As you know, we’ve written about hypothermia many times here.* It is a subject that my son and I, members “back in the day”, of a USCGAux Cold Water Team, were trained in. Recently, amongst the professional life-saving community, whispers started that we have had it all wrong, that data, from US Navy studies from the post WW-II era on "Time of Useful Consciousness" that came from molded dummies with internal brass skeletons, didn’t calibrate to live testing conducted by various scientific and medical studies done in the last couple of years. Further, medical testing of the effects of cold water on the human physiology would lead one to believe that the standard “fireman’s hoist**” of a stricken mariner, taught everywhere, could in fact lead to a worsening of the effects of cold water on the victim, even leading to death. This column, replacing ALL the columns I’ve written about this subject, is about that.
The Cold Facts
Back in August 2010, while attending the National Convention of the US Coast Guard Auxiliary in Phoenix, AZ, I attended a presentation on this topic by a Canadian organization called Cold Water Boot Camp (www.coldwaterbootcamp.com) which works in cooperation with many life saving organizations, including the US Coast Guard.
In the video part of the presentation, I saw a good friend and fellow member of US Coast Guard Forces – Mario Vittone, USCG Marine Safety Specialist and former Helicopter Rescue Swimmer Instructor – featured in the video as one of the guinea pig subjects. In the past, Mario would ping me with commentary on the aforementioned columns on hypothermia. “Vin, some of the this stuff is not lining up with the latest data. Be careful!” The problem I had was in sorting out that which was still good and that which was good to go – as it “outta here!” There was no official report to rely on. Well, not only was there now an official scientific report to rely on, but I could talk directly to one of the subjects – Mario Vittone, USCG. In fact, Mario has published a detailed article on the subject - http://mariovittone.com/2010/10/the-truth-about-cold-water/ - which I want to acknowledge here as an underlying source document to this column.
Traditions Die Hard at Sea
It isn’t easy convincing mariners that a life-time of tradition and practice is wrong. And not everything we know and practice on this subject IS wrong. Here are the facts:
The first phase of cold water immersion is called the cold shock response. This we’ve had right and have written about before, (see SSP, “Going Down For The Third (and Last) Time”, 7/15/09.) Data now shows that roughly 20% die in the first two minutes. They take on water in that first uncontrolled gasp, panic and drown, plain and simple. In some, the cold shock triggers a heart attack. Surviving this stage requires you to stay calm and get your breathing under control. If you don’t, your life is measured in minutes and you won’t need your other hand to count them. A further consequence of this phenomenon is that you will rapidly lose your physical capacity to swim. Even the strongest swimmer can’t fight Mother Nature – your body’s natural reaction to all this cold water is to protect the inner core. It does this by constricting blood flow to the outer extremities and keeping as much warm blood as possible around the inner core. We had this right too. I’ve described it as “being drunk without the booze.” Fine motor skills go, followed by gross motor skills, followed by, well, death by drowning. You can’t swim without arms and legs (read: extremities) working.
What we had completely wrong was this. To quote Mario Vittone directly:
It is impossible to get hypothermic in cold water unless you are wearing flotation, because without flotation – you won’t live long enough to become hypothermic.
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