How to Cool Your Body Quickly

AAs much as people enjoy the hot summer months, high temperatures can be harmful to the human body. “As mammals, we live close to the thermal limit of life and death,” says Craig Heller, a physiologist and professor of biology at Stanford University. “We ran at 37°C [98.6°F]and just a few degrees above that puts us into heat illness and sunstroke.”

However, not all parts of the body have the same temperature, “and blood flow determines where heat is distributed,” says Heller.

Which part of the body cools down the fastest? And can we use this knowledge to cool down faster when it’s hot outside?

Focus on your core

To avoid the negative health effects of high temperatures, scientists say the most important goal is to reduce core temperature. The most effective way to do this is to apply cooling methods, such as a cold towel or ice water, to as much surface area as possible.

“Cooling one segment of the body isn’t going to do much when it comes to trying to reduce core temperature, which is the main determinant of heat-related illness,” says Ollie Jay, professor of thermal physiology at the University of Sydney.

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As the body heats up, it tries to get rid of the heat by opening the blood vessels closest to the skin and sending more blood to those areas. This moves heat away from the core toward the surface of the skin, where it can dissipate from the body. Placing cold water or ice on the skin helps speed up this process and cools the body more quickly as the water evaporates from the skin.

Jay recommends pouring cold water over as much of your body as possible or placing an ice-filled towel on your chest for a minute or two at a time, every 10 minutes, until you feel more comfortable.

Direct your hands and feet

If it’s not immediately feasible to go for a swim or wrap yourself in a cold towel, “then cooling a limb, for example, is probably a good idea,” says Jay. Basic physics can help determine where to start. Each object has what we call specific heat, which is the amount of energy needed to heat or cool it by 1°C. Objects with large surface areas and smaller masses have lower specific heats. This means that the extremities – like the hands and feet, which have a lot of skin but not a lot of mass – are the most efficient at cooling.

Ice-cold water is best, “and the more skin surface area you cover, the faster you cool down,” says Douglas Casa, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and CEO of the nonprofit Korey Stringer Institute. at the university dedicated to heatstroke prevention.

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Another unique aspect of these areas is that they are essentially hairless — and Heller found that hairless parts of the skin can heat up and cool down quickly. “The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet are radiators,” he says. This occurs, in part, because there are large networks of blood vessels in these areas that can exchange heat quickly through the blood.

Know when it’s time to speed things up

If you’re really overheated, cooling one part of your body at a time may not be enough. Most negative effects of heat, such as heatstroke or heat illness, occur when a person’s core temperature reaches dangerous levels or when heat puts excessive pressure on the heart.

It’s not always obvious to a person when they get to this point. How hot someone feels is not always related to how hot their core temperature is.

“Behavior is determined by how hot you feel, and health is determined by how hot you feel,” says Jay. “You can have totally different skin temperatures for a given core temperature.” For example, applying a cold towel to your neck and face can cool the arteries leading to your brain—which gives your body a signal that it’s actually colder than it actually is. Some areas, like the face, have many receptors to detect temperature – so cooling them can make someone feel like they are cooling down quickly when they are not.

One way to know it’s time to cool off is to watch for signs of heat exhaustion: symptoms like nausea, cramps, dizziness and elevated heart rate. If a person experiences any of these symptoms, they should leave hot environments, seek medical attention, and use methods to cool themselves immediately.