Christina Jud

Biology Lab

Hypothermia Assignment

Hypothermia affects people of all ages and is ultimately very dangerous. Particularly, it

affects young children and the elderly. It occurs when our body loses heat at a faster rate than

we can produce it. It is estimated that each year, we lose approximately 1,500 from accidental

hypothermia. To minimize this number, it is important that we take proper precautions to keep

ourselves and our loved ones safe. Some of these precautions include wearing warm clothing,

not exerting too much energy in the cold, and being aware of the weather.

When your body starts feeling cold, it does its best to try and regulate body

temperature back to a place of stability. The body has many mechanisms for trying to maintain

a stable internal environment which includes the thyroid and adrenal glands boosting

heartrate, metabolism, and blood pressure. Your muscles then receive signals to shiver, which

results in metabolism accelerating to nearly 2-5 times its normal rate. Following this, the brain

starts to get colder until it stops functioning, leaving some dizzy and disoriented. All of this can

result in permanent brain damage over time.

Cardiac arrest has one of the highest mortality rates and it is shown that less than 10%

of people will survive. During cardiac arrest, the brain undergoes self-destruction where certain

processes speed up cell death. However, when you reduce the c ore temperature of the body,

you can halt the injury process that is happening internally. To do this, it is preferable that the

body’s core temperature gets dropped down to 32C within 3-6 hours of cardiac arrest.
 When medical professionals want to go about lowering a person’s body temperature,

they have to be cautious and do it in a controlled manner. Initially, they may start out with a

cooling blanket or icepacks in areas of high circulation. Once the patient is moved to a hospital,

more formal devices can be put into play in order to lower the body temperature. This may

include devices that are inserted into the main vein of the abdomen, or sedative drugs that help

slow the brain. Additionally, paralyzing drugs are used to minimize shivering within the patient.

Shivering needs to be prevented as it uses up oxygen. This type of therapy has been around for

a long period of time and is accepted, however it has not been widely used and is slow to

evolve.

Anna is one case where this type of therapy was extremely beneficial and in fact saved

her life. Her body temperature dropped down to 13.7C and she remained without medical

attention for almost 80 minutes. The hypothermia however saved her life. When Anna’s heart

stopped, her brain was at such a low temperature that it was not requiring oxygen. Looking at

Anna’s blood, it was noted that her potassium levels were in a normal range which was a key

component of understanding the degree of cell damage. These potassium levels indicated that

she could in fact be warmed up and survive. If these levels were not normal, she would have

been determined dead.

Ultimately hypothermia is extremely dangerous, but it can also protect people in a way

from death. At temperatures below 35C the body goes into hypothermia. One it hits 25C, it

enters cardiac arrest. Following cardiac arrest, the body enters a period called “downtime”

where it starts dying. The hypothermia protected Anna from death and allowed medical
professions to bring her back in an efficient manner where she was safe. In Norway it is said

that “you’re never dead until you’re warm and dead.”