Greenseniors

Hypothermia: A Cold Weather Risk for Older People Including Green Seniors

As Green Seniors strive to lower their heat to save energy and reduce heating bills, they need to be aware of a cold weather risk: hypothermia.  The information below is quoted from the National Institute of Aging (USA).  

Almost everyone knows about winter dangers such as broken bones from falls on icy steps, sidewalks or streets. But cold weather also can cause an important, less obvious danger that can affect older people. Older adults are especially vulnerable to hypothermia, which can be deadly if not treated quickly. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has some advice to help older people avoid hypothermia.

Hypothermia occurs when a person's body temperature drops below normal and stays low for a prolonged period of time. With advancing age, the body's ability to endure long periods of exposure to cold is lowered.

Older people also are at risk for hypothermia because their body's response to cold can be diminished by certain illnesses such as diabetes and some medicines, including over-the-counter cold remedies. In addition, older adults may be less active and generate less body heat. As a result, they can develop hypothermia even after exposure to relatively mild cold weather or a small drop in temperature.

The best way to identify someone with hypothermia is to look for confusion or sleepiness, slowed or slurred speech, shivering or stiffness in the arms and legs, weak pulse, poor control over body movements or slow reactions. If you suspect that someone is suffering from the cold and you have a thermometer available, take his or her temperature. If it’s 96 degrees or lower, call 911 for emergency help.

The NIA has information to help you prevent hypothermia. Here are a few tips:

• Wear several layers of loose clothing when it is cold. The layers will trap warm air between them. Tight clothing can keep blood from flowing freely and lead to loss of body heat.
• Wear a hat, scarf, gloves or mittens, and warm clothes when you go outside in cold weather. A significant amount of your body heat can be lost through your head, and hands and feet are the first body parts to get cold.
• To keep warm at home, wear long underwear under your clothes, along with socks and slippers. Use a blanket or afghan to keep legs and shoulders warm and wear a hat or cap indoors.
• Make sure your home is warm enough. Set your thermostat to at least 68 to 70 degrees. Even mildly cool homes with temperatures from 60 to 65 degrees can trigger hypothermia in older people.
• Check with your doctor to see if any medications (prescription or over the counter) you are taking may increase your risk for hypothermia.

Because heating costs are high, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has funds to help low-income families pay their heating bills. For more information, contact the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (1-866-674-6327) or the Eldercare Locator (1-800-677-1116).

The NIA has free information about hypothermia. To order the fact sheet, Hypothermia: A Cold Weather Hazard, or the brochure, Stay Safe in Cold Weather, call toll free 1-800-222-2225. Hipotermia: El Peligro de las Bajas Temperaturasis also available. These and other free publications on healthy aging can be downloaded from the NIA Web site at www.nia.nih.gov.

GREEN SENIORS are keeping warm during cold weather in various ways.  Some are able to close off the room they are in from the rest of their house and heat that room to a safe and comfortable level.  Some stay warm at night with electric blankets or electric mattress pads.  They find that they can turn down the heat, reduce total energy used for heating, and yet remain comfortable.  

If you are experimenting with your household heat source and trying to find more energy efficient means to stay warm, do it with great care.  People have burned their homes down when an animal knocked over a portable electric heater.  If you have any medical conditions such as diabetes, be sure to consult your doctor about safe ways for you to keep warm. 

Green Seniors co-founder Joyce has a common condition, Raynauds, in which blood vessels in her hands and feet sometimes react to cold by constricting, making them feel very cold or even turn white.  This is not hypothermia because the core body temperature is maintained, but it is still a reaction that she must avoid if possible.  If this occurs outdoors, it could easily lead to frostbite.  The more a Raynauds person experiences the constriction response, the more likely it will become frequent and severe.

The same tips given by the NIA to prevent hypothermia help Joyce prevent her fingers and toes from turning white and feeling icy.  During cold months she needs to move about at frequent intervals, since exercise is the best antidote for her.  If she wishes to sit and read, it's usually on the bed, wrapped in an afghan, with a microwave heat pack near her feet.  Needless to say, she dresses in layered clothing and wool socks even in the house.  Though she's had the condition most of her life, she is glad that there are ways to stay warm without using huge amounts of energy.         

 

 

 

Green Community Exhibit at the National Building Museum, USA

A Museum Takes on a Green Mission

Museums are about the past rather than the future, aren't they?  Not always, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC shows www.nbm.org.  The Museum is an advocate of sustainable design and has created exhibits to educate and inspire people to consider their impact upon the planet and how to lessen the harm we cause through building. 

The Green House Exhibit was an actual structure people could walk through and was used to teach sustainable building techniques.  The current exhibit Green Community shows how various communities throughout the world (although primarily in the USA) are addressing the challenges of brownfields, transit, land and water conservation, and waste.  While few of the featured communities were addressing all these issues, each was achieving success in at least one aspect.

The displays for each featured community include large photographs of  before and after the "green" intervention.  Each display also used floor-to-ceiling clear cylinders of perhaps a foot in diameter, filled to a level showing the magnitude of the challenge nationwide and comparing that to the progress made by the community.   

After looking through the exhibit, Green Senior Joyce Emery said,

I laud the National Building Museum's proactive stance on the environment and its leadership in educating the public.  The Museum could have said its mission was not to foster any particular type of future building but only to document what has been built. Instead, it treated the prevention of environmental degradation from building as a vitally important part of the institutional mission, shaping public concepts towards that goal. 

Video on Community Activism

The exhibit included a video of ways that people strive to make their communities better.  Three global environmental movements were featured:  Guerrilla Gardening featuring UK's Richard Reynolds, Freegans, and Critical Mass.  Green Seniors has already posted on Guerrilla Gardening, but what are Freegans and Critical Mass?  And what are they doing in a Building Museum display?

Freegans are a form of "dumpster divers:" people scavenging the garbage of groceries, restaurants, and other places for free food.  They find a great deal of food that is healthful and enjoyable, though likely past its sale date, and they pool their findings and cook group meals.  They also help feed the hungry while highlighting the waste that takes place in society.

Critical Mass are bicyclists who wish to make a statement on behalf of their legitimate rights as roadway users by organizing (hastily and unofficially) a mass grouping for a particular day.  By achieving a "critical mass" that authorities are not expecting, they can cause other traffic to yield to them--for a change.   

Freegans and Critical Mass are both found in Wikipedia, which paints a more complete picture of them than does the Green Community Exhibit.  Since these groups form spontaneously and have no organization beyond the local group, their actions can vary with the locale and range from the heroic to the annoying, depending on your point of view.  

The appearance of this video presentation in the Museum Exhibit is remarkable.  For one thing, it involves forms of human behavior other than how people build structures, demonstrating the broad embrace of "greening" by this institution.  For another, it casts yesterday's radical behavior as today's valued community spirit that will improve the quality of life in communities.  (Taking the naughtiness out of it may disappoint some of the guerrilla gardeners, freegans, and cyclists, but they will surely find new challenges to address in unconventional ways.)   

The National Building Museum is an example that we can expand the mission of our place of work, or any institution or organization where we have influence, to include consideration for the environment.  The planet needs no less.