The other night I was talking on the phone with one of my friends who is recovering from a heart attack. She’s younger than I am and probably not a genuine senior citizen. Yet when I asked her how she was doing, she echoed a familiar complaint of many older people – she seemed to be cold more often now.
One of the reasons people feel cold is inactivity, and let’s face it, for some who have arthritis and other health issues, being active can be painful. I asked my friend if she’d been walking but she said that her health provider had told her not to do any walking for a couple of weeks. I remembered that walking was something I had to do routinely after I had open heart surgery, but I did spend at least a week and a half in the hospital, walking every day inside and under supervision, prior to coming home. I’m sure when my friend can resume activity, her feeling of being cold will subside.
Feeling the cold is a real problem for anyone, but especially the elderly. My sister told me that “Even if you’re pre-elderly, like 60, it can be a problem.”
Although these recent days have been sunny and the thermometer says 45 or 50 degrees, be careful. This winter has been a dangerous one for many, even though we didn’t have a lot of snow. Setting the thermostat back to 60 or 65 might sound tempting to save money on fuel, but in some cases it’s not a healthy solution.
Hypothermia is a lowered body temperature brought on by being cold for a long period of time. A recent report published in Southern Maine Agency on Aging’s Senior News also states that certain illness or medications can interfere with the body’s ability to regulate its temperature. Severe hypothermia can cause an irregular heartbeat which could lead to heart failure.
When a person is so cold they shiver, they might not realize that shivering is the body’s way to get warm. Muscles receive “messages” from nerves and shivering increases muscle cell activity which produces heat. If body temperature falls to between 80 and 90 degrees, most people will recover, but some lasting damage is likely. Below 80, most won’t survive.
To learn more about hypothermia, a person should ask their health provider if the medication they are taking affects body heat. There are also illnesses that may blunt the response to cold. Talk with your doctor about how your health condition might affect your reaction to cold.
Some of these illnesses, according to the SMAA article, include: Slow thyroid or other disorders of the body’s hormone system; stroke or other disorders that cause paralysis and reduce awareness; severe arthritis and diseases which limit activity; conditions that curb the normal flow of blood and memory disorders.
Certain medicines increase the risk of accidental hypothermia. They include drugs used to treat depression, anxiety or nausea and some over-the-counter cold remedies. Alcoholic drinks can also lower the body’s ability to retain heat.
Even mildly cool temperatures between 60-65 degrees can trigger hypothermia. Older people in particular should be warm and dry during cool weather. Friends and relatives need to be aware of the environment and health issues which might cause hypothermia. And a walk outdoors to beef up one’s activity, in order to get warm may not be a good idea. Brisk winds cause rapid heat loss. Stay inside, put on a couple of sweaters and some warm footwear and spend your time in the warmest room in your house.
Signs of possible hypothermia include excessive shivering or no shivering; low blood pressure, weak pulse, confusion or sleepiness, slurred speech, poor control over body movements or slow reactions. If you suspect hypothermia, call a health professional right away. Do not rub a person’s limbs, but wrap them in a warm blanket to prevent heat loss. And get help!
Trying to keep heat expenses down, especially at this time of increased fuel costs, may have inadvertently affected many of our older citizens. The process of getting fuel assistance is hampered by the process itself, and lack of timely, meaningful information. While press releases inform the public that a certain amount of funds is being “made available,” a clear message is not being received by many. Most of these articles which tell of the efforts being made, do not carry a phone number or source for folks to find out more – like how it can help them.
With just one agency in the local area (PROP) taking applications for fuel assistance, the hundreds – and probably thousands – of people who need assistance most, were required to wait on the phone to get through, and then wait for appointments. When seniors heard that extra funds had been approved, in reality those extra funds just helped cover the increase in cost from last year. There should be a better way of handling this situation, like a meaningful discount.
The bottom line is that we seniors need to prepare ourselves for a cold emergency. We need to find out what can cause hypothermia and then do what we can, ourselves, to help prevent it, by finding out all we can about medical conditions and medications which may affect our body’s ability to produce heat.
We also can spend some of our warm Maine summers stocking up on quilts, electric blankets and maybe even some of those warm wool mittens! We can’t all move to Florida!
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