Can cold air really choke someone to death?

GaiaGirl95 said:
I speak from experience. When the weather is extremely cold, around 0 F or so, I cannot breathe in it for more than a couple of minutes, or I feel a pressure sensation at the end of my trachea. It is different to when I am suffering an asthma attack in that the sensation of pressure lies around the bronchial tubes, and not a point in the middle of the chest. The area where I feel pressure from breathing cold air pertains to the area in which the thymus gland lies. It causes me difficulty breathing, and pain.
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It sounds like a variation of the placebo effect. Your beliefs can greatly affect your perceptions.
 
joepistole said:
It sounds like a variation of the placebo effect. Your beliefs can greatly affect your perceptions.
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Well, my doctor told me cold causes things to expand. So it is causing the organs around my windpipe (cooled) to expand as well, because breathing the cold air cools your airways, which also cools down organs around the airway as well.

The area where I feel the pressure is where my thymus gland would be.
I didn't know that cold weather could cause acute fatal swelling of the thymus gland, which is why I went to a doctor and I looked it up further when I came home, and that is when I found that news article.
 
Also, you're Wrong about the autopsy finding no cause of death.

'' Miss Leblanc was killed because the gland In the lower throat suddenly "ballooned," as one medical authority puts it, and closed the windpipe, strangling the girl as surely ass a rope could have done. The only cause of such a swelling is a sudden, shocking fright. ' The physician who performed the autopsy on Miss Leblanc's body is reported to have found evidence of a "ballooning" glitnd in her neck.
 
That's what some doctors believed was true about the thymus in 1926, when medicine was not a strongly scientific field, and doctors prescribed radiation therapy to ruin the immune systems and thus shrink normal-sized thymuses that they were too ignorant to know were even normal-sized. Neither you nor the reporter you quote (from the article I found), did any work to research what the size of the thymus was in question, so we have no evidence it was larger than normal at any time. We have instead an unattributed opinion based at least partially on information we know to be faulty. Because you did no research, we have no data on all other possible causes of stridor or respiratory obstruction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridor

Notably, swelling of the thymus due to a "sudden, shocking fright" is mentioned nowhere, you fear-monger. But if you trust that, then there is no reason to fear the cold as your (ridiculous) trust is placed in the 87-year-old claim that "The only cause of such a swelling is a sudden, shocking fright" so calm the **** down.


rpenner said:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...iAvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Dd0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=2554,2319858

The Norwalk Hour - Mar 15, 1926

Basically, it's a gross mistake to rely on antique anecdotes for reliable medical and scientific information. Neither of these reports are credible when attributing death to the size of the thymus or the size of the thymus to sudden shock or fright. In the 1950's it was discovered everything that was believed true about the normal size of the thymus was based on the cadavers of people who died after long stressful declines which reduces the size of the thymus and so healthy people were frequently misdiagnosed with enlarged thymuses and even subjected to unnecessary radiation therapy on that mistaken basis. In the early 1960's the actual function of the thymus was first discovered.
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GaiaGirl95 said:
Also, you're Wrong about the autopsy finding no cause of death.

'' Miss Leblanc was killed because the gland In the lower throat suddenly "ballooned," as one medical authority puts it, and closed the windpipe, strangling the girl as surely ass a rope could have done. The only cause of such a swelling is a sudden, shocking fright. ' The physician who performed the autopsy on Miss Leblanc's body is reported to have found evidence of a "ballooning" glitnd in her neck.
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Oh, please!! You are RELYING on reports that are nearly 100 YEARS OLD! For Pete's sake - we've learned a TREMENDOUS amount since then (but evidently YOU have NOT!).
 
Read-Only said:
Oh, please!! You are RELYING on reports that are nearly 100 YEARS OLD! For Pete's sake - we've learned a TREMENDOUS amount since then (but evidently YOU have NOT!).
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Well why don't you step out in weather below -2 F for an hour or so without protecting your airways from the cold, and report back.
 
GaiaGirl95 said:
Well why don't you step out in weather below -2 F for an hour or so without protecting your airways from the cold, and report back.
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You really need to stop posting in the science section this is getting silly. The other morning I was feeding my horses and it was -9 F and nothing in my chest exploded (that I noticed). Course I was only out about 1/2 hour. Guess I was just lucky...:eek:
 
origin said:
You really need to stop posting in the science section this is getting silly. The other morning I was feeding my horses and it was -9 F and nothing in my chest exploded (that I noticed). Course I was only out about 1/2 hour. Guess I was just lucky...:eek:
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Ask any Russian. We don't seem to have reports from their medical profession of this "problem", do we? -10F is not exactly cold for Siberian winters.
 
GaiaGirl95 said:
Nope. American Football game is split into four quarters with each lasting 15 minutes of play. They warm up every 15 minutes. That isn't long.
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A specious argument from a soi disant expert; a classic example of denialism. Anyone who actually watches American football understands it is not a one hour game. And the players are an insignificant sample compared to the fans, tens of thousands of them in the stands for 3 hours. (50,861 according to Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_NFL_Championship_Game

And while I have less documentary evidence of this happening (certainly less photographs), the 300 Club is additional evidence that thymuses don't suddenly swell in the cold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_Club
 
GaiaGirl95 said:
Nope. American Football game is split into four quarters with each lasting 15 minutes of play. They warm up every 15 minutes. That isn't long.
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Actually with american football they only go inside after 2 quarters (halftime). A full game lasts about 3 hours and the players are on the field for about 3 1/2 hours, with halftime being 15 minutes. That means they are out in the cold for about 1.5 hours and surprise, surprise, they do not suffocate!!! I can't believe we are actually having this goofy discussion.
 
gaia said:
Well why don't you step out in weather below -2 F for an hour or so without protecting your airways from the cold, and report back.
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Do you realize how many millions of people living in the northern US have done exactly that several times over the past couple of weeks, couple years, couple centuries? You are talking about routine winter activities - ice skating, sledding, doing chores, picking up garbage and delivering stuff, walking to work or school or store, shoveling snow - that ordinary people do in that kind of ordinary weather without a second thought outside of "prob'ly should get the longjohns in the wash one of these weeks".

No deaths from thymus swelling reported. None.

gaia said:
Well, my doctor told me cold causes things to expand
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My experience with stuff connected to me tells me things tend to contract in the cold - blood vessels, hair follicles, skin, kidneys and bladder, ambition, horizon of interest, plans for the day, maybe even a windpipe especially sensitive for some reason - anything with a muscle around it, except maybe appetite. But the thymus has no muscle afaik, it's well insulated, and -2F is not that cold - if you are having problems at that temperature, you might have an actual disorder like chilblains or Reynaud's Disease. That last sometimes can be alleviated temporarily (sit outside in the cold with an ice pack on the back of your neck and each hand in a bucket of warm water for a few minutes - resets your thermostat, the reset lasts for one winter and then next winter you have to do it again).
 
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