Dr. Craig Heller

The skin, the fascia, the muscles underneath, they're all very good insulators.

And that's why I said earlier that the way the heat gets out of the muscle is in the blood.

Sure, you can do that, but you can calculate how much heat that can absorb.

And you can't continue drinking liters of ice water.

You're going to dilute your blood and have other problems.

But yes, it'll help.

Sure, it will help.

But it doesn't have the full capacity you will need.

Well, you have to understand something about our thermoregulatory system.

We have a thermostat, just like you have a thermostat in your house, and that thermostat is in the brain.

It's called the preoptic anterior hypothalamus.

It does many things in terms of physiological regulation, but it serves as a thermostat.

Now, that thermostat has to have information.

It has to have input.

Where does that input come from?

It comes from our overall body surface where we sense temperature.

So one of the things that can happen when you're overheated

is that you can send in a cold stimulus to your thermostat.

And that's sort of like wanting to cool your house by putting a wet washcloth over your thermostat.

It's doing the wrong thing.