Stanford Device Cools Body Inside Out

polished look 2 writes "This is a way cool invention: Those bright, eager scientists at Stanford invented a device that cools the body by drawing the blood to an extremity (such as the hand) and pulling the heat away it - thus the blood becomes cooler which is then re-circulated through the body. The net effect is that the entire body is cooled via this relativly small device."

Comments

Technically, from the outside - in

[binaryspiral]

The device is external and cools the blood externally. This simply gets more blood to the surface by lowering the air pressure around your hand, then cooling the blood.

Neat, but not revolutionary.

Is this really new?

[JavaRob]

I ran competitively all through school, and all the smart runners knew the quickest way to cool down on a hot day is to put something cold on the inside of your wrists, and your neck... because there's a lot of blood flowing through there near the surface, and it "carries the cold" through the rest of your body and your muscles.

If you spend any amount of time in an ice bath, you can feel this effect, as well. Actually, it's rather unpleasant to feel the cold blood travelling back up your legs (but that's an extreme case).

I'll go RTFA now to check, but are they really talking about anything different?

As a side note -- for runners, it would seem to make sense to try cooling down the major arteries leading into the legs, but somehow I don't remember anyone pouring the ice or cold water into their groin.