Can cold weather actually make you sick? Health and safety dangers to know about this winter
As millions of Americans cope with severe winter weather spread across the country, experts say to watch out for health and safety dangers that go along with frigid temperatures and snow.
"One of the things we've been seeing in the last couple days is just a lot of falls," Dr. Steve Dorsey, assistant medical director at the Cleveland Clinic emergency department, told CBS News, saying to watch out for icy sidewalks and be careful shoveling snow. "There's clearly an association between the exertion of clearing snow and provoking chest pain or angina."
The cold can also weaken our immune system, increasing the risk of contracting colds, COVID, flu and other illnesses around this time of year.
Even people with normal, healthy lungs can experience cold-like symptoms like coughing or shortness of breath in cold weather, Dr. Chidinma Nwakanma of Penn Medicine recently told CBS News Philadelphia.
"The cold air, particularly cold, dry air, can cause your airways to constrict and can be irritable to your airways," she said. "Which is why we recommend that if you are outside for these prolonged periods of time, you're covering your nose, you're covering your mouth, you're warming up the air that your lungs are taking in."
Who is at risk for winter health issues?
"There's a risk for anybody at these extreme temperatures because your body is doing everything it can to maintain its core temperature," Nwakanma said.
The young and elderly, however, are even more vulnerable. Children lose heat more quickly than adults due to their size and weight while the elderly have a harder time regulating their body temperature, Dorsey said. This can be due to thinner skin, loss of muscle mass and even medications for blood pressure, which can affect blood flow and temperature.
Frostbite and hypothermia prevention
Hypothermia is when your body's temperature goes below 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
"At those temperatures, it makes it very hard for the body to do its normal functioning, such as brain function, heart function, lung function," Nwakanma said.
Frostbite, when skin or tissue freezes, is another cold weather danger — and in freezing temperatures, it can happen in minutes, Dorsey said.
Symptoms appear in three stages, according to the Cleveland Clinic:
1. Frostnip: cold, sore and painful feeling
2. Surface frostbite: pins and needles feeling
3. Deep frostbite: numbness
If you experience any of these, Dorsey said to get out of the cold and warm up.
"The best way to do that, particularly for the fingers or toes would be to run them under warm, not hot, but warm water," he said. "Then it's a matter of taking a look at the skin and seeing is there are their coloration changes? Is there's dustiness at the tips or are there blisters, those are signs of deeper skin injury that need to be seen by a physician promptly."
The best way to reduce risk of these issues? Dress appropriately.
"Make sure to cover your ears and hands and keep your feet warm," Nwakanma said.
