Well, no one like feeling cold! Apart from seasonal affective disorder, cold weather can also be physically hard for your body.
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As the weather swiftly moves towards colder temperatures, and we all get ready to look for tips and tricks to keep ourselves warm this winter, its worth recounting a strange and unsettling story from back in 1980, when a girl got literally frozen, and yet could be brought back to life.
As reported by New York Times, a teenager, Jean Hilliard was found frozen 'like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze,' by her friend, but to the shock of everyone, she made a miraculous recovery. Here's what happened.
Teenager found completely frozen
As Science Alert explains, Hilliard was coming back home after a night out when her car stopped working. She was not dressed warm enough for the cold Dakota winter with temperature running around - 30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit).
She began walking to her friend's house, but on the way she tripped and lost consciousness. Her body then lay on the ground, freezing away for the next 6 hours, until she was found by her friend, Nelson who describes the moment they found her,
I thought she was dead. Frozen stiffer than a board, but I saw a few bubbles coming out of her nose.
When she was rushed to the hospital, she was completely frozen, with skin that was too hard to pierce with a hypodermic needle, and body temperature so low that it could not even register on a thermometer. Her body actually had to thaw out. The doctor who overlooked her case, Dr. Edgar Sather, described her slow recovery,
The reaction didn't appear until two or three hours after she started thawing out. The body was cold, completely solid, just like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze.
How could she have survived?
Hilliard's family saw her amazing recovery as a miracle, and the answer to their prayers.
Whether that may be the case or not, this incident is a great example of the fact that hypothermia actually does not equal certain death. As Science Alert explains, being frozen solid is actually a sign of hypothermia, which could also sometimes resemble rigor mortis, the stiffness that happens to dead bodies.
The fact that Hilliard's body was cold, and even her eyes appeared non-responsive could be due to the fact that, in the kind of severe weather as the one she was in, 'the body will close off channels to blood vessels,' as it tries to do its best to keep all the organs functioning.
So even though Hilliard was definitely freezing from the outside, her body's core temperature was way above the point of freezing. And hence, she could survive.
Read more:
⋙ Here's why you should always cover your nose when it's cold outside
⋙ This man is so obsessed with death that he got buried alive: ‘I wished I could stay there longer’
⋙ This man was told he had cancer but you would never guess what was really inside his lungs
Sources used:
Science Alert: 'Amazing True Story: The Woman Who Survived Being 'Frozen Solid''
New York Times: ' DAKOTA TEEN-AGER RECOVERS AFTER BEING 'FROZEN STIFF''
