The Boot Campers of Cold Water Boot Camp USA dive in and experience the three effects of cold-water immersion – cold shock, cold incapacitation, and even hypothermia. The project provides valuable information of how to survive an accidental fall into cold water. The demonstration forces the Boot Campers to face the indisputable fact – that the difference between becoming a statistic and a survivor – is wearing a life jacket!
From an article in Outside magazine:
Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht, the world’s leading authority on freezing to death, believes the best way to study the effects of cold on the human body is to get intimate with the elements. Along the way to claiming numerous research firsts, the 45-year-old physiologist and director of the University of Manitoba’s Laboratory for Exercise and Environmental Medicine has lowered his body below 95 degrees, the threshold for hypothermia, a mind- and body-numbing 33 times.”I’m the scientist who does things for real,” he says, “to make sure I really know what I’m talking about.”Findings from Giesbrecht’s studies have reached rescuers and trauma doctors and already helped save lives.From an article in Outside magazine