Episode 218: The Preppers Blood Vessels

diagrams and stuff like that. So you can actually either listen to this on the podcast, or you can go to YouTube, we'll link in the podcast stuff, and actually watch the graphics as they scroll by. So I want to turn this over to spice. So this is mostly just gonna be all her because this is her thing.

pipes. And not only are they really cool pipes, but they've got some tricks that you can learn to use to your best interest in prepping kinds of situations. And we're doing it with the diagrams because I talk much better about physiology when I can draw really bad diagrams, because that's how I roll. So here's one for you. This is of course, very diagrammatic. Because we have here's the heart. There's the heart, right side of the heart left side of the

heart. And the right side of the heart just pumps the blood to the lungs, so it can pick up oxygen lose carbon dioxide, send it back to the left side. And the left side of the heart pumps that blood everywhere else. So here you see the major artery, the aorta, coming out of the left ventricle, big fat pulsing sucker. And as it takes all the blood out of the left ventricle, various arteries branch off in different directions, taking blood various parts of the body.

And it's kind of like a tree where you start with one trunk and then you start sending off branches. And every branch you send out makes the stem a little more narrow. And the branches get smaller and smaller as you divide them further and further. So the first major trunk is this aorta, bringing all the blood out of the heart. And then it

starts sending it around. It's got the big arteries, and then the arteries once they get inside these individual organs, they're going to branch into a number of smaller vessels called arterioles. And eventually, those guys will subdivide into extremely large number like millions of miles literally, of tiny little capillaries that

infiltrate the tissues. And here is Joe, your body cells sitting out here, he's going to be able to trade materials with the blood in the blood vessels as they go through the capillaries. And then we're going to collect that blood which is now lower in oxygen and trends and higher and wastes. And we're going to have some thin URLs that are going to collect into larger veins. And then we're going to bring the blood back to the heart so we

can do it all over again. So that's the general circulatory pattern. And the main focus of today is a cool little trick that these small vessels have going to wrap some around here. Now I'm going to wrap some around there and around there and around here. A lot of these blood vessels have smooth muscle wrapped around them. And as you can see in the little drawing there, they're wrapped around

it. Like you had your arms sticking out, you wrapped your fingers around your arm so the circles of muscle are around the vessel. If you made your vessel look like that, then you'd have your with the blood coming out towards you, you'd have your smooth muscle cells wrapped around it like that. So when we wanted to constrict the muscle, that muscle is going to squeeze on down or that's my weightlifting sounds until you have a smaller diameter vessel. And there's several reasons you

you do this. One thing you want to do is when you have Have a bigger vessel, you get more blood flow to the tissue. So the tissues gets more blood that it can exchange with it gets better access to oxygen and nutrients, it has an easier time getting rid of its waste, when you give it more flow. So you want the big vessels bigger, when you

want more flow. When you make the vessels smaller, by constricting them, you do that when it's time to raise your blood pressure, because that'll raise pressure, it will shut down the flow to the tissue somewhat. But another thing it's going to do is it's going to reduce heat loss. So the major reasons, you want to change the size of these vessels, you want to increase the flow with the tissues or active, whatever tissues are most active, you're going to give them the very most

flow. And when they're less active, it's okay if they get less flow, it's critical that you keep your blood pressure high enough, so you'll constrict your vessels when you need to do that. But the other major reason you constrict vessels, especially at the skip control, heat loss, because when the vessels are big and fat and wide open in the skin, you're bringing all that nice warm blood close to your surface, here is our happy prepper. I

promised you bad drawings. When we bring more nice warm blood to the surface, we're going to radiate a lot of body heat off. High Flow cools your body down more effectively, whether you want it to or not, you feed the tissues better, but you get cooler. So one thing you're going to do if you start to lose too much body heat, and this guy gets cold, he's going to constrict those blood vessels, make them smaller, and he's going to reduce the amount of heat he

loses to the outside world. Now, one of the cool things about physiology is you've got a way to sense what you need internally make it happen. So if you've got a muscle here, here's a skeletal muscle and you're making a muscle rar, you're doing a bunch of work, you want to have a bunch of flow. And your body is going to make it happen because these active working muscles are going to send out some chemical signals. And those signals are going to tell the muscle around the blood

vessel to loosen up. And that'll make your blood vessel nice and big and wide. And you'll get a lot of flow. And now the actively working tissue is happy, because it has all the nice blood flow it needs. But there's a side effect to that. What's gonna go on with that is when you have better blood flow to a tissue and it's warmer, it's gonna work better. Because it's got all the nutrition it needs and all the waste removal it needs. And also it's going to be less likely to be injured.

