Are City Dwellers scared of the forest?

[jakunen]

Hoodoo, why do I feel like I'm back in college doing human biology???):

Bearing in mind I do unfortunatley suffer a bit in the cold, do you know of any way to increase brown fat?

 

[george]

Some interesting ideas. If you read Cody Lundin's book, he spends a lot of time running around half naked in an attempt to acclimate his body to the cold. The problem with this that there's not a whole lot of plasticity in the physiology for this. However it has been reported by some and repeated by many that consuming lots of meat, especially raw meat, will prepare you well for the cold. This was talked about in a wonderful book on the Inuit, "Kabloona!" by Gontran De Poncins. Granted, the information is almost entirely anecdotal.

We also know that there is some genetic differences among mammals that use physiology to warm their bodies. This process is called Nonshivering Thermogenesis. Cody Lundin actually mentions this in his book but unfortunately he got the mechanism for this all boogered up. I asked him about this and he said he got it out of some book on outdoors medicine. I never did get around to checking that out. Anywho, mammals that are born and live in the cold tend to have a much greater ability for nonshivering thermogenesis than those from warmer climates. And these are genetic differences although NST can also be enhanced by acclimation (well documented in rodents). Very little though is known about this in humans. Brown fat is used as the main effector organ for this process and not much is known about the distribution of brown fat in adult humans (btw, this is a controversial issue), but large depots of it can be found in neonates around the neck, in the interscapular area, and a few other places. Finds of brown fat in adults have not been well documented.

As I understood it Hoodoo it's not actually people who are from cold climates who most effectively use NST (though that may be true of other mammals). The San bushmen, Australian Aborigines and the Chonos Indians all come from places where daytime temperatures are hot but night temps fall very low. They use little clothing (unlike Inuit) and they regularly sleep out nearly naked at temperatures approaching freezing. Without a degree of physiological adaptation they would be unable to live in the places they do. The Inuit and others who come from a cold climate would be unable to do the same without the clothing that they use. BAT deposits are well documented in neonates but as you say not so much know about adults.

See: Hammel, HT, Elsner RW, LeMessurier DH, Andersen HT, and Milan FA. Thermal and metabolic responses of the Australian Aborigine exposed to moderate cold in summer. J Appl Physiol 14: 605-615, 1959

George

 

[Hoodoo]

No offense George but 1959 is ancient history in this field.

 

[Kim]

I would have thought that someone's ability to deal with temperature would be a physiologically inherited trait, but as my father lies outside on his lounger at the first sight of sunshine, usually March...and I'm always multi-layered because I get cold if it's below 60...it doesn't exactly follow that theory very well...

It would be interesting to know how much of our ability to deal with temperture changes are psychological and how much physical. Some Budhist monks have the ability to alter their body temperature to such a degree simply by meditating on that change, that they can sweat profusely on a freezing day and vice versa...

and slightly back on track we are taught to fear the dark, fear places that are classed as 'desolate' i.e not many people around just as we are taught to fear germs and strangers...the fear is often greater than the reality of any threat. Even cycling along the canal path home some friends say to me...really...it's not very safe is it...and when you ask them why not it's always the same old...well, don't you get weirdos there...

NO...mad joggers, yes, cyclists trying to break the speed barrier, yes but no crazy people...plus I don't get crazy drivers trying to run me over, and I'm not breathing in loads of fumes[...but I digress...I don't think people necessarily fear the woods, I think they fear who they may meet...It's always wise to be aware of who's around, but to fear a possibility and let it stop you doing something is to give in to a mirage, and lose out because of it. :shock:

 

[arctic hobo]

Yes, I have a friend who can do things like that (not that good though!). He spent four years training in a temple in Tibet. Amazing stuff, I didn't know him until he came back, but people say he's totally different. He's big on bodybuilding, but he never goes to the gym: apparently he can concentrate on muscles to make them grow :yikes: I know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is supposed to have done the same thing. :roll:

 

[george]

No offense George but 1959 is ancient history in this field.

