Health

What Happens When You Have Hypothermia?

Brutal winters — and even chilly springs — force many people to bundle up or stay indoors to avoid freezing temperatures and cold weather illnesses. Staying warm can be a good way to avoid these illnesses in winter, but some cold weather problems, such as hypothermia, occur all year round, even if the weather isn’t unbearably cold.

Commonly caused by cold temperatures, people can also have hypothermia as a result of immersion in a cold body of water, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Since 2006, at least three people have died of hypothermia after swimming by the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior, according to WDIO Detroit.

Hypothermia occurs as your body temperature passes below 95 degrees. Fortunately, hypothermia from exposure can be easy to prevent.

“Generally to prevent it you need to recognize what you’re up against,” Salvatore Pardo, M.D., vice chairman of emergency medicine at LIJ Medical Center in New York, told weather.com. “Be prepared, and dress appropriately, and look after people at risk like the elderly and the very young.”

Preventing hypothermia might not be difficult, but detecting it can be tricky.

“You [might] not really notice a lot initially. The body tends to tolerate it pretty well,” said Dr. Pardo. “You’ll feel cold… but the exposure itself is very hard to pick up before it’s too late.”

Hypothermia has many stages of signs and symptoms, some of which persist while others fade away as the condition progresses.

So what happens when you’re hypothermic? Click through to find out.

Shivering

The most obvious and common symptom of hypothermia is shivering — the body’s attempt to warm itself. If you’ve been out in the cold and contract hypothermia, “shivering is the first sign that you are at risk,” said Dr. Prado.

Dizziness

The next few symptoms are all related to mild hypothermia, which occurs as your body temperature starts to drop below normal levels. As the body temperature continues to drop, the signs and symptoms change and mild hypothermia can become moderate-to-severe hypothermia.

Lack of Shivering

The first symptom of mild hypothermia might eventually stop, but that doesn’t mean that hypothermia is cured. It could actually mean that hypothermia has advanced to moderate or severe hypothermia, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Lack of Coordination

While some symptoms stop as hypothermia progresses, others remain consistent. Lack of coordination and drowsiness/fatigue appear in mild, moderate and severe hypothermia, sometimes getting worse as the condition intensifies. This symptom is tough to detect on your own, but “other people will notice that you’re clumsy or you’re just very lethargic,” said Dr. Pardo.

Confusion and Poor Decision-Making

This symptom of moderate-to-severe hypothermia can worsen other symptoms, and cause new problems.

Because people with hypothermia can be affected mentally, poor decision making can lead patients to not realize the severity of their situation.

“Judgment tends to be affected,” said Dr. Pardo. “For example, if you’re climbing Mount Everest and you’re hypothermic, decision making will be flawed. You might keep going to make a base camp even if you shouldn’t.”

Progressive Loss of Consciousness

Loss of consciousness is a symptom of moderate-to-severe hypothermia, and another sign that a person might have hypothermia. Similar to other signs, the person in danger will relies on someone else to detect it.

Deadly Heart Problems

“One of the things that happens is the heart becomes very irritable, so for people who are cold (temperatures in the low 90s) their body doesn’t work properly,” said Dr. Pardo. “They are prone to have arrhythmias, their [heart's electrical activity] changes and those are the things that we worry about.”