The Shower Dilemma, a mini-story
There's the seemingly pointless question of whether to take a shower as part of personal hygiene. However, my experience with visiting at high altitudes has me wondering whether it should be more in the "life or death" category.
At high altitudes, the ambient temperature is usually a lot lower. None of the places I've stayed have had central heating, and most of them had nothing at all. This means that a room at a typical hostal is not likely to be very warm. Most places have hot water for at least part of the day though.
After you take a hot shower in an otherwise cold room, and the moment you get out of the shower, you're likely to start shivering. The problem is that shivering counts as exertion, and exerting yourself is one sure way to get altitude sickness. There's a limited supply of oxygen, and shivering uses up more of that oxygen while your body is still trying to adjust to the altitude. So, the dilemma is: do you take a shower and feel dizzy and keel over and die, or stink a little longer and cause others around you to keel over and die?
There's the seemingly pointless question of whether to take a shower as part of personal hygiene. However, my experience with visiting at high altitudes has me wondering whether it should be more in the "life or death" category.
At high altitudes, the ambient temperature is usually a lot lower. None of the places I've stayed have had central heating, and most of them had nothing at all. This means that a room at a typical hostal is not likely to be very warm. Most places have hot water for at least part of the day though.
After you take a hot shower in an otherwise cold room, and the moment you get out of the shower, you're likely to start shivering. The problem is that shivering counts as exertion, and exerting yourself is one sure way to get altitude sickness. There's a limited supply of oxygen, and shivering uses up more of that oxygen while your body is still trying to adjust to the altitude. So, the dilemma is: do you take a shower and feel dizzy and keel over and die, or stink a little longer and cause others around you to keel over and die?
1 Comments:
I wonder if the solution is as simple as: don't take a hot shower. Taking a hot shower increases the blood flow to your skin. You may gain heat while in the shower but once you step out your body will start radiating heat and will notice how suddenly cold the surroundings are. If you can take a shower that doesn't cause your body to enlarge those arteries you'll keep a lot more heat in your core. In cold climate winters, I'd often finish a hot shower by turning down the heat at the end so my body reduced the flow of blood to my extremeties before stepping out of the shower.
This might also help keep more of your blood's volume near your brain and vital organs where the oxygen is really needed.
On the other hand, the simple fact that you've gotten yourself wet may be enough to get you shivering. So you might conserve heat in your body's core and still end up using the real resource you need to conserve.
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