Stuff You Should Know - Frostbite: Yeeeow!

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

Up to the 1950s most reports of frostbite came from the world’s militaries, but as outdoor sports have gotten more popular, so have frostbite cases. Learn about how frostbite wreaks havoc on your extremities, even literally freezing off your tookus. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, we're also looking at you, Oakland. We are coming out to SketchFest this year, again, for the second year in a row, and we are doing a rare Sunday afternoon jam.

So that is Sunday, January 15th at 1 p.m. You can come see us live, and tickets are gonna go fast, so go to sfsketchfest.com and just click on the little ticket links or look at the lineup and follow us there. And we can't wait to see everyone. It's one of our favorite cities to perform in. And go to sfsketchfest.com, Oakland, San Francisco.

We will see you soon. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from howstuffworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry, and it is really cold here in the studio. It is election day part two. Mm-hmm. We're recording on election day.

That's right. Jerry's got on her pantsuit. Yeah. Which means that she's gonna make America great again. That's right. She's got on her pantsuit and her hat that says make America great again. Yeah, she makes me confused.

She's very confused. I early voted, so I wasn't out there today. Yeah. But I heard people saying like, oh, I wanna wait till the real day, because I just, I get more out of that experience. It's like, no, it's like Christmas now. Well, it's not just one day, it's spread out over weeks.

To each their own, of course. But when I early voted, there were plenty enough people there for me to feel like I was, like I enjoy voting. It's a fun experience, and it wasn't like I showed up early and they were just like, ah, doing their vote. No one cares. Don't make eye contact. No, they had like your grand old flag blaring

on the speakers at the doorway and all that. Yeah, and hey, well, this is for the next election. I should have said this weeks ago. Thank an election volunteer. Okay. Just go up and say thank you to somebody. That's a lot of hard work, and they only make about 25 bucks an hour.

It's spit on a lot. I imagine it's not fun in a lot of precincts. Sure. And anyway, the good people doing good work. And that's all. Nice job to say about that. Are you ready? So let's talk about frostbite.

Yeah. When you were standing in line for early voting, was it cold out? No, it was late October, so it was very, very hot. Like 100 degrees. Well, you're very lucky that it wasn't cold out because had it been very cold out, Chuck, and had you been wearing what you're wearing now, t-shirt,

you know? And me undies. Yeah. And that's it? That's it. And tennis shoes. Yeah, well, yeah. That's a terrible look.

You would have been a likely candidate for frostbite depending on the temperature. Yes. And arrested. Yeah, perhaps. Probably. It depends on how cool your election volunteer was, you know? So here's the little tip.

If you're looking into frostbite for one reason or another. Oh, I know what you're gonna say. Don't look at images of frostbite. Yeah. No need. Yeah, I like them. It's like they're like balloon animals.

You know? Yeah. And we're not making light because this is something that affects people to the point of amputation. Yeah, it definitely can. But you don't need to go look at the pictures of blackened toes and blistered fingers and things.

But if you do, and you want to cope with the horror, just pretend again that they're balloon animals. Okay? All right. So have you heard of this dude, Rulon Gardner? I had not until this. So he was a wrestler. And I'm not surprised you hadn't heard of him,

especially if we were talking in the 90s because he was virtually a nobody. He was a professional Olympic level wrestler. Greco Roman. Right, of course. But he was, yeah, not like WWF Olympic wrestling. They should do that. But more like a Team Fox catcher style wrestling, right?

Sure. Okay. But in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, this guy came out of nowhere. He'd never placed higher than either fourth or fifth, I think. And he came out of nowhere in the 2000 Olympics and won the gold.

He became like the reigning world champion of Greco Roman wrestling. Yes, of his weight class. And he was just this cool, nice farm boy from Wisconsin. No, from Wyoming. Yes. Okay. And a couple of years after his big win in the Olympics,

he was snowmobiling out around his house, I guess. And he got stuck up there in like a 17,000 foot elevation mountainous area. 10,000, but close enough. Still pretty high. And it was cold out. It was. I mean, super cold, Chuck.

80 degrees below. Fahrenheit. That's crazy. Negative 62 degrees Celsius. And he's stranded, like he's out there. So when you're like this, unless you have prepared to spend an extended amount of time outdoors in that weather. Even if you have sometimes.

