The area I live in had a heat wave for the past two days, with temperatures near 90 and the high humidity that characterizes unpleasant East Coast summer days.
The first day I just suffered through it (I was too lazy to put my window air conditioning unit in). But the second day I remembered something I'd once read about.
I filled a metal water bottle with ice water, and alternated holding it against each of my carotid arteries, and in the crook of each arm. Within four minutes I was no longer sweating, and this kept me completely cool for as long as the ice lasted, which was about an hour.
Try it, it works.
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26 comments:
If your aircon is broken at night,
Take a towel, make it wet then wring it until just right
(you wan't to keep it damp but not get a cold).
Sleep with it.
-Ga
Ga --
Interesting, I never thought of that. But water evaporating does keep something cool.
I guess in Hong Kong pretty much every place has to be air conditioned.
It does! It's hot as Texas here, but its crowded like Manhattan times 5x! So no cars, you gotta bear the heat. I think fewer people in the US would die of heatstroke or get sunburnt if they build up resistance to it.
We get up to 340,000 people per square mile in Mong Kok during rush hour! If it's not the sun, it's the body heat! Thank lord Asians evolved unique pores and sweat glands or it would smell awful!
But a mixed guy like me, I always stand out because of my non-mongoloid/negroid body odor, I can tell if a caucasoid is in a crowd because of that evolutionary difference.
Do you know what evolutionary purpose the unique sweat glands and strong scent found in caucasians have?
-Ga
Ga --
Never been there, but I've seen pictures.
I always thought that blacks had the strongest body odor, followed by whites, and then Asians. Mine seems to vary, as if I switch back and forth between being Asian and white.
No, don't know the evolutionary purpose to strong body odor. (To help identify people? Just a guess.)
If it stays hot, I suggest you get your A/C unit installed. It's been hot in our part of the country. I'm very thankful for A/C in the house and elsewhere (grocery store, book store, etc.).
- Susan
Susan --
The problem with the AC in my room is that once it's in, you have to keep it on all the time, or take it out, otherwise there's no airflow.
There are portable air coolers that are for sale. I am looking to buy one for my detached garage (my son built a "man cave" in there for himself and his pals). This could possibly help you out. Just a suggestion.
- Susan
Susan --
Thank you very much, I'll look into one.
Blacks do have a unique body odor, but whites have a unique sweat odor separate from their regular body odor, the actual sweat itself has this smell that is not like any old sweat.
Also larger and more numerous pores.
In countries like Korea, deoderant is very hard to come by since they naturally have very thick skin with few pores and sweat glands, lots of collagen and fat is evenly spread instead of getting bunched together in one place like hips or the belly.
Unlike the hairy bodies of westerners with lots of pores and thinner skin, I think this adaptation path taken by northeast asians possibly has some interplay with a different kind of cold weather than european cold weather.
It could explain the squinty eyes, people from the very north reaches of scandinavia can have squinty eyes but they lack epicanthic folds along with them unlike northeast asians who historically may have had to travel across cold deserts from Africa before reaching northeast Asia.
Asians and whites are much closer to eachother genetically than either are to blacks. Two groups forked off from the group to become blacks, one became australoids, but the second group then forked off again into whites and asians, groups like the Ainu.
The group to become blacks had their own forking off into negroids (black people) and capoids. Native Americans probably forked off from Asians with some caucasian admixture (there is evidence a few caucasoids made it over to alaska from siberia, I even heard they found a skeleton with caucasian features over 12,000 years old but the local native american tribe covered it up or something, wanted it reburied and not studied further.
The sami people in Scandinavia I believe were a group that forked off from caucasoids and constitute their own subtype. The rest I believe are just local variation and admixtures like middle easterners or semetic people resulting from caucasoids having a little negroid and mongoloid blood plus adapting to hot weather. African americans being negroids with a dash of caucasoid blood, central asians being an admixture of caucasoid and mongoloid etc.
-Ga
Ga --
I didn't know that about the Caucasian sweat odor being separate from regular body odor, interesting, nor did I know about the pores. Maybe that's why I get a heat rash in the summer sometimes.
