Try to make contact. Check whether the person concerned responds to calls and gentle shaking. Then you open the airways and bend down completely and listen, see and feel for normal breathing. Call 113 If the person does not react and is not breathing normally, call 113 and immediately start cardiopulmonary resuscitation with thirty chest compressions and two mouth-to-mouth breaths. Wait until help arrives. – If you are in doubt about whether to call, then you are not in doubt. Rather call once too much than once too little, says Gilbert. Photo: Kate Smr / Unsplash If they are awake, it is still a danger sign if they stop shaking and start messing with their talking and perception of reality. – As long as they feel they are cold, that they are shivering and are awake, then it is not so dangerous. But once it stops, there is danger on the way, says Norheim. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to take care of others who are apparently lifeless, it is important not to give up, emphasizes Gilbert. – Critically cooled persons have survived many hours of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the way to hospital, which can warm up the lifeless person with a cardiopulmonary machine, he says. Hypothermia Hypothermia, or hypothermia, is when the body’s core temperature is below 35 degrees Celsius. Mild cooling: the body has a temperature between 35 and 32 degrees. Moderate cooling: the body has a temperature between 32 and 28 degrees. Severe hypothermia: the body has a temperature between 28 and 20 degrees Deep hypothermia: the body has a temperature below 20 degrees. – Five minus can kill you It can take a little while before your temperature reaches 35 degrees. But it quickly goes downhill from there. – It can go very quickly from trembling to a person being in imminent danger of death, says Mads Gilbert. Their statistics show that nearly four out of ten patients who are deeply chilled and completely lifeless can survive even prolonged resuscitation until they are warmed up on a heart-lung machine at the hospital in Tromsø. – We tend to say that “no one is dead until they are warm and dead”, says Gilbert. How long it takes before your body temperature starts to become dangerously low, there is no exact conclusion. What you are wearing, whether you have eaten food, whether you are rested, whether you have alcohol in your blood, weather, temperature and your physique are all factors that play a role. To explain it in a simple and perhaps slightly morbid way: – You can of course get frostbite in minus five degrees, but you have to be below minus 20 degrees before the chance of having to amputate starts to increase, says Norheim, and continues: – But you can easily run into five minus degrees of hypothermia.
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