Here’s a timely test for all  Minnesotans: What are the signs of frostbite? What do you do to treat it?  How cold does your body have to get before hypothermia sets in and you literally start freezing to death?

 Here are the answers to today’s pop quiz, courtesy of Dr. Doug Brunette an emergency room physician at Hennepin County Medical Center.

Frostbite: Your skin literally freezes.

 What it looks like: Frozen skin. It becomes hard and pale, and red and painful as it thaws.  When you get cold, your body responds by not sending blood to the extremities in order to preserve your core temperature.   In a -30 degree wind chill skin freezes after only a few minutes. Skin dies in two ways: At the time of the exposure and because of the lack of oxygen. 

What to do:  Immerse affected areas in warm water, about 102 degrees.   Get medical help if sores and blisters develop.   Â
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Hypothermia: You are literally freezing.

What it looks like:  Shivering, slurred speech, very slow breathing, pale cold skin, and fatigue.  Hypothermia becomes fatal when core temperatures get too low causing cardiac and respiratory failure.
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What to do: Medical help should be called immediately.  Remove the person from the cold, remove wet clothing, insulate the person’s body from the cold ground, monitor breathing, share body heat, and provide a warm, nonalcoholic beverage if a person is able to swallow.

What not to do:  Do not apply direct heat, massage the person, or provide alcoholic beverages. That could cause cardiac arrest.

 For those who haven’t lived here long enough to know, here are the ever sensible cold weather tips:

1. Always dress for the weather, being sure to cover ears, nose, face, and head at all times.Â
2. Wear mittens instead of gloves
3. Wear two pairs of socks and waterproof shoes to keep feet warm.Â
4. Clothes should fit loosely to avoid a decrease in the amount of blood supplied to legs and arms.Â
5. Do not smoke or drink because it can affect your body’s blood circulation.Â
6. Always travel with a friend incase help would be needed or something would happen.
7. Pay attention to the “real feel” temperature.  This temperature factors in the wind chill, which may be much lower than the reported air temperature.
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A few months ago I wrote about Batman, the dog who became the first subject in brain cancer research trial at the University of Minnesota. 

Batman has a tumor called a glioma, the same kind that Sen. Edward Kennedy has. Both dogs and people are susceptible to it, and there is no cure. Researchers at the university are studying a cancer vaccine treatment in dogs in the hope it can also be used in humans. Batman had brain surgery in early August, and a series of vaccine injections since. But it will be some months before his doctors know if it worked. Last week Batman’s owner, Anna Brailovsky,  sent me an update on how he’s doing. It’s been quite the ride she said. Her  fear that the treatment is just prolonging Batman’s disease is regularly punctured by hope that it will work. Here’s what she had to say: 

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 Here’s  gut check nutritional fact: There is as much sugar in a serving of Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal as there is in glazed donut from Dunkin’ Donuts.

Ugh. The sad part, of course, is that Honey Smacks is heavily marketed to kids. And it’s not alone in that sugar content. According to a new analysis by Consumer Reports Health, there are at least 10 cereals that have that much sugar. Honey Smacks and Post Golden Crisp are more than 50 percent sugar by weight.

Based on sugar content, calories, fiber, sodium, iron and calcium, here are CRs best pics for kids cereal. For the complete listing, go to www.consumerreports.org/health. But  you have to be a subscriber to get complete access to the report.

Cheerios, General Mills:  1 cup; 100 calories; 1 gram of sugar.

Kix, General Mills: 1 1/4 cups; 110 calories, 3 grams of sugar.

Life, Quaker Oats: 3/4 cup; 120 calories; 6 grams of sugar.

Honey Nut Cheerios: 3/4 cup;110 calories; 9 grams of sugar.

Check back next week for new posts. BodyTalk is on vacation until then.

In the days when my daughter resisted wearing a bike helmet I tried to argue that if she did fall or get hit by a car that the thing most likely to kill her or cause her long-term harm was a head injury. Broken leg? It would heal. Really bad scrape? it would heal. Broken head? Probable death.

I figured I was entitled to the use of a parental scare tactic, but according to a study published this week in Pediatrics, I was pretty accurate.

In 1993 the government of Ontario, Canada passed a law requiring everyone under the age of 18 to wear a bicycle helmet. Under that law, parents of violators younger than 16 paid a fine. Those older than 16 have to pay their own fines. It became effective in 1995, but does not apply to those older than 18.

Canadian researchers decided to measure whether the law actually reduced the number of deaths among bike riding children.

Between 1991 and 1995, before the law was enacted, there were 13 deaths per year among children aged 1 to 15.  After 1995, the number of deaths among children was cut in half, to an average of 6 per year.

But among those older than 16 the number of deaths annually increased slightly from 21 to 22 per year, the researchers reported.

They concluded that the law should be extended to all adults. Hard to argue with that. But, hey, they’re Canadian.  Reason often prevails.