How Strange: Was I Really Freezing in the Tropics?

Don’t make my mistakes and ruin your vacation

Thick padded socks. A fleece hoodie. Huddling under a down-alternative comforter. And still, I was freezing. In the tropics.

How could this be? The answer is simple: heat exhaustion. Not from working in the sun, exercising, or any other form of exertion. From sitting. In the ocean.

Yeah, that didn’t make any sense to me, either. Until it happened. Hopefully, you’ll learn from my mistakes, and save yourself from experiencing heat exhaustion, or its deadly follower, heat stroke.

Just a normal Saturday

Last Saturday, we went to a beach barbecue. In the hottest part of the afternoon, it was very hot indeed. In the mid-80s. (That’s around 30, for those of you who speak Celsius.)

Since I was wearing shorts, I decided to wade in the ocean to cool off. I waded out until I was up to my knees in the surf, and stood there, enjoying the cooling ocean water.

To one side, young teens played a rousing game of King-of-the-Mountain on the swim raft. Older teens rode paddleboards into the deeper water. And on the other side, fishing boats, motorized dinghies, and small yachts bobbed at anchor.

Of course I wear glasses in the water

I wear trifocals. The top of the lens is distance vision, for driving. The main center portion of the lens is focused at around 2–6 feet, for general vision. The bottom of the lens is reading, for things held at about chest height.

That means I can’t actually see the ground by my feet in focus. If I look down, at something 5 1/2 feet away from my eyes, it’s out of focus, because I’m looking through the reading glasses. I can see the ground a foot or two in front of me, or to the side of me. But not directly where I’m standing, unless I lean forward at the waist and stare directly down.

This will become important in a moment.

Lack of control leads to…lack of control

One of the teens had enough water sport, and brought his paddleboard in to shore. He wasn’t very good at controlling it, so I moved out of his way.

I looked down at the ocean floor. It was smooth and even to the left of me. It was smooth and even to the right of me. It was smooth and even in front of me. It was blurry and out of focus by my feet.

Assuming it was smooth and even by my feet as well, I stepped to the side. And stepped into a hole.

Arms windmilling, I struggled to regain my balance, just as an extra large swell broke over the beach. Down I went.

“I’m in now”

I was now sitting on the sand, fully clothed, with ocean water up to my chest.

Family and friends on shore called out to make sure I was okay, and wanting to know what happened.

“I fell,” I called back. “I’m fine. But I’m in now, so I may as well stay in.”

And it was lovely. I sat in the ocean, feeling the gentle push and pull of waves breaking on the beach. I sat for long enough that an angel fish swam past my unmoving feet.

Or perhaps it was an angel-fish-shaped piece of trash. It was hard to tell, since it wasn’t in focus.

What happens in the water

If you’ve ever been to the beach in the summer, you know that walking barefoot across it is an exercise in dancing from toe to toe, hoping to avoid burning the soles of your feet. Sand gets hot in the sun!

Water, on the other hand, especially ocean water, does not. It may get pleasantly warm, rising from breath-stealing cold to merely brisk, through refreshing, and all the way up to bath-water. But it can always absorb more heat.

Which is exactly what it does when you immerse yourself in the ocean. Normally, you lose 2% of your body heat to the air. That’s why you start to feel hot when standing in the sun — the sun is increasing your body temperature faster than conduction through the air can lower it.

Depending on the temperature of the water, you can lose body heat up to 25 times as quickly in water as in air!

Preventing hypothermia

The human body is a marvel. Many systems of biofeedback exist to monitor our internal core temperature, external temperature, and rate of heat loss. After all, if our internal core varies outside of a very narrow range, we can die quickly.

If we are losing too much heat through our skin, the body suppresses vasodilation. In other words, all the tiny blood vessels that bring blood to the skin start closing off. In the long term, if the outside temperature is cold enough, that could mean frost bite, or even loss of fingers and toes. But you’ll have survived.

Since most of my body was soaking in the ocean, I was at risk of hypothermia. But my head and shoulders were above the water, in the warm air, soaking up the sun’s rays. Those two forces stayed roughly equal for quite some time. Eventually, I started to feel a little chilled.

It was time to get out of the water.

