Is it true that alcohol helps not to freeze, and also warm up in the cold?

It is common that alcohol helps a frozen person to warm up, and is also able to prevent hypothermia in a person who accepted him in advance. We decided to check if it has a scientific basis.

A person who uses alcohol really feels that he is warming. Drinks with its content called hot and strong drinks often Describe In fiction as burning. In the explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov even There is The word "SUGREV", which means "a little drink to warm up." During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet soldiers Rely The so -called "People's Commissars of 100 grams". The warming effect of alcohol and their opponents believed-in the autumn-winter period of the Battle of Stalingrad, German soldiers centrally Received schnapps. Historians Countedthat “only in a month of 1942, during the battle of Stalingrad, the Transcaucasian front drank 1.2 million liters of vodka, the Western front - about 1 million liters, the Karelian front - 364,000 liters, and the Stalingrad Front - 407,000 liters.” The participants in the hostilities of those years writethat it was alcohol with severe frosts or sharp hypothermia that saved their life.

It is worth noting that the use of ethanol counts The most common concomitant cause of death from hypothermia in urban conditions. Scientists also Reportthat alcoholics as a whole have a higher risk of random hypothermia. Rescuers agree with them - by data The Ministry of Emergencies in the Arkhangelsk region, half of the people who froze to death was intoxicated. At the same time, subjective observations tell us that after taking a certain dose of alcohol for some reason becomes warmer. However, in this case, the sensations bring us - the effect of heat Feel Due to the fact that the blood rushes to the skin, while it leaves the rest of the body, including internal organs. 

Scientists came to the conclusion that the effect of alcohol on thermoregulation (that is, ability Our body maintain a certain body temperature) depends mainly on the amount of drunk. Research show that low doses of alcohol Do not affect Significantly of the ability to thermoregulation, while at higher levels of alcohol in the blood, the frequency of thermoregulation disorders increases. A group of British scientists I did not find The difference between the cooling rate of volunteers, some of which drank a little alcohol (0.34 g of ethanol per 1 kg of body weight), while others drank water. Another group of researchers Raised The dosage of alcohol is up to 0.79 g per 1 kg of body weight and received already different results. The cooling rate of the body that took alcohol increased significantly, the heating process at room temperature went slower, while subjectively subjects evaluated the ambient temperature as a warmer and less trembling compared to the control group. 

Studies on animals allowed to better understand the mechanisms of thermoregulation and the effects of more significant doses of alcohol on them. On the monkeys experienced A dose of 0.5 and 1 g per 1 kg, all animals showed a significant drop in thermoregulation compared to the control group. The most prone to cool were individuals over nine years old average The life expectancy of an animal is 10-12 years old. Rats "Got" An even larger dose of alcohol is from 2 to 6 g per 1 kg. Explust animals showed even less ability to maintain body temperature even at room temperature. These experiments showed that the relationship between the dosage of alcohol and the subsequent impact on thermoregulation is not a linear pattern, but, most likely, works as a “threshold phenomenon”: low and moderate doses of alcohol do not affect thermoregulation when the cold, but with high or extreme doses, thermoregulation is significantly changed.

All scientists used not the most understandable parameter for calculations - a gram of ethanol per 1 kg of the test of the subject. Let's try to translate scientific data into understandable measurements. Average Human weight - 62 kg. According to methodology WHO, 12.6 g of ethanol is 40 g of a drink with a strength of 40%. Thus, only a dose equal to 66 g of 40 percent alcohol did not affect thermoregulation. All exceeding it have already had a negative effect on the loss of heat by the body. That is, the front -line 100 g already contributed to the hypothermia of the soldiers. At the same time, even a dose of 66 g did not demonstrate any advantages when hypothermia and subsequently warming compared to water, that is, 66 g of vodka, just do not worsen the situation, but do not improve it, and a large dose already harms.

A decrease in the ability to thermoregulation after taking alcohol may be associated with the effect of alcohol on the concentration of glucose in blood plasma. It was demonstrated that the intake of alcohol suppresses the production of glucose in the liver and Curses To Hypoglycemia. At Hypoglycemia The sweating rises, the peripheral vessels relax and their lumen expands, and cold tremor decreases. All this accelerates the heat transfer even more and complicates the warming even when it gets into heat. It is also worth noting that alcohol consumption leads To a decrease in the criticality of perception. Together with drowsiness, concomitant hypothermia, this can lead to the fact that a drinking man in the cold simply cannot adequately evaluate the freezing boundary.

Thus, neither alcohol taken in advance, nor drinking alcohol in cold weather, nor the “one hundred grams” already offered to the already frozen person will help to protect the body from the cold and will not improve its thermoregulation. At the same time, they can create a dangerous illusion of heat, which will lead to even worse than freezing in itself, consequences.

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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