Yeah. But if you haven't, you're in big trouble. You're definitely, you're probably going to die. At the very least, you're gonna, you're going to get some serious frostbite. And that's all that Rulan Gardner ended up with was serious frostbite. And they're actually, he's a really good example,

as we'll see of how a person or why a person could survive in that kind of weather. And just get frostbite. And why it wasn't worse. He lost a toe, right? Yeah, he did. Not bad. No, not bad for being out there for,

it was at 17 hours. In negative 80 degree Fahrenheit. I'd be like, just the moment I stepped outside, I'd just fall over and die. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even make it onto my snowmobile. They're like, Josh, you can probably make it. And you're like, no, leave me, leave me. You're still in the living room.

So he actually came back and won a bronze with the toe missing. Yeah, missing a toe. Pretty good. Yeah. And I saw he was on that biggest loser show. I think he, he gained a lot of weight. So if it was fat, that's not good for frostbite.

If it was muscle mass, it's like Mr. Frostbite Fighter. I think he put on a fat weight and went on the biggest loser. And I think perhaps lost that weight. Good for him. Boy, he's just a winner all over, isn't he? Sounds like it. So frostbite, it turns out,

is not an extensively studied malady. It's called a cold weather injury, right? Cold temperature injury. Yeah, it's not tracked very well either. No, and up until, the reason why is because up until about the fifties, if you got frostbite, you were probably a soldier. That's where most cases of frostbite came from.

We're from the militaries around the world. Yeah, you're a cross country skier or a soldier. Right. And then as cross country skiing got more popular and then downhill skiing gained popularity and then snowboarding came along and outdoor winter sports increased. And mountain climbing is another big one too.

Incidents of frostbite went up as well. So it was really in just the last few decades that frostbites really become a lot more prevalent. It's become like significantly prevalent, but it hasn't, it's just our understanding of it isn't as widespread as you would think. Yeah, it says in here 10% of casualties, American casualties and WW2 and Korea were frostbite.

Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Those I saw were high altitude frostbite cases where they were up in a plane and the plane wasn't insulated enough. So poor guys just got frostbite. Wow. Yeah.

Cold weather injuries, and this includes frostbite and other stuff. They says that men between 30 to 49, it's most common. And it just makes sense. It says they're more likely to be the ones in engaging in these kind of outdoor extreme temperature activities. Okay.

Tell that to peekaboo street. Yeah, that's what I say. And then of course, if you live in a warm or hot weather country, and maybe you're a soldier or something, then you're gonna be more likely to get frostbite. Yeah, so apparently if you are of African descent, Arab descent or Pacific Islander descent,

you are likelier to get frostbite than like a Caucasian or an Asian person. And that's because of your, just what your body's used to? They don't know. No one's ever said. Any explanation of it tends to be armchair and trips is very quickly into like racism.

Sure. You know? So science is like, we've documented that it's definitely true, I think African-American soldiers get it like four times more like, they're four times likelier to get it than their Caucasian soldiers in the same study. But they're like, we have no idea why.

We just can't say why. Like what are you saying? We're not saying anything. We're just saying it, we just documented it. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the symptoms. Like we said before, even if you are dressed for the weather, it's this prolonged exposure. And I can, I went, I had the worst,

what's the worst cold weather experience of your life? Do you remember? I do. All right, well, let's share these real quick. When I was four, maybe five, I had this pair of cowboy boots that I loved. And I'd gotten them when I was maybe three. Well, you started to grow significantly

between three and four and five. So I'd outgrown the cowboy boots, but my parents had neglected to buy me replacement cowboy boots. Yeah. And it neglected to take away the ones that were now too small. So I went outside and I wanted to wear my cowboy boots,

but I couldn't wear socks with them or anything. And it is the middle of winter in Toledo. Like I'm sliding around on ice in my cowboy boots with no socks. And I got home and I lost three toes. I didn't lose the toes, but everything else was, that was my first brush with the concept of frostbite. Because my mom was like, you could have gotten frostbite.

Like this is, you're a dumb kid. Yeah. That was a really eye-opening experience for me. I went to a Cleveland Browns game a few years ago. Yeah, but that was cold. In Cleveland. Possibly the most miserable sporting event of ever, not possibly.

I've never understood why. Far and away, why what? Why people do that to themselves. Well, they wear like a badge of honor in those cold weather states. I guess. You know, like, you know. Green Bay.