Doing exactly the wrong thing

When you are chilled and wearing wet clothing, there are certain things you should do to prevent hypothermia. First, if at all possible, get out of the wet clothing and into dry clothing. Some clothing, such as neoprene or wool, will retain body heat when wet. Others, like cotton, will not.

This is where the popular outdoorsman saying “cotton kills” comes from. If you remain outdoors wearing wet cotton, you will develop hypothermia, unless it’s extremely hot weather.

I’ll give you one guess what I was wearing. Yup, cotton.

The other things you should do include blocking any wind or airflow, and positioning yourself near a heat source. This is because airflow across your wet clothing increases the speed of heat transfer. And the amount of heat transferred depends on the difference in temperature between your body heat and the air around your body.

So it was doubly wrong of me to sit in an air-conditioned car for the ride home. Not only was it significantly colder than the external air temperature, but there was also strong airflow.

From hypothermia to hyperthermia

By the time I got home, I was thoroughly chilled. I stripped off my wet clothes and took a hot shower. Points for finally getting out of the wet clothing. But negative points for immersing myself in water again. Even though the shower was warmer than my skin temperature, it was still cooler than my core body temperature.

So, after drying off, I bundled up. I put on heavy padded socks and a fleece hoodie. I felt cold, and was trying to warm up.

But I hadn’t considered that I’d been out in the sun for hours. While the sunscreen I’d been wearing had prevented me from getting a sunburn, my skin had still absorbed heat. And, now that I wasn’t wet, that heat couldn’t go anywhere. It started raising my core body temperature.

Level 1 hyperthermia: heat exhaustion

As mentioned earlier, the human body is a marvel when it comes to self-regulation. It automatically takes action to lower its temperature when the core body temperature gets too high.

The first and most common way the body tries to dump heat is by sweating. In other words, by getting the skin wet, exactly as I’d done by sitting in the ocean.

If that doesn’t work, the body tries to reduce the amount of heat produced by cutting back on how much the muscles are working. That’s where the name “Heat Exhaustion” comes from. You get very tired, and want nothing more than to take a nap. Immediately.

In my case, one moment I was standing there telling my husband that my feet were like blocks of ice. The next thing I knew, I could barely keep my eyes open. I announced that I was taking a nap.

Core body temperature rises

This is where I made the biggest mistake of the day. Because my core body temperature rose so quickly — or rather, because I’d suddenly stopped dumping massive amounts of body heat — the air felt very cold to me. To all intents and purposes, I had a fever. But, I thought I was still chilled.

So I snuggled up under a down-alternative comforter to try and get warm. The problem was, I was already too warm. Burrowing under a blanket kept me overheated.

Since my core body temperature was still too high, I stayed exhausted. I’d briefly claw my way up to consciousness, drink a little water, and then immediately fall asleep again.

Heat stroke can kill

While I was passed out, dead to the world, my husband was researching heat stroke. Heat stroke is the stage of hyperthermia after heat exhaustion. It can be deadly, and requires immediate medical care. Some of the symptoms are red skin, confusion, dizziness, nausea or vomiting, muscle cramps, racing pulse, pounding headache, slurred speech, and a high fever.

He woke me repeatedly to check my mental state, and to ask if I was experiencing any of the other symptoms. (I wasn’t.) He insisted upon taking my temperature. I was running a fever of 102 degrees. At 104 degrees, heat stroke can begin causing potentially permanent organ damage.

Once I realized that I had a fever, I got rid of the comforter. I also took some aspirin to try and bring the fever down. In about 15–20 minutes, I’d cooled off enough to be awake and alert.

My husband had a few hours of fear, and I had an extra-long nap, but fortunately there were no long-term repercussions. If he’d been a little less proactive, or I’d been on my own, the story could have had an entirely different ending.

Conclusion

Fun in the sun can quickly lead to overheating, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. This is especially true if you are in the water, where your body’s attempts to prevent hypothermia can backfire.

If you feel cold, get out of wet clothes, put on dry clothes, and go someplace where the air is warm and still.

If your skin is cold and clammy, you have a headache, and you feel exhausted, you may be suffering from heat exhaustion. Sit or lie down somewhere cool, drink fluids, and monitor your temperature.

If you have a fever of 104 degrees or higher, are confused, have trouble speaking, or your pulse starts racing, you may be suffering from heat stroke. Get medical attention immediately.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Enjoy the beach and stay healthy.

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