Dead true hoodoo (and no offence taken) but there's not that much been done since then that disproves what they were saying.

If you know better then I accept it, but it would still appear that the greatest physiological changes are in peoples who are not from arctic climates but from those who experience the greatest day/night temperature differences.

George

 

[Hoodoo]

George, that study came out looooonnng before we knew much about brown fat metabolism. As far as anyone knows, brown fat is far and away the most important effector organ of NST in mammals. The largest depots of brown fat are found in 1) cold acclimated or winter acclimatized adults, 2) hibernators, and 3) newborns. Not tropical species. There was an AWFUL lot of guesswork going on about NST prior to the mid to late 70s. Measurements of true NST were pretty poor as well.

Hypertrophy of brown fat in mammals is easily induced in the lab by cold acclimation and reversed by warm acclimation. The lower the temperature, the greater the hypertrophy, not to mention the increase in the uncoupling protein that makes it work. Production of uncoupling protein depends on the temperature, not the temperature range. Arctic mammals that are active year round are critically dependent on NST even though they molt to longer coats. Yes, they depend on insulatory changes (and eskimios depend on their clothes--I never said they ran around naked ) but their capacity for thermogenesis increases tremendously during the winter. And on it goes.

 

[leon-1]

I have only just come across this thread so you must excuse me if I echo opinions.

I grew up in a built up area, but around it was a big area of green, when I initailly started out everything got to me, the dark, the sounds, you name it and it was something to keep me awake at night.

Gary on the first page said that which we don't understand we fear and to a degree that is true, but it is also that which is passed onto us by our parents, if they have an uncertainty then we may have a fear if they have a fear then we may also have a fear. In some cases this is not true, my initial fears and uncertainties were banished quite early on.

Other people I know from that area still don't sleep as soundly as I do when in the wilds because they have had neither the experience nor the training that I have had. This is more based in the way that society thinks in built up areas rather than a normal fear of something that does not appear or move the way that we would like it to

 

[Great Pebble]

My parents used to have to organise search parties of neighbours to find me at night when I took to the local hills.... Dunno why, I always camped in the same place

 

[leon-1]

Nick, you'll probably find that in the end you wanted to be found, but that is normal (sorry to say it, but it is true), at the time you probably felt somewhat different ( I hate them and never want to see them again), but this is normally the case, the subconscious takes over and home is home and comforting .

 

[Great Pebble]

Oh I never actually ran away...

Just went up there and forgot to come back

I remember me and another guy being trailed home by respective parents.... On more than one occasion.

 

[jakunen]

Didn't we all do that?

You run off coz dad had a go or gave you a hiding, you get to the woods - a magical place full of clay, lianas, swords and tommy-guns, AND NO PARENTS and either decide to stay there until they're sorry or just find a colony or wood ants and before you know it, its half past nine, the police have organised a full search, the TA have been drafted in, your mum's in the psyche ward with a nervous breakdown and they've just called in the helicopters from the local RAF base...

 

[BIG-TARGET]

Didn't we all do that?

You run off coz dad had a go or gave you a hiding, you get to the woods - a magical place full of clay, lianas, swords and tommy-guns, AND NO PARENTS and either decide to stay there until they're sorry or just find a colony or wood ants and before you know it, its half past nine, the police have organised a full search, the TA have been drafted in, your mum's in the psyche ward with a nervous breakdown and they've just called in the helicopters from the local RAF base...