Yeah, they love that stuff. Yeah. I don't know if they really love it or if they just, it's, they've all gotten so used to dealing with it that that's their way to deal with it is by putting down people who don't have to deal with it. Right. Like, you know, they'll come to Atlanta

and it'll be like, you know, 28 degrees, which is cold. And they're just like, oh, this is like summer to us. Like, no, it's below freezing. Like no matter who you are. You pecker fan. Anyway, the Browns Dolphins game of a few years ago was truly miserable. It was that stadium in Cleveland is right next to the lake

and the water, the wind just whips off that water into the stadium. Man. And I was, I remember walking in there thinking like, man, I am toasty. I'm going to be just fine. I was layered like eight layers deep, had pocket warmers. Like this, I've got this.

And as the game went on, just slowly and slowly it just started to creep in through all those layers. I'm talking long johns, thermals, sweatshirts, sweaters, hoodies, and like the big parka. It sounds like you did everything right. Everything right. And it's still just cut through. And by the end of the game, my internal core was freezing.

Right. And that's the big problem, right? Because frostbite is your body's natural response to staving off hypothermia, which is an even bigger problem. You're not going to die from frostbite because there's only certain areas of the body and they're really ultimately not that important to keeping you alive.

But hypothermia, that's the money problem, right? That's the one that's going to kill you. Because with hypothermia, your core temperature drops and you end up freezing to death. Yes. Frostbite is your body's reaction to that. And what it does to- I don't want you to freeze to death. Right.

You dummy, this one's on TV. It's not even blacked out. Like go watch it on TV, dummy. But we can lose a toe. Right. And that's fine. It'll be a badge of honor. You can go to Green Bay with that thing.

So your body says, all right, fine. We'll lose a toe then. I'm going to stop sending blood to your extremities, including your toe. And I'm going to save it for your core. That's right. Not like your core needs more blood at that point, but when your blood goes out to like your skin

and your fingers and your arms and your ears and your nose, and your penis, you can get frostbite on your penis. Did you come across that? What do you mean, come across it at the Browns game? In your research. Did you see that? No, I didn't. You can, right?

Well, that's definitely not something I will Google. So when blood goes out to these extremities, it's being exposed to that cold air. Whereas if it stays circulating in the core, then it's able to just keep the core warm because the blood's not getting cold and coming back into the core and robbing the core of its warmth to reheat the blood.

I would hope that you're wee-wee is close enough to your core. I saw amongst joggers, it can be a real problem. Oh, well, that's because they're wearing those little dolphin running shorts. Right. Yeah, in Green Bay. And I should finish up that story about that game.

It was not only miserable because of the weather, but that field was wet and frozen. And it was the Browns dolphins. And it was literally like, I think it was like a six to nothing game. Oh, man. It was just awful. Did you at least get some good nachos out of the deal?

I don't think so. You were too cold to eat? No, well, I mean, I was with my in-laws and sister-in-law and my father-in-law. They don't eat nachos? My cousin-in-law, cousin-in-law? Yeah. So that was fun.

Okay. But by the end of the game, I was like, you people are crazy. This is miserable. I know everyone's drunk. Yeah, which is a bad move as far as frostbite goes as we'll see. That's right.

But let's get back to this bit about sending warm blood to the extremities. There is, and this is something I did not know. It was pretty neat though. But your hands and your feet have these little junctions between arteries and veins that you can shut off like a faucet called arteriovenous anastomosis. Nice.

And that's literally what happens as your body starts to get cold. And they say, you know what? I'm gonna shut it down for your hands and feet. So sorry, but we need to keep your internal organs and your wee wee nice and warm. All right, and there's actually something called the hunting response.

And the hunting response is where your arteriovenous anastomosis shut off. Yes. So the blood to your extremities is shut off. But then every 10 to 15 minutes, they get turned back on so that there's blood going back to your extremities again for a few minutes and then they get shut off again.

So it's keeping it going just enough so that your extremities aren't actually going to freeze. Interesting. But then that hunting response is only good down to about zero degrees Celsius for freezing, right? Yeah. And once it hits that, your hunting response turns off and the circulation to your extremities

is shut off entirely. It's not coming back on anymore. Yeah, and at this point, your skin is literally freezing between the space between cells. Ice crystals are forming. It's gonna dehydrate the interior of those cells and damage that tissue and you're in bad shape at that point. Yeah, because ice crystals are literally forming

in between your cells, right? And if that damages the cells, that's bad enough. But when ice is forming, as anybody knows, ice is less dense than water, right? And as it forms, it takes that water and sucks it up. And since cells love homeostasis, they wanna regain that balance of solution between the outside of the cell and the inside of the cell.

