In their daily work, they risk shipwrecking or falling into the sea. He mentions a group in the High North that is very exposed to cold, even though they have hands that can endure it better than the average population. Yet it is not genetic – acclimatizing has a bigger effect, and it is simply a matter of how long time one has spent in a given area, Dietrichs says. People who have been fishing in cold waters have better blood flow in their hands. People in the Arctic have a different way of handling the cold. Are people in Arctic areas better suited for the cold than for instance people from warmer climates? It is all about how the cold protects the brain against damage, and the protective effect is bigger the colder we get, he says. The boy wakes up and then asks for his glasses. His core temperature was 24 degrees, yet life-saving treatment makes his heart start beating again. It takes 40 minutes from his disappearing until divers locate him underneath the ice. In his book, he describes the story of how a little boy falls through the ice while playing on it. Persons with severe hypothermia can still have a pretty good chance of survival, provided they receive correct treatment, Dietrichs says. Nevertheless, moderate hypothermia is not risk-free and it can lead to heart arrhythmia as well as other complications, while at the same time the cold protects the brain.
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Increasing the body temperature by four or five degrees, however, is very much, the doctor says. For instance, lowering the body temperature by four or five degrees for adults is considered moderate hypothermia and is also used in the treatment of heart patients. According to Dietrichs, we endure cold temperatures better than heat. People can survive with very low body temperatures. The climate changed the body’s response to managing the environment, the researcher tells High North News. There was less blood for toes and fingers, but the rest of the body got warmer. Thin men got more fat on their bodies, despite the cold. Thin men with a low Body Mass Index would acquire subcutaneous fat. Studies have been conducted on people who winter on a base in Antarctica, and as it turns out, the core temperature of the body changes in a given climate, Dietrichs says. And this is not just evolution over time. It is exciting to see how these people learn ways of life that allows them to survive in areas where the body is not really suited for survival. He mentions the Inuit, the rough indigenous population whose individuals haves perfected their lifestyle and their clothes through generations in order to survive. They were brought in and had to wait for the ice to dissolve before they could return home, Dietrichs says. Think of trappers on Svalbard and Greenland, those who have gone to desolate areas to hunt their food, chase some furs. The doctor is very interested in how the body adjusts to the surroundings – how people have survived expeditions, settlements and not to mention wintering in desolate areas covered by ice, surrounded by extreme weather and biting cold – against all odds.
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I am perhaps even more fascinated with poor people who went seal hunting, built a cabin and spent winters on the periphery year after year in order to provide food, Dietrichs says. Polar explorers and those who go on expeditions are one thing. Though it is equally exciting with those who chose to live their lives in areas where no one thought people could survive in a time when man had rather little resources and few aides. Names like Amundsen, Nansen and the WW2 resistance hero Jan Baalsrud come up. The book is a popular science book aiming to tell of what happens to the body, in combination with exciting stories about people, the author says. And there are four such extremes height, cold, depth and warmth. ‘On the Edge of Life’ is about the extremes in nature, about the very absolute limits of what the body can endure of extreme conditions. The 32-year old lives in Tromsø and says his interest in what happens in the body when exposed to extreme cold, heat, height and depth took off when he did research into hypothermia, when the body is cooled down. We are simply going to places we really should not endure, Dietrichs says. Expeditions hit the top of Mount Everest, people spend winters in Antarctica and they dive into the Mariana Trench.
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Large groups of people have settled in areas with extreme conditions. Man is an extremely adaptable creature. His book ‘On the Edge of Life’ is about what happens with the body when we go to places where we should not go. Doctor Erik Sveberg Dietrichs (32) is so fascinated by the human body’s reaction and endurance limit in extreme situations that he has written a book about it.