Dr. Craig Heller

You want to periodically... Well, this is important.

Well, gloves definitely impede heat loss from the hands, just as socks impede heat loss from the feet.

So if you want to maximize your heat loss, you want to have as thin of protectors as possible on your hands.

And, of course, the feet are more problematical because you have to be using them in certain ways.

Interesting.

Let me introduce one more thing because you asked earlier about the pouring of water on the head.

One of the things which is not appreciated fully is that the blood which is perfusing these special blood vessels in the face above the beard line, that's the non-hairy skin,

And that blood then returns in the venous supply to the heart, but it actually does it in a very strange way.

We go through the skull, okay?

And that's why the scalp bleeds a lot if you cut the scalp.

And these blood vessels were...

primarily thought to be ways that blood is leaving the brain.

But when you're overheated, the direction of flow in those blood vessels reverses.

So the cooled blood that's coming from your facial region goes into that circulation and actually is a cooling source for the brain.

So you can cool the brain, you can have a cooling effect on the brain by pouring water on your head.

Yeah, it's one of the natural mechanisms for cooling the brain.

I'm aware of those ideas, but they're controversial.

One of the things that you want to do for injury to the brain is to decrease swelling.

And one of the ways that you decrease swelling in many parts of the body is to cool.

It decreases inflammation.