So water's drawn out of the cells. That stuff freezes too. And all of a sudden, your cells are dehydrated and the stuff in between them is ice crystals. So it's a bad jam in there. And we'll get further into the cells after this. ["Hey Dude, The 90s"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So check the extracellular matrix is frozen into ice crystals. Your cells are dehydrated. Bad news.

And your skin is literally freezing. Yeah, and you're watching the Browns and the Dolphin. Exactly. It's bad. What you've just entered is the first degree, or I should say not the first degree, but the first part of frostbite. That's right.

And actually, that's probably called frostnip. I think frostnip comes before that. I think as your skin is getting closer and closer to zero degrees. It says here, frostnip is mild frostbite. Only skin freezes, and skin appears yellowish or white, but feels soft to the touch, tingling and burning sensations.

But there's no, like the extracellular matrix is not actually freezing and forming ice crystals. I don't think at this point in frostnip. Once it just sounds cuter. Yeah, it does, then. You just got a little frostnip. Yeah, some marshmallows will clear that right now. Once the ice crystals form the extracellular matrix,

you've hit frostbite, though, for sure. Right, yeah. So can we talk about the degrees now? Yeah. All right, first degree, superficial wounding and underlying of the skin and the underlying tissue, and numb to the sensation. That might be frostnip.

No, frostnip has tingling still. Frostbite is where you're numb, and your hands supposedly feel like blocks of wood, or your leg, or your penis, whatever. Whatever is being frostbitten, and it's horrible. It feels like a heavy block of wood. Second degree, still superficial. Just like you don't want to hang around.

It's not very deep in conversation. Very superficial. And the skin blisters, and the tissue freezes. Third degree, you're going to get that deep tissue and skin wounding, blisters, blood-filled blisters, permanent tissue damage. And then finally, fourth degree, no good at all. You're going to lose a digit or a limb

because of all the dead tissue. Yeah, severe, severe tissue damage. Yeah, you're almost certainly going to result in amputation because you've got necrosis. You've got cellular death, like extensive cellular death. When those things get dehydrated and cut up by the crystals, the ice crystals, they're toast. No coming back.

No. And it's even worse, it turns out, when it freezes, and then thaws, and then refreezes. Yeah, did not know that. And well, it makes sense, though, because you've got the initial damage from those ice crystals that form. And then they thaw, and then they form new ice crystals and do even more extensive damage.

It would make sense that your cells would be like, you had one shot. You blew it, you thawed, and then refroze. Who does that? Yeah, it's like skunky beer. Yeah. All right, so I just gave myself away and said that I did not know that about the re-warming.

But I also, and I wrote articles on cold weather survival. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. And I don't remember. I thought the way to treat frostbite was to very, and I think I might have been thinking hypothermia, was to very gradually re-warm your hand or whatever. Not with frostbite.

It makes sense that you would want to do that. I totally thought, like, no, you don't want to shock your frostbitten hand. No, you do. With warm water, but that's exactly what you want to do. Yeah, and it has to be warm water. And the reason why is because direct heat from a heating pad or something like that can actually really

damage the damage that's already done. It can take it and finish it off. Well, because you don't have that feeling in your hand, so you might be burning yourself and not even know it. Right, but I get the impression that also direct heat itself, actually, on a cellular level, is problematic for the tissue damage, right? Oh, really?

So you want indirect warmth through water. Oh, interesting. And you plunge your hands. Let's say, so I keep going to hands, because I think that's probably the most. Hands and feet, probably. Sure. Well, let's say it's feet, right?

You get a couple of buckets of 104 degree Fahrenheit temperature water, and you plunge your hands and your feet in them, and just leave them in there until they're rewarmed. Yeah, you don't want to make it too hot. No, and there's some really important points to say here. Like, first of all, we're not doctors. No.

We're not lawyers either, but we know enough to say that we're not doctors. That's correct. So if you find yourself in a cold weather injury survival situation like this, or you come across somebody, from what I've seen, you don't actually want to do this until you're down off the mountain. Well, yeah, because of the whole thing

with thawing and refreezing. That's one part of it. I said, don't start this process unless you know you can complete it. Right, unless you know that it's not going to freeze again, because you got the freeze thaw, freeze injury that comes about. But also, one of the other things you're going to find is that, like I was saying earlier,

your extremity that's frostbitten, once it thaws, it's going to resemble a balloon animal very quickly. And if you're hiking out of a mountain area, somebody came to get you finally. A ravine, let's say. Sure. You're actually better off walking out on your frostbitten feet than you are rewarring them and trying to walk out

