Body hacking trick: cooling the hands for better performance

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2005/julaug/features/cool.html

by aroberge • 15 years ago

144 47 15 years ago

bane3• 15 years ago

I'm a person who almost constantly feels hot. I think unconsciously I realized that if I roll the sleeves up on my long sleeve oxfords (when I have to wear them) I feel much more comfortable, but could never figure out why it made such a difference. I suppose it just helped expose more area near my hands and cool me off.

I'd love to have one of these.

donw• 15 years ago

You and I have the same problem; even in the winter, I rarely need anywhere near the amount of clothing that people around me seem to.

What's really annoying here in Tokyo is that, during the winter, the thermostat in every office, train, and department store is set to about thirty-five million degrees centigrade.

I have to strip off pretty much everything I'm wearing whenever I transition from the outside to the inside, and then put it all back on again when I do the reverse. Amazingly annoying.

What's helped me out a lot are Marmot's Gore-Tex jackets. Because they're breathable and have vents, I can just unzip a bit and cool down rapidly. Admittedly, they don't look as good with a dress shirt as a nicely-fitted suit, but it's a compromise that keeps me from bursting into flame.

aantix• 15 years ago

Do you generally have normal blood pressure readings?

I continue to have blood pressure issues, but in the early days when it was less controlled one of my symptoms was that I was extremely warm blooded.

Now the my BP has been lowered somewhat, I find that I generally feel cooler and am more sensitive to cold environments.

bane3• 15 years ago

No, normal BP. However, as I've gotten older it isn't as bad (and I've started to become more sensitive to cold), but I still find myself hot and sweaty when everybody around me is often fine or cold.

When I was young, it wasn't even a big deal to go out for a while in the middle of winter in a t-shirt, I didn't even own a proper winter coat until I was far into my 20s.

delackner• 15 years ago

Each time I see stories about this device I end up wanting to have access to one at my local climbing gym REALLY BADLY. I hope they manage to bring the price down enough that I might actually be able to pitch it to the gym.

hobolobo• 15 years ago

And if you could combine this with a machine to remove lactic acid from your forearms and make it small enough to fit into a chalkbag so that every time you dipped, you got chalked up, cooled down, and stronger. Yeah, I think that might work.

tghw3• 15 years ago

Every time this comes up, it makes me want to do try making a DIY version...

jakeonthemove2• 15 years ago

Why not? Doesn't seem to complicated - you'll just have to find the best temperature for you and a way to keep it stable - a thermostat and/or variable amount of insulation should do the trick...

tghw3• 15 years ago

They even state the temperature, between 18 C and 22 C. I'm thinking if you could find a plastic top for a gumball machine (or something like it) you would have a pretty good start. The vacuum could be done manually with a pump of some sort.

For the cooling part, you'd need to drill two large holes for a pipe to go through, which the hand would hold onto. Then maybe just have a water and ice reservoir that sits on top of the whole thing? That way, you wouldn't need any electric pumps or anything.

Then, the only thing left is sealing the wrist joint. One of those big rubber exercise bands might be enough to seal it off.

jakeonthemove2• 15 years ago

"When a hot body core issues a command to open the radiators and dump heat, the palm can override that command and order the radiators to shut down based on local conditions, i.e., if the palm touches a cold surface" - Damn, I was thinking that you could cool down by touching anything cold, apparently that won't work because the radiator shuts down if the outside conditions are too cold (so touching ice won't work)... Pretty interesting research, though - implementing something like this in some sort of "power suit" would be great.

carbocation3• 15 years ago

> "The drugs that render patients unconscious also make them hypothermic. That’s useful because chilled patients bleed less during surgery ..."

Coagulation is an enzymatic reaction. You might not be surprised, then, to learn that low temperatures retard, not enhance, coagulation. Cold temperatures make the patient bleed more, not less. The article gets this part exactly wrong.

pavedwalden• 15 years ago

Is it possible that this is counterbalanced by the circulatory system's reaction to cold? For instance, perhaps surgery on the limbs is easier when the body is reducing peripheral circulation as it does in someone experiencing hypothermia.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

That's exactly what they're talking about. If the reason they bled less was that their blood was coagulating all over the place, they would also bleed less because they would be dead.

carbocation3• 15 years ago

Empirically, my understanding is that no, the harm of cold temperatures (decreased coagulation) is not counterbalanced by the gain (decreased peripheral circulation). Patients undergoing surgery are coagulopathic, moreso when they are cooled, and in fact they are often actively warmed now.

billswift• 15 years ago

Cold causes blood vessels to constrict, restricting blood flow. It is a totally different response from coagulation.

carbocation3• 15 years ago

And yet coagulation is the relevant thing to discuss when we talk about blood loss from surgery, which is all I am trying to address because I am uncomfortable with the fact that the journalist got his facts exactly wrong. Being cold during surgery makes you bleed more. You and others have noted that cold causes constriction of blood vessels, so if that were the driving fact during surgery, cold would be beneficial. In fact, it is not. The decreased effectiveness of the clotting cascade outweighs the decrease in peripheral blood flow, leading to increased blood loss due to cold. The journalist stated something as fact, and then tried to explain why it was so. But he started from a false fact.

tomahhy• 15 years ago

Why does it need a vacuum?

Groxx2• 15 years ago

Dilates your blood vessels, allowing faster heat exchange. Considerably faster, from what I've gathered from similar devices.

ehsanu1• 15 years ago

when externally applied heat shocked open the radiators in the cold palms of anesthesia patients, warmed blood was returned straight to the heart, and the body was reheated from the inside out. Applying a mild vacuum to the hand intensified this effect.

