It seems counter productive, you sweat , your clothes become wet with sweat making you even more cold.
Where did you see that sweating is part of hypothermia? It is not a symptom of hypothermia, but as you mention it can cause or worsen it. If you are in a cold environment but exerting yourself and sweat and your clothes get wet rather than venting it off, once you stop the exertion and sit with wet clothes your heat loss is a lot faster.
Mat357, hypothermia (too cold) does not cause sweating, however, sweating can cause hypothermia.
If your hypothalamus is buggered up (for example by a bad reaction to opiates) it might think that you are too hot when in reality you are not. When it mistakenly thinks that you are to hot, it tries to lower your body temperature by directing your body to sweat. As you sweat you cool down. If your hypothalamus is too confused, you could sweat so much that you become hypothermic.
If your hypothalamus is working properly, you will not sweat unless you are too hot, and certainly will not sweat if you are hypothermic.
If you are hyperthermic (too hot), then you will sweat, unless you hypothalamus is buggered and sending out the wrong signals, or you are so dehydrated that you have little left to sweat, with the vultures circling and asking each other “is dinner cooked yet?”.
For a list of things that can bugger up your thermoregulatory centre and cause you to sweat when you are not hot, google about for “cold sweat” or “night sweat”.
wikipedia says sweating is one of the symptoms of the latter stages of hypothermia
Is this what you’re talking about?
I didn’t find anything about sweathing being a symptom in the Wikipedia article.
As far as sweating leading to hypothermia…sure. I’m always paranoid, running in the winter, that I’ll sweat too much and twist an ankle or something, and not be able to stay warm.
From UpToDate.com
No sweat. More urine sometimes, though (cold diuresis).
Can you post a link to what you are talking about? Because it seems contrary to what is known about hypothermia.
I read the article and I don’t see that anywhere. I also searched for “perspir” and “sweat.” Nowhere mentioned as a symptom.
If the hypothalamus was buggered this could be possible. Never heard of it happening though. If you come across any references on this, please post the links, for I’d like to read them.
A thermoreceptor is a sensory receptor, or more accurately the receptive portion of a sensory neuron, that codes absolute and relative changes in temperature, primarily within the innocuous range.
Why is the thermoreceptor only accurate inside the innocuous range ?
The body was only ‘designed’ by evolution.
Probably because for the thermoreceptors to be selected toward being accurate in deadly range, would require the range to NOT BE DEADLY. because dead people don’t pass on their genes..
So really its one of the evidences (in the stack of a billion billion ) for evolution…
Its nice one though.. doesn’t take much to switch it around… why would a designer make the thermoreceptor work ONLY “within the innocuous range.”? There was no designer. Its due to evolution.. Same answer as the OP’s question.. Due to evolution.
I read it a couple years ago on wikipedia, I don’t see it there anymore for some reason. I know when I get very cold I start to sweat profusely and but not in my armpits. I sweat mainly on my back. This causes my clothes to become damp or even soaked in sweat making me even more cold.
Probably because you are misremembering or because it was so obviously wrong.
Sweating when you are cold can happen for a number of reason, mainly due to exertion. But that has little to do with hypothermia, which isn’t the same as being cold.