January
25, 2005:
Amazing Ways the Human Body Adapts
Interview
with Kenneth Kamler, M.D., author of
Surviving
the Extremes |
Mike Carruthers:
The human body is amazingly adaptable. Dr.
Kenneth Kamler:
Well, if you think about it, the body temperature has to stay
around 98.6 degrees. If the body temperature varies by more
than ten degrees from that temperature, we die. And yet, we
live on a planet where the temperature varies from sometimes
twenty below zero to 140 degrees.
Dr. Kenneth
Kamler, author of the book, Surviving
the Extremes, says when your body starts to get too hot
it needs to get rid of some of that heat.
And the
way you get rid of it is by having blood flow past the organs
that are developing the heat and bringing it out to the skin
surface. And, there it goes out into the atmosphere, provided
that the atmosphere is cool enough to take the heat away.
But,
when the air is not cool enough and is higher than your body’s
temperature…
What
your body does is turn on it’s sprinkler system, which is sweating.
And your sweat glands put water on the surface of the skin.
The water evaporates, and the evaporation process has a cooling
effect, and that brings down your body temperature. It’s actually
an amazing system.
And when
you’re in a cold environment…
Your
body then redirects the blood flow away from the surface of
the skin into your deeper layers. And everyone has a layer of
fat underneath their skin. So the blood is redirected underneath
the fat layer, and fat is a good insulator, and that helps to
keep it warm. That’s the first body mechanism.
The second
body mechanism is what we call shivering. Your body will start
to shake, and the only purpose of that shaking is to generate
heat.
Tomorrow,
how your brain and body work together to keep you alive. I'm
Mike Carruthers, and that's Something You Should Know.
|