People don't think about it a whole lot, especially when you hear them talking about putting these giant get home bags on their back and trekking through miles of woods. And while they're foraging and camping out and doing all that Joe cool stuff. They don't think of what what happens if you try and sling that big old bag on your shoulder and you wrench your

shoulder. pull a muscle when you're doing that times of emergency when you're having to do a bunch of strange stuff you don't really do injury risk is much higher than usual. And it is absolutely the last thing. So one thing about this is Don't forget that basic stuff you learn in gym class, if you're going to have to be doing hard work, especially if it's out in the cold or the blood flow is restricted in the first place.

You absolutely are going to want to make sure you reduce injury by increasing the flow to the tissue before or before you get heavy about it. And there's a couple ways you can do that. Give it a try salty. You want more blood flow to a muscle because you're about to have to have some big old heavy stuff. pushing your emergency vehicle out of the mud. So you can continue your bug out. What can you do?

it's a bad answer. So instead, you find out you're stuck, you take a moment, you walk around a little bit, you swing your arms a little bit, you get the blood moving, you've been cramped up in that vehicle for a while, you get the blood flowing before you set your shoulder behind that thing and give it your major shove. And that way, you're one more likely to actually get the thing pushed out of the mud, because your muscles are going

to work better. And two, you're less likely to tear that muscle into piece. So it's not going to work for you properly for the next week. So be thoughtful of that, especially when you're out in the cold. Now it's a little hokey, but I've seen it on baseball games on TV where these guys are going to go pitch. Well have these special jackets made that cover only their one arm and shoulder. So their pitching arm stays stays nice and cozy.

It reminds me of that movie, some cheesy sports movie about baseball where the guy wanted hats for his bats keep that swarm.

be working out in the cold. And if you start out without a whole lot on, you're going to restrict blood flow to the skin and you're going to be more susceptible to injury and you're not going to function very well, you'll start to lose manual dexterity pretty quick, that's not a great answer. So we're going to start doing here is we're going to start putting on lots of nice, thin layers of clothing on top of this guy.

Start out nice and bundled up, he's gonna go out there and start cutting his wood or shoveling or carrying water or doing whatever he's going to do. And then as soon as he starts to warm up, take awful air works and more, start to get warm threatened to start up a sweat. Before you get a real sweat going. You take off another layer, you go out there and layers and you remove them as you get warm. Because there's two things you don't want to

happen. You don't want to be working cold, because it saps too much energy and it makes you more. But you also don't want to sweat up because sooner or later you're going to be done working. And there are things that are more miserable than being out in the cold, completely sweated through because you were working before. And then you stop working. And your body heat goes down and now you're soaking wet and you're still out in the cold. There are things more miserable than that. But the

list is kinda short. It's really unpleasant. And it is dangerous though. So that is a proper consideration. You want to be warm when you start working. But don't forget, you don't want to sweat up in there. So you go out layers and strip them off as you go. burlesque music is an option as you strip off layers. On the other side of that is the fact that people are often wondering what's the best best clothing they can wear out in the cold to protect themselves. And that is

a big important deal. But if you the more effective way to warm your body is actually to keep it moving. And there are two parts to that. When you move you'll generate more core body heat. And when you have plenty of core body heat, you'll go ahead and open up those blood vessels to the skin so you can start

radiating that heat off. That brings the heat closer to the surface that's going to make you more comfortable and it's going to maintain your dexterity and your strength and your abilities and all that so you generate heating your core. I know this one I cycle when I go out cycling this time of year, it's about refrigerator cold outside this time of year. So when I go out cycling, I go out and the first half mile, my fingers and

my toes start going numb. Okay, you can't let your fingers go so numb that you can't grab the brakes. But other than that you keep going for another mile, mile and a half. by about two miles in I'll have generated enough core heat that it goes ahead and starts sending blood back to my fingers and toes and my fingers and toes a warm up, even though I'm still out there in the cold. So moving is a more effective way than clothing of keeping your core heat. But if you're moving, you got to keep

fed. When I go out for a ride in the summer, I'm about 30 miles in before I start needing to eat. If it's winter, it's 15 or 20 miles, because you burn through a lot more calories. When you're exercising in the cold than when you're exercising in the warm for at least

