Heat Your Body, Not Your House

The recent brutally cold weather event across much of the U.S. has been a wake up call for lots of people.

The first is to conserve your own body heat. Keep yourself covered up, especially your head, because you lose so much heat through your scalp. And don’t wait until you feel cold before adding clothing. Conserve the warmth you already have — don’t wait until you lose that warmth and they try to recapture it. 

The second important key is to add warmth to the inside of your body. Eat hot meals as often as possible. Drink warm liquids as often as possible. Avoid alcohol because it actually speeds the cooling of the body core. But make sure to drink plenty of water because dehydration comes easily in cold weather when you don’t naturally feel thirsty, and dehydration speeds hypothermia.

I’m seeing all kinds of suggestions about how to heat your house when the power goes down during cold weather. Some of them are okay, some are downright dangerous.

One thing I want to mention is that you should never try to heat your house with any device that has an unvented fuel combustion system. The very worst scenario is using a barbecue grill or hibachi with briquettes to try to heat your house. It’s nothing less than a recipe for death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

So here’s what I want you to think about. In order for you to survive, it isn’t necessary to heat your whole house. All that’s necessary is that you personally stay warm enough.

Here are two important keys to survival in a cold environment:

• The first is to conserve your own body heat. Keep yourself covered up, especially your head, because you lose so much heat through your scalp. And don’t wait until you feel cold before adding clothing. Conserve the warmth you already have — don’t wait until you lose that warmth and they try to recapture it. 

You can lose body warmth by four methods.

1) Radiation. Your body radiates warmth, so if you can capture that warmth and keep it from drifting away into the atmosphere, it helps keep you warm. This is where the reflective side of an emergency blanket comes into play. That material reflects back toward you the very heat that your body is radiating away. Wrapping up in an emergency blanket does wonders for conserving your body warmth.

2) Convection. This is the movement of air around your body — basically it's wind, or even a slight breeze. To avoid losing body warmth by convection, keep yourself protected from exposure to the wind. That means staying inside a shelter, or a vehicle — anywhere that shields you from the wind.

3) Conduction. You transfer body warmth to cold objects by conduction whenever you touch something cold. It sucks the warmth right out of your body, so don’t sit or lie down on anything that is cold. And don't allow anything colder than 98.6 degrees F to touch your bare skin.

4) Evaporation. If you become wet, it will be almost impossible to stay warm. The moisture evaporating from your skin or clothing will act like an air conditioner, literally drawing the warmth from your body and dissipating it into the air. Staying dry is the most important step in staying warm.

• The second important key is to add warmth to the inside of your body. Eat hot meals as often as possible. Drink warm liquids as often as possible. Avoid alcohol because it actually speeds the cooling of the body core. But make sure to drink plenty of water because dehydration comes easily in cold weather when you don’t naturally feel thirsty, and dehydration speeds hypothermia.

If you conserve your body warmth, and add warmth to the inside of your body, you can survive the cold weather without having to worry about keeping your entire house warm.