on those, because they're going to just balloon up, and you will not be able to walk on them afterward. At the very least, if they're frostbitten, you can't feel them, and they're not swollen. But part of the thawing process is what's called perfusion, or reperfusion. And there's something called a reperfusion energy, where blood and oxygen comes back to the site,

and it actually leads to inflammation, and the tissue damage from the body going back to its normal processes can actually make the whole thing way worse. Yeah, and that also ties in nicely with one of the things I recommend is to keep moving. If you're stranded somewhere, even if you don't leave the area, get up and walk in circles, like anything

you can do to try and get circulation going to those extremities again. Yeah, and we talked about it kind of in the hibernation episode, where when you make your muscles move, it requires energy, and it burns that ATP and creates heat as a byproduct. So anytime you can move your muscles, you're actually generating heat, which

is what the shiver response is. That's right. One thing that they said in 2007, though, was an issue in the archives of surgery, that hot, hot publication. They said that they had some pretty good results, promising at least from a study about anti-clotting agents, like blood thinning agents, to help that blood flow.

But I don't know where that's gone since then, and it said that not everyone's a candidate for that. And this is something that you would obviously not have if you were out there trying to survive. This is something you would get maybe in the emergency room. Sure, right. And the other big thing is infection. After you've rewarmed that tissue,

infection is a big problem waiting to happen. Huge problem. Like you're a prime candidate for tetanus. When your feet swell, the skin can very easily crack. Your toe can just fall off, and you don't have to worry about amputation anyway, right? Oh, man. And again, a lot of this is what's

called a reperfusion injury. So when this immune response or this inflammation response comes and puffs up your foot or your hand or whatever's been frostbitten, if you're out in the field, you would be very smart to have aloe vera gel on you, because it actually prevents what are called prostglandins from entering the site. And they are part of the inflammatory response.

So the more you can keep your frostbitten hand or foot from being inflamed, the better off you're going to be. Another thing that you're not supposed to do, and it says here, the thing that you've seen in movies where you clap your frozen hands together, I've never seen that in my life. What is that? I don't know.

I don't know what that is. That was like The Karate Kid, I think, is the movie that I'm fencing. Oh, maybe. But it also says here, don't walk on your frozen feet. And that sounds counter to what we were saying. I think what we were talking about earlier is if the only way out of the woods is you.

To save your life. Yeah. Yeah. But if you've got rescue people. Oh, yeah, don't walk. Yeah, yeah. If you've got people that'll carry you down a mountain, go with that.

Exactly. I think what this guy was saying was, if you are up on a mountain, and yeah, the person needs to walk down, you probably shouldn't start the thawing process, because they're not going to be able to walk after their feet are thawed, because they're going to balloon up.

Gotcha. All right, well, let's take another break. And we'll talk a little bit about prevention right after this. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, stay out of the cold. Yep. The end. That's the prevention.

It literally says that in our own article. That's obviously the common sense thing to tell people. But if you're a hobbyist, an outdoor cold weather hobbyist, you're going to be out there. Or if you're a reindeer herder. Well, I was just saying, you might have a job too, though. Sure. You're a mail carrier or road works.

Reindeer herder. Reindeer herder, Christmas tree farm. Oil, the oil industry has a lot of frostbite. Sure, I could see that. So there's a lot of industries, obviously, where you're forced to be out there. And hopefully, you're being taken care of through the company you work for.

But you should also take care of yourself by layering, like we talked about. Yeah. Use that thermal underwear on the bottom, and then layer on top of that. Yeah, and you want to wear something that is tight. Well, not necessarily tight. It's fitting, but not compression.

I saw specifically several places do not wear compression clothing in cold weather situations. All right. And you want stuff that's not going to make you sweat or is going to trap sweat. You want stuff that's going to breathe. Right. Because if you sweat and it traps the sweat,

that's going to, your clothes are going to freeze to your body. So comfortable, wicking. Yes. Clothing layered upon layer upon layer. Preferably with Modal. It's very soft. What else? You can keep your body in shape.

Diabetes and other circulatory diseases, thyroid conditions, they can all lend themselves to be more apt to get frostbite. Yeah, and a common myth, I thought this was the case too, but a common myth is that if you are overweight, if you have layers of fat, it will protect you on the cold. And actually, it's not true. No, it's not true. Supposedly, layers of fat tend to deaden your nerve endings,

which would tell your body to get some blood going. Yeah. And if they're deadened, then they're not going to be doing that. One thing you should do though, right, is if you have a little whiskey and a cigarette, just nip on that and smoke a cigarette and that'll warm you right up, right? Yeah. Not true.

