Taipei City Hospital

      Mr. Zeng, 64 years old, was sent by ambulance workers from the roadside where he had passed out to the Zhongxing Branch of Taipei City Hospital for emergency rescue. With the arrival of a cold front on the same day, he had lost consciousness before reaching the hospital, so it was impossible to know how long he had been unconscious. The patient’s body temperature was only 21°C, so low that the situation was life threatening, and he also suffered from severe cardiac arrhythmia. Beyond that, his face and back were bruised, suspected to have been caused by falling down.

      Therefore, the patient was immediately given an intravenous drip of warm fluid, warm blanket and heat lamp, with the nasogastric tube and catheter lavaged with warm saline, and was transferred to the intensive care unit for strict monitoring. Only then did his body temperature recover.

      Liu Wensheng, Attending Doctor of the Nephrology Department at the Zhongxing Branch of Taipei City Hospital, says that patients with extremely low body temperatures are usually found in high-latitude countries or high altitude regions due to falling into water or having lost their way on high mountains and suffering from heat loss; the clinical condition is rarely seen in Taiwan, a subtropical country. However, if people drink alcohol to warm up when a cold front strikes, be careful to avoid the opposite effect.

      Dr. Liu explains that as alcohol causes blood vessels to expand, the warm blood flow inside the body is guided around the body, so one feels warm from the speeding up in blood circulation. In fact, due to vascular ectasia, more heat from the center of the body (such as the heart and brain) is lost to the arms, legs and body surface, lowering the temperature of the body center, reducing the shivering of the body in the fight against the cold. Therefore, the traditional saying that drinking can keep one warm is wrong. During cold waves, people should still put on more clothes to keep warm and eat high calorie food to avoid heat loss.