Sheena Purdy, left, and Dwayne Lockhart pull son Damon Purdy, 7, along snow-covered Penn Avenue in West Reading this week. Cold temperatures such as those Berks Countians are experiencing are tougher on the body than terrible heat, a local expert says.
The arctic temperatures and frigid wind chills have us adding layers and staying indoors.
But can't the same be said of a July heat wave when we strip off layers and stay inside in the air conditioning?
Do our bodies adapt more quickly to frigid temperatures or extreme heat?
Kate Peiras, an acute care nurse practitioner, might be one of the first people you see if you go in to the emergency department of St. Joseph Medical Center suffering from one of the thermias.
Our normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees. Hypothermia occurs when a person's core body temperature drops below 90 degrees for any length of time.
Hyperthermia is when the body temperature is 105 to 107 for hours at a time, like someone being out in 100-plus degree temperatures with no access to water.
Peiras said our bodies are better able to handle heat than the biting cold that has Berks County and the region in its grip.
That's because, as a species, we're warm-blooded animals, Peiras said.
That's why we sweat and have mostly bare skin and long extremities that help us radiate heat to control our thermostats.
While our bodies can acclimate to colder climates, we're not subarctic animals. We don't grow a heavy fur coat or put on layers of blubber every winter, Peiras noted.
And when our bodies react to extreme cold our circulatory systems shunt blood away from our extremities in an instinctive effort to preserve our brains and other vital organs, she said.
Then again, that first burst of winter wind that is a shock to the system in November might not even get a reaction by the time March rolls around.
Don't humans have the ability to adapt to either extreme? asked Dr. Charles C. Barbera, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Reading Hospital.
"The body, with the right training, is really able to adapt to either," Barbera said. "When you look at Eskimos who live at the North Pole they adapt very well, as do people who live in the equatorial region."
It's called acclimatization, Barbera said. It's a fancy word for the fact that any organism will adapt to gradual changes in its environment, like temperature.
"Think of a mountain climber," Barbera said. "They don't climb Mount Everest in a single day. They climb so high, get used to the altitude, and they climb a little higher and do that until they get to the top."
Barbera said all animals are capable of adapting to changes in their environment, even negative wind chill readings like the ones we're experiencing for the second time this month.
"What we worry about in the ER is, 'Are people dressing in layers and staying warm and are parents putting hats on their babies if they take them out in this weather?' " Barbera said. "Babies have much bigger head surfaces than adults and as a result they lose more body heat through their heads."
Contact Dan Kelly: 610-371-5040 or firstname.lastname@example.org.