Maybe if you know for a fact that no one's coming for you, might as well have a last drink and a last smoke. OK. But if you're trying to warm yourself, no, that's the opposite of what you want to do. Yeah. I think we did another show on. Avalanches.

Maybe that was right a long time ago. With the Saint Bernard's. Yeah, because I remember the drinking alcohol. It gives you, and it also talks about other illegal drugs. But booze is a sort of a double edged, not double edged, sort of the double hammer, two-headed hammer. Sure. It's a two-headed hammer because it makes you feel warmer,

but you're actually getting colder. Right. And it's also going to affect your, you know. In judgment. Yeah. Yeah, it'll impair your judgment. Sure. You might stop walking around.

You might be like, oh, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Stupid mountain. I'm just going to sit down. This vodka is warming me up. Yeah. And the reason why, did you say? Because it carries the blood to your skin for a second,

so it makes you feel flushed. Yeah. But when it's doing that, it's carrying away from your core, so it's a really bad move in a very cold weather situation to drink. Bad. And the same with smokes. Cigarette does not warm you up in any way.

And Yale University said that smokers have a greater risk for frostbite because nicotine just slows everything down, and it's even going to make your blood pump slower and make it harder to get to your digits and your wee wee. Yeah. So Chuck, I feel like we probably saved some lives here today. I got another little thing.

I found an infographic that was cute that had a couple of things that I didn't know. And this isn't frostbite necessarily, but I just thought it was interesting. Do you know why your nose runs when it's cold? No. In trying to warm up cold air on the way to the lungs, extra blood flow within the nostrils leads to more mucus.

Oh, that's cute. Eyeballs don't freeze. I didn't know that. Thankfully. How about your contacts can freeze to your eyeballs, though? Oh, and think about that. But your eyeballs don't freeze because they're inside the head and your head is not one of your extremities.

Like, that's part of the core. Your body wants to keep your head nice and warm. Oh, I see, yeah, yeah. And what else? Ears are at great risk because there are no muscles in the ear to produce heat, no major muscles. Huh. And finally, your cheeks are going to turn red

because, again, those surface blood vessels dilate when it falls below 10 degrees Celsius. I saw that your buttocks are actually at risk as well, especially if you're watching a football game on aluminum bleachers or something like that. Oh, yeah. Because that material is going to wick the heat right out of your butt, right out of your tuchus.

Yep. Yeah. So that's frostbite to stay indoors, drink some hot chocolate. Yeah, watch that Brown's game on your big widescreen and drink a hot toddy. There you go. Emily had a toddy last night because she's sick.

Oh, yeah, it was work. Yeah, her big push now is on natural remedies. And so she looked up like a good old-fashioned toddy recipe. Yeah. Does she like it? She loved it. They're really great when you're sick. Yeah, I imagine.

Yeah, it really takes the edge off at least. She had a little ginger water to hers. Oh, nice. And it was nice and spicy hot and warm to the touch. So let's hope she stays sick for a while. Well, feel better, Emily. I'm going to enjoy those as well. Are you one for you, one for me?

She's kind of nice. Actually, I just had a bourbon. I know. You don't have to be sick to have a hot toddy. No. They do help when you are, though. Yeah. If you want to know more about frostbite,

you can type that word in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this ham radio, I guess. OK. Oh, burglar tape. Oh, yeah. Hey, guys.

A big fan of the podcast. I was excited to share some knowledge from my area of expertise. In the ham radio, you mentioned burglar tape. I've worked in the electronic security and fire protection industry for 16 years. You can remember my first exposure to burglar tape. Back before motion detectors and acoustic glass

break detectors, burglar tape was used to trigger an alarm if a window is broken. Isn't that what we figured? Yeah, I think so. It is essentially a thin foil tape that was glued to a window using a clear liquid glue. The tape was applied around the perimeter of the window, directly on the glass.

The foil tape would then be tied down to a two wire circuit at one of the corners of the window frame. The foil completed the circuit. So if the foil was severed from the window breaking, the circuit would open and initiate an alarm. Technology has left burglar tape behind. Is there much less invasive means to detect a window breaking today?

But as far as being a ham radio antenna makes perfect sense. Nice. That is from Josh Hines. Hey, Josh. All right, fellow Josh, where you go? If you want to get in touch with us like Josh did, you can tweet to us at Josh Clark or at SYSK Podcast. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant

on Facebook and at facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. Send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy

bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.