Home remedies · Everyday life & travel
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Take off wet clothes, put on dry ones, a blanket over, a hat on — most warmth is lost through the head. Warm sweetened drinks, no alcohol. Warm the whole body, not just hands and feet: a warm room, a bath at about thirty-seven degrees, a hot water bottle at the trunk, armpits and groin. Cold fingers and toes into lukewarm water, not hot.
Someone who chills pulls the blood supply out of arms and legs to keep the trunk warm. Cold, acid blood then stands in the chilled limbs. Warming the hands first opens the vessels there and that blood flows back to the heart — the core temperature falls further instead of rising. That is why the trunk is warmed first. Alcohol does the same from inside: it widens the skin vessels, you feel warm, and that is exactly how the warmth is lost. Rubbing does harm, because cold tissue is fragile and the friction damages it further.
No alcohol, no rubbing, no strong direct heat — not by the stove, not under hot water, not on the radiator. Chilblains are not frostbite but an inflammatory reaction of small vessels after cold; they need time and dryness, not heat. Anyone with numb, white or hard fingers does not rewarm them themselves if further chilling threatens — thawing and refreezing does more harm than staying frozen.
At once with confusion, drowsiness, slurred speech, if the shivering stops without it having got warmer, with very slow breathing or pulse — these are signs of serious hypothermia, and the person is then moved as little as possible. Also with white, hard, numb skin on fingers, toes, nose or ears, with blisters after rewarming, and with chilblains that open or will not heal.
Have it assessed: heat with confusion, dry hot skin or clouded consciousness — that is more than exhaustion. A one-sided swollen leg after a long journey. And anything new that does not go away within a few days.