Because when you are dehydrated, that means you are low on body water. And water is a good chunk of what's in the blood more than half of what's in the blood. So when you're low on water, you're actually low on blood volume. When you're lower blood volume, you're low on blood pressure. And if you're low on blood pressure, your brain absolutely hates that. And we'll fight against fights against it by constructing blood vessels. And when you constrict blood vessels, of course, you get

colder. You feel colder, cool. Why put that many O's in there, but there we are. So avoid dehydration. As salty said, you don't notice it as much in a letter. But through your breath. Even though you're not sweating this much. You lose a considerable amount of water and you don't feel it. So keep hydrated, even though it's cold. When you're working out though. The flip side of this is there are some things that you should not do. Not letting yourself get dehydrated was one of them on my

list. Something else that ends up being significant. If the St. Bernard comes to rescue you when you're in the snow, and he's carrying that cute little chunk of brandy, here's your dog. Yeah, I don't have time to drive. Good dog. Here's his little cask of brandy. He's taken with it. No brandy. alcohol. People often talk about taking a dip to keep them warm when they're out in the cold wrong. But thank you for playing. Alcohol causes blood

vessels to dilate. Yes, you feel warmer, you feel warmer because you're sending more nice warm blood to the skin. When you send that nice warm blood to the skin. All that lovely heat radiates away into the outside world and your core is colder. So if you have alcohol when you're out in the cold, you will feel warmer. But you'll actually chill faster. So if you're only going to be out there for half an hour because you're watching a football game or something like that. It's not a tragic

deal. But if it's an actual strategy to keep warm in the cold, you picked a pretty lousy strategy. Avoid the alcohol if you need to stay warm. The other thing is if you've got somebody who already is chilled. So here we have our hypothermia victim who By the temperatures dropped, they're chilled, you're trying to help them, you want to warm up. Here's what you don't want to do. Oh, I know, we've got a little bit of warm water, we'll give him this nice tub of warm water. And we'll stick his feet

in the warm water. And he was starting to threaten to get frostbite. Anyway, we'll warm up the feet and hands first. Because that's what we could easily reach and put in warm water. Let's see what's gonna happen there. You put the warm water in the hands and feet, ooh, the hands and feet start to feel better yet nice, toasty warm water. And the blood vessels out there, dilate. And when you dilate, you get more blood flow. And where's that flow coming? It's coming from

your body core. So the heart stent starts to send out more nice warm blood to those dilated vessels in the hands and feet. But to get there, it's got to go through the arms and legs. And it is still cold out there in the arms and legs. Which means the blood that's going out there loses heat, and the blood is it goes back in loses heat. You bring cold blood back to the core. You actually get worse chilling.

See you've tried to warm them up by putting their hands and feet in cold water and you've made their hypothermia worse where it counts. And where it counts is primarily right here. If you get that heart cold enough, it will stop on you. So it is according to the wilderness medical experts that I've read and error of judgment to try and warm them up by putting hands in warm water. Instead, you've got this person that's cold. You want to

warm up their core. You want to apply the heat here at the core if you can before you warm up the extremities. Look the extremities have limited blood flow for a while they'll be okay. If there's frostbite. All right, there's already frostbite. It's not going to get worse if you leave it be for a while if you've got both frostbite and hypothermia, you treat hypothermia first. And you deal with the frostbite later. If they're hypothermic, you warm

the core. Maybe put that warm water into some water bottles. Maybe you've got a bladder for a backpack sipper thing, put the warm water in there. Or you take some stones that have been around the fire and you wrap them up and get them nice and warm. And you put those warm things on the armpits and groin where the Bloods coming back from the limbs toward the heart and you warm it, put them under stomach and warm up their chest.

Maybe you have a lay on something warm or certainly on insulation, you warm the core first. And that'll actually bring up the core body temperature while the blood is still not moving very much in the arms and legs. As you get the core warm. You'll start sending warm blood out back to the extremities and you'll get them warmed up by and by. Just don't start there. Start at the core first.

socially or not. If you don't want them to freeze to death, you might strip down to almost skin crawl in and hug up real close to them to give them body heat.