It doesn't need a vacuum, but it does help. They don't seem to mention why.

pbhjpbhj• 15 years ago

Applying a vacuum to an area causes blood to well in that area, suck on your hand and you'll see the area you suck on blush. So presumably you're making capillaries open up and increase heat transference over the skin threshold. Opening all the capillaries in an area will increase the volume of blood in that area too, so greater volume and greater heat gradient (over a small distance).

Disclaimer: Assumptions, not medically/biologically trained.

watmough2• 15 years ago

I noticed the article talked about dogs cooling through their feet. I used to work in a hot office, and the best solution to cooling down was to take my shoes off and have a fan under the desk.

Luckily, I shower every day, and my feet don't generally sweat or smell too badly.

mhartl• 15 years ago

Interesting. The article appears to be from 2005. I wonder what has happened the last six years.

davidw2• 15 years ago

They were going to try and bring the thing to the mass market, but they got cold feet.

mipapage• 15 years ago

Taking this very very low tech... I ran a 5 day running race in 40-50C heat this summer. By grabbing ice cubes at the control points during each stage and holding them in my hands - as opposed to putting them under my cap like most runners - I was able to drop my heart rate by 3-6 beats per minute until the ice melted.

The Swedish company Craft made an "ice glove" for triathlete Torbjørn Sindballe who had trouble from the heat when running in Hawaii...

keeptrying• 15 years ago

These are used on all NFL sidelines if you keep a look out for them.

davidw2• 15 years ago

Anyone else want to yell "double blind!" at the bit about the track coach?

Groxx2• 15 years ago

Interesting. I'll have to try this some time.

For people not willing to buy such a contraption (like me), though the vacuum helps, try running cold water over the bottom of your wrists. It's a fantastically-effective way to cool off, and very not-messy.

jwdunne• 15 years ago

I can confirm cooling the wrists works wonders.

On nights where it's too warm and sticky to sleep, this technique always helps me.

nooneelse• 15 years ago

A good hat and a wet handkerchief tied around each wrist is how I was taught to make it through the 105°F days back on the farm as a boy.

lachyg4• 15 years ago

This isn't very encouraging.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=CoreControl

lachyg4• 15 years ago

Can't edit anymore: Since finding this I've found one more study that doesn't support the CoreControl, and I've found three that do support the CoreControl, as well as 3 redditors that have said the support it.

Another thing to note is that the sample group in most of these studies is far too small (9 people, come on!)

wwkeyboard• 15 years ago

I wonder if the use of running as a stressor effected that study? The original article caused heat in the core and upper body(squats and pullups) while short sprints is more of a leg issue.

gaius• 15 years ago

I am more interested in the opposite of this: a portable, ruggedized hand-warming device for divers suffering from hypothermia in the water.

viraptor• 15 years ago

Wouldn't mind one for kayaking in winter time either... Pogies are good, but once you get wet and cold, you stay that way.

qohen• 15 years ago

A Noah Shachtman piece in Wired about tech for soldiers spends some time on this same device from Stanford and it describes how the device (in an earlier form) could also be used for warming:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore_pr.html

Towards the end of the piece, the author describes being being in a bathtub with cold water and, after it starts to affect him, the device is used to warm him:

"But his stories get harder and harder to follow. I’ve started shivering again--all across my legs and chest, muscles pulse to a manic rhythm. And then I start having tremors. My thighs jackknife to my chest, unbidden. I moan, and darkness closes in from the edges of my vision.

Then, just like on the treadmill, Grahn takes my wrist. He slips each of my hands into a modified Glove prototype. This time, the metal hemispheres inside are hot to the touch--113 degrees. After two minutes, I can think again. The tent comes back into focus. You can stay this way indefinitely now. "You’re at a thermal equilibrium; the heat going into these two hands is equivalent to what’s going out of the rest of you," Grahn says. "Now you’re uncomfortable again -- merely uncomfortable. That’s a huge difference when you’re talking about survival." The water is still bitter, of course. But now I can take it.

rjprins• 15 years ago

This is way over-engineered. Just put your hands in cold water..

Also, this fact about cooling the body for better performance is well known in professional sports. An example product that is being used there: http://www.icydip.com

dlytle2• 15 years ago

The problem with that is that the blood vessels clamp down in response to cold. The vacuum prevents that, and seriously improves the efficiency of the cooling process.

squozzer• 15 years ago

Strange -- because after I play video games for a while, I have to warm my hands to regain my reflexes -- which aren't very good anyway.

pingswept2• 15 years ago

I think this might be bullshit. [Edit: maybe not. See thread below.] The article is from 2005, and I can't find anything that is less than 3 years old that describe the device working.

I was working as an engineer near Stanford when this cooling glove was announced, and I remember hearing about the "$400,000 version by a name-brand design firm that really never worked." It's possible that the professors just gave up or moved on to something new after discovering that productization was hard. It might also be that the rate at which you can cool a human body through the small surface area of the hands without damaging the skin is too small to be useful.

Anyone find any good evidence that this could work?

lachyg4• 15 years ago

There is a study as recent as last year http://www.avacore.com/sites/default/files/document/Kwon-Sch.... There are also a lot of sports teams using it, and it is visible often on TV.

pingswept2• 15 years ago

That does appear to be a scientific paper from 2010 with real statistics in it-- maybe it does work.

Body hacking trick: cooling the hands for better performance

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