AMEN!!!!! :You_Rock_

 

[bambodoggy]

I used to "run away" with monotonous regularity.....always made a big thing of collecting my little knap-sack and filling it with tins from the kitchen cupboards and packing my favorite teddybear (never remembered a tin opener though) and went to live in my special tree in the small woods at the end of our garden......sometimes I managed a good 2....3.....4 hours before I felt bad and came home.....or more often than not I forgot what I was mad about due to being in grossed in what I could see and do in the tree.
I actually once caught my mum and older sister giggling and almost taking bets on how long I'd be gone for.....I thought I was so grown up running away and didn't realise for years that they could see me in the tree from the back window and mum was always keeping an eye on me!!!! ):

 

[Rod]

Sorry, I've just found this. I would also echo the sentiments from the early entries. And, as with some of the later; would spend hours in the woods as a kid to get out of being at home. Regularly got in trouble for climbing trees, shooting catapults, whittling sticks, making shelters, collecting conkers etc etc

Give me the woods any day over a town. Far far safer

 

[Skippy]

I remember when I was 11 yrs, at christmas, everyone was so sick of turkeys and pickled onions, the usual family conversations started.....and ended in an arguement.
I went into the garden to escape, and make snowmen (yes we had real snow back then), well... i soon found out that i was no good at making snowmen, and the poor attempts at the middle section soon became a big pile of very misshapen, very large snowballs, these in turn where piled together in a small circle, and it was not long before my new igloo started to form, to cut a very long story short...my mum found me asleep 3 hours later, curled up inside my new home with a copy of 'Survival for Young People' by Anthony Greenbank.

i have spent most of my spare time in the woods building shelters etc... ever since.

'scared of the woods' ...NEVER

 

[jakunen]

Skippy,

Think we had an edge, having grown up in Kent myself, in that a lot of us could do stuff like that.

Only the big towns like Maidstone, Canterbury, Ashford, Dover, etc ruined the sky with light pollution, DEEP snowdrifts on the hills (12 foot was the most we had) made winter a real season, and a lot of Kent is still wide open spaces - fields, woods, the Downs (if you have to go up it, why is it called a 'down'?), so I've never been afraid of the country, but I used to get scared of cities - all the noise and lights and people and only one smell and speed, and even now HATE cities. Give me a dark country wood with eerie sounds and shadows and bats and foxes and stars throught the canopy any day!

 

[Kim]

In connection with 'the local woods beckon' thread, where it talks of when you go out camping to spend a night in the woods...I hate to say this, because I don't like to be afraid of things and when I am I usually push my way straight through because I'm pig headed...but I don't know if I would take my bivi up to the local woods and camp there for the night...

I think I would if I was in the middle of absolutely nowhere...for example, nowhere near a housing estate...

To be honest I don't want to take the chance of being found in the dark, by some bloke wandering around...in the dark...who knows where that fear comes from but it's there.

But if I were in the middle of a forest in the wilds...I think that appeals to me more, although I'd still be nervous...but for some reason that's a chance I'd rather take than the local woods. Boils down to my fear of strange blokes I suppose rather than the woods themselves. In either case my preference is up a tree...I'd sleep up a tree...probably not that comfortable but it sounds just safe enough for me...

And another question that's just hit me, just out of interest...how many of you would react differently to a male friend saying, yeah, going to spend a night in a wood, versus a female friend...???

 

[Skippy]

your not kidding, i live in a town right on the edge of the sticks, yet you fear getting run down by joy riders, mugged for your mobile phone, why hell...i even had to buy 2 german shepherds just so i could take the dogz for a walk at night.

but in the woods those sometimes menacing shadows that point their eery fingers into the darkness, are a real comfort.

 

[Skippy]

kim

up a tree is good, and can be safe if you pick your tree carefully.

1. make sure it is not the tallest tree around (lightning hurts, i know :yikes: ).
2. find two branches that are parallel and & horizontally level.
3. take some hairy string or very long length of paracord and wrap it slightly loosely around both branches, like a stretcher (loosely makes a dip so you don't fall out of the tree).
4. put your kip mat in the middle (this not only makes it more comfortable than laying on string, it also stops some of the draught that would come up underneath you).
5. if you are lucky enuf to find a tree that also has a branch just above you, then you can also put your tarp over the top for a roof (best in case it rains, trees drip forever after rain stops).

But you probably already knew that didn't you....