What causes death from freezing? Is it because it throws off our homeostasis?
In: Biology
Our body is a big pile of chemical reactions. Every cell, every organ, is hosting innumerable reactions dedicated to keeping us alive.
Nearly all of those reactions are temperature dependent, or contain enzymes or other molecular machines whose functions are temperature dependent. What this means is that if the body temperature falls out of a certain range, those reactions start to shut down.
Hypothermia by definition is our core body temperature falling outside the lower end of our normal body temperature range. As this occurs, our body diverts blood from our extremities to our core organs in order to keep them warm and those critical life-sustaining reactions running.
However, as we continue to lose body heat to the environment, our temperature continues to fall and those reactions spool down, gradually causing multiple organ dysfunction and eventually death.
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