I was surprised when I originally found out how closely whites and northeast Asians are related to each other. And how far apart northeast Asians are from southeast Asians (i.e., Malays). I guess a lot of the people you see in places like Indonesia are a result of the admixture between northeast Asians and Australoids, or Melanesians.
I wrote a little about that here:
https://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2011/04/last-august-i-put-up-post-about.html
And here:
http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-apologize-for-small-size-of-type-in.html
John,
I believe there is a commercial system now being used to threat heat-stroke but here is the high-tech version of your cold soda can.
http://news.stanford.edu/2012/08/29/cooling-glove-research-082912/
I haven't tried making one and taking it to the gym - - yet.
Luke
Luke --
That's interesting, thank you. I was just talking about cooling off on a hot summer day, you're talking about improving athletic performance. I took my son to a high level swim camp in Florida in March of '08 and in between repeats the Olympic hopefuls there were immersing themselves in a bath filled with ice water, using the same theory.
I suppose we could try just taking a really cold shower halfway through the workout as an experiment. I never feel overheated in the gym though. I actually have started taking cold showers recently because I've heard it's good for you (in particular, that it raises testosterone levels). I can't report any discernible changes, but I have been taking the last 30 seconds of the shower with only the cold water running. It's a little unpleasant, but sort of exhilarating, like when you jump into a cold lake.
One thing I noticed once in the summer of 2015 was when I went out to run some sprints on the local track when it was 90 degrees out one day, at midday. (Don't ask, I don't know what I was thinking.) After I had warmed up and had run one fairly hard 200, I found that when I stood up straight I felt as if I was going to faint. And when I tried the next one, I actually had to stop running after about ten steps or so because I thought I was going to faint. What had happened, I found out later, was that lowered blood pressure is the body's way of preventing heat stroke, which I guess I was in danger of at that point. I guess I should have had one of those cooling mechanisms with me that day. Anyway, will never go out to run at midday on a black track on a 90 degree day again.
It's sort of funny, I talk about intelligence a lot on this blog, and I fancy myself as a high IQ guy, but I've done so many stupid things like that in my life, and have made so many stupid decisions, that I have to conclude that I"m just really not that smart.
Good tip. Putting your wrists under the cold running water from the tap feels nice when its hot. Nothing spectacular, just feels nice and cools you a bit.
Australoid appearance genes tend to be very recessive, while Malays are certainly darker there aren't as many throwbacks as I would expect. The Australian aborigines even among australoids are uniquelly recessive. One of the reasons claimed for the stolen generation and laws against intermarriage in the past was not just for the whites but to prevent aborigine extinction.
Also the mixed children in their reasoning could remarry among the whites without affecting their appearances and contribute some genes for hardiness to survive Australia (a death trap with 1000 kinds of venomous beasts!) The population of aborigines now has grown slowly, but many are considered by their tribe to be "too light looking" while 1/4th native americans are accepted.
A lot of people worry about white looking people somehow disappearing, it doesn't exactly work that way, in Brazil they pop up back and forth among mixed families no matter how much intermarrying happens, they come back here and there. Maybe they are worried all-white families or white lineages will disappear.
But Aborigine genes would be at risk in any multiracial society. The rule of thumb I heard from a friend is the further away from Africa you go, the more recessive the DNA becomes, less genetic diversity within groups as well. Australia is pretty far away, and is separated by more bodies of water than even the Americas are.
-Ga
Ga --
I've seen pictures of half- and quarter-aboriginal children, and it is remarkable how white they look. I'd never heard that before, that the further away you get from Africa the more recessive genes become; I wonder why that is.
Just judging from those artists' forensic recreations of what homo erectus must have looked like, and from brain size, it seems that aborigines have evolved less far from them than other groups have.
European whites are definitely losing out on the population sweepstakes. In Europe they're not even reproducing themselves at maintenance level, meanwhile the Middle Eastern Muslims in their midst are having lots of children. Even in the US, whites are projected to become minority in the near future. And the population in Africa is exploding.
Genetic diversity is highest in the deepest parts of Africa, further out you get bottleneck after bottleneck, maybe that has something do to with it.
Like the hundreds of dog breeds all looking and acting vastly more different than wolf subspecies do from eachother despite the wolf subspecies having more pure genetic distance from eachother.
