keeping cool in the heat.

[dstebbins]

My first taxpaying job was at Sonic as a cook. They recommended that, to prevent myself from passing out from the heat, I should soak a rag in water, stick it in their walk-in refridgerator, and, when it gets cold, drape it around my neck.

 

This made me think of an infomercial I saw some time prior: It was about a battery-powered cooling collar. They said that the science behind this was that, if you can cool down the back of your neck, the sensation will seep down into your spinal cord, and therefore, throughout your body.

 

My question: Is this technology legit, even if the product itself (by nature of being on an infomercial) is not? If it is, then why hasn't anyone come up with the idea yet, just at a price that doesn't make you suspicious?

[Kyrisch]

Well the whole spinal cord thing sounds pretty specious to me, but I can say from personal experience that, for the most part, cooling down or keeping warm a part of your body can definitely affect the temperature of your whole person. For instance, a lot of people subconsciously stick feet out of the blanket during the spring to regulate body temperature, and when I work outside in the cold I almost always wear shorts but bulk up in layers on my torso and my legs stay fine.

[Externet]

A towel presents a very porous and large surface that promotes its moisture to evaporate faster as there is large area of water contacting the air.

 

When water evaporates absorbs heat. 540 calories each gram. That cools the wet towel, and you in contact with it.

It is nothing out of the ordinary and well known effect.

 

When you want to evaporate water, you heat it up with a flame, sun rays,... or your warm neck. If you want the same in turbo mode, wet the towel in alcohol.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

 

Miguel

[Mokele]

The spine thing is BS, but the back of the neck is generally a good place to cool.

[dstebbins]

First, by "specious," I hope you mean suspicious.

 

Second, think about it: The spinal cord is one of the most fundamental parts of the entire nervous system. Factor in the brain, and the spine is essentially second in command. It is basically the liaison between the brain and the minor nerve cells.

 

Therefore, if you can create a message yourself, and convince the spinal cord to deliver it to all the other nerve cells, it would. This is essentially what they say happens when you put something cold on the back of your neck, and that's how it decreases your entire body tempurature.

 

It makes sense to me; why not you? Is there something else I haven't considered?

[iNow]

Could possibly have something to do with all of those ginormous veins feeding blood to the brain, and cooling down the blood itself. Sort of like cooling down your wort when brewing beer... You have a tube inside a hose. The hose flows cold water through it, and the tube surrounded by that cold water flows the beer/wort. The beer, being inside the cooler water itself gets cooled.

 

Much more likely than this ridiculous argument of "the spine senses it's cooler" is that your body actually does decrease in temperature... or, more specifically, the blood gets cooled and carries that coolness with it throughout the body.

 

This is conjecture, but seems likely. The spine argument is fallacious because the spine itself is not a sense organ, only a superhighway of neural signals. The sense itself, however, must originate from precise points on the skin to be interpreted as such.

[dstebbins]

A towel presents a very porous and large surface that promotes its moisture to evaporate faster as there is large area of water contacting the air.

 

When water evaporates absorbs heat. 540 calories each gram. That cools the wet towel, and you in contact with it.

It is nothing out of the ordinary and well known effect.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

 

Miguel

 

Well, that leaves only one thing left:

 

Could a battery-powered cooling device that is attached to the back of the neck do the same thing?

[Externet]

A battery powered cooling device can be as simple as a propeller promoting faster evaporation from the towel surface.

A Peltier effect cooling device would also work, if its heating half is also able to cool itself by wind of fan.

[Mokele]

The spinal cord is one of the most fundamental parts of the entire nervous system. Factor in the brain, and the spine is essentially second in command. It is basically the liaison between the brain and the minor nerve cells.

 

Therefore, if you can create a message yourself, and convince the spinal cord to deliver it to all the other nerve cells, it would. This is essentially what they say happens when you put something cold on the back of your neck, and that's how it decreases your entire body tempurature.

 

There's two serious errors here:

 

1) The spinal cord has *no* sensory nerve endings. It's a bundle of wires, with no sensory ability. Raising the temperature near it will no more affect your perceived temperature than raising or lowering the temperature of an ethernet cable will change your email address.

 

2) Even if you *could* alter the perception of temperature, that wouldn't actually lower the body's temperature.

[swansont]

Could possibly have something to do with all of those ginormous veins feeding blood to the brain, and cooling down the blood itself.

 

That's the actual mechanism.

 

The best places to do this are the bottoms of your feet, your palms and your ears, because of the density of blood vessels and the surface area. I recall some research I read about a few years ago, with a device that drew a weak vacuum while cooling one's hand; the lower pressure kept the blood vessels from constricting, which is one thing that normally happens when you slap something cold on the skin, and it restricts heat flow.

[Phi for All]

The best part about using the back of the neck is the relative ease in draping the cooling agent around it. Nothing on your hands and feet to impede your work, and it's a stable area that doesn't make a lot of quick movements (especially if you're a cook at Sonic).

 

I think there's a psychological factor at work as well. Keeping the neck and head cool seems to keep our minds off the heat. When you fan yourself in the heat, do you fan your legs or abdomen? No, but when you feel the breeze on your face you seem more aware of the general cooling effort, and the heat seems less oppressive.

[GDG]

First, by "specious," I hope you mean suspicious.

 

"Specious" means fraudulent or untrue. Particularly applied to arguments that do not stand up to scrutiny.