STRANDED on a freezing mountainside, wouldn’t you welcome a rescuer’s thermal blanket? Perhaps not. Your first instinct might be to throw it aside, and you might even have removed some of your own clothing before the rescue team got to you. Paradoxical undressing certainly lives up to its name.
“Your first instinct might be to throw a rescuer’s thermal blanket aside”
Between 20 and 50 per cent of deaths from hypothermia involve paradoxical undressing of some kind. Mountain rescuers are trained to expect it, and the spell of severe cold weather in North America earlier this year produced a handful…