There is greater phenotypical variation within dogs basically, but dogs have less genetic diversity overall than wolf populations. (Btw, there is evidence human phenotypical intelligence is increasing, but genotypical is going down, which explains the flynn effect, hidden intelligence is being unlocked since we have less people with iodine or vitamin deficiences than a thousand years ago, but the pure potential that could have existed is not being unlocked because of that)
A single gene that acts one way can have multiple variations without much difference, dogs have far fewer, their differences lie in having more of one gene while another has a more of another, but these are a fraction of an animal's dna, but fewer flavors of shared ones.
Aborgines possibly have very few redundancies and less junk genetic diversity than africans I theorize. Junk genes are like 90% of our body, they determine what a species is something that can reproduce with something else successfully. Appearances, size, skin, or intelligence doesn't matter, if they can reproduce they can reproduce, junk dna has more leverage in whether or not for that (could be wrong).
-Ga
Ga --
I didn't know that about dog genetic diversity vs. wolf genetic diversity. I'd guess that has to do with the wolf populations having been separated for longer periods of time. Domesticated dogs travel with humans, and have spread out all over the world relatively recently, whereas wolf populations have been separated from each other for tens of thousands of years (for instance, New World wolves vs. Old World wolves, though I suppose there could have been some cross fertilization during the last couple Ice Ages when the Bering Strait was exposed).
Honestly, I'd be out of my depth trying to discuss genetics with you, so I'm going to abstain.
John,
Are you sure it's heat rash? I suffer from Polymorphic Light Eruption (PMLE), the second most common sun problem after sunburn. As an Italian, I'm olive-skinned and never burn...i just bypass sunburn altogether and go straight to itchy, miserable rash.
I used to think it was heat rash, but the dermatologist explained the difference. I'm in greater danger of a rash in early summer, after several winter months when I have no suntan. If its really bad, i have to take prednisone.
If you want to know the best way to scratch that deep itch (or an itch from poison ivy or other rash) other than steroids, let me know. I have a great technique.
John,
RE: Elevated IQ and common sense.
Based on personal experience, I can promise you that the two are not consistently related.
Luke
Fled --
I've been told it's a rash from the time I was a little kid, and it has something to do with the fact that I don't seem to sweat from my back. I find the best ay to get rid of it i just to swim outdoors, and the sun basically burns it off. "Burn" is probably too strong a word, but it does seem to make it go away. And if I can swim in cold water, even better.
Luke --
I'm sure you're right.
The thing is, I like to think I have common sense when it comes to most stuff. But when I look back on my life.....yikes.
Huh. Mine is a rash, for all intents and purposes, but it's caused by an allergic reaction to the sun somehow. Olive-skinned folks tend to be susceptible.
I take a washcloth, dip a corner in boiling water, and touch it to the rash. It's a marvelous way of "scratching" the itch deep down without damaging the surface with your fingernails. It basically deadens the itchy nerve endings for a couple hours.
But for years, I thought it was heat rash caused by clogged sweat pores. It's yet another reason I'm thrilled to live in Utah instead of the hot, humid Deep South. At least here, I can sweat efficiently. The sweat has somewhere to go, so to speak.
Fled --
That's interesting, I'll try it sometime. The only thing, my rash doesn't itch, it's just a little bumpy.
I envy you living in Utah, that's a beautiful state. I actually just drove across the southern part of the state in April, I took 15 to 70 and drove to Colorado on that, I couldn't believe how many spectacular vistas there were. I'd never taken that route before, had half-expected it to be like northern Nevada, just dry desert scenery, interesting for about five minutes and then just boring. But it wasn't like that at all, it was just one incredible rock formation after another. Pretty desolate country too, though, all those little towns, I always wonder how people make a living there.
Come out in the winter and ski with us. I'm a ski instructor and would love to have you as my guest!
P.S. All the serious money is up here in Park City. The only thing in southern Utah seems to be fundamentalist Mormons.
Fled --
Thank you very much, that's very generous of you, but I haven't skied since I was in 11th grade. And now that my parents are at a local retirement home as of two weeks ago (I was driving their car back from California in April when I was going through Utah) I'm pretty much on call to take them to medical appointments, etc. But thank you.
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