Smartphones are part our lifes, for some of us it’s nearly an addiction. As an osteopath and physio in Courchevel, my iPhone is a work tool. I manage my appointments, I do my invoices, i receive payments (by the way payments in bitcoin and ethereum coin are accepted for the season to come), I feed my professional social networks all from my fruity device. I m trying to digital detox as much as I can when I m off, whilst riding the mountains of Courchevel most of the time my device stays in my pocket but I can’t resist of Photo shot or a look at my patients calls. We are doing it all the time, a quick look on our phones on the chair lift waiting to be up there for the next rocket ride.
It can be really cold in courchevel. We all experienced that pain in our hands whilst browsing the web bare hands on our dying device, cold is biting hands and device. Why ?
Hands and fingers are the end of our arms nerves, therefore physiologically there’s a profusion of neurological sensors.
We can say that there are 3 types of sensors roughly linked to temperature detection in that area :
Warm
Cold
Pain
When our fingers are experiencing a severe cold situation, the cold receptors and the pain receptors are activated. It sends a signal to our brain, first vasoconstriction (read my post on that subject here ), the blood supplies is dramatically decreasing to keep our vital organs safe and alive. This lack of blood enhances the sensitivity of both receptors, you may feel your hands in pain and cold. If no action is take frost bites can happen quite quickly and it’s a medical emergency situation as necrosis, thermal burns can accur. The solution is simple, put this phone of yours in your pocket, gloves on and start to shake your hands to make the blood flow back again. The pain you feel in extreme cold is the last signal before your body cuts off completely the blood flow. So it might be better on a cold day to just have a chat on the chairlift or admire the beautiful landscape of Courchevel.
Now phone medecine !! All our devices are powered by lithium ion battery or LIB. Electron are moving to electrodes on both way to charge and discharge to give power to our addictive tool. Temperature is affecting our phones. You’ve noticed that during this cold weeks of December and January, smartphone discharge so quickly. Roughly they are designed to hold between 500 to a 1000 charge/discharge cycles, and they run like Ferraris between 10 degrees to 30.
In extreme cold ions whintin the battery are not moving at all, boom !! I missed that call for physiotherapy osteopathy in Courchevel !
Keep in mind :
-40 The battery stops totally to function
-20 The battery starts to discharge itself even if unused.
-0 the battery can just give power but no charge is possible
Conclusion : keep your hands warm on that chairlift, if you have to use your phone in extreme cold just use edevice friendly gloves like I do to receive and answer calls for my physio osteo work. It’s a good idea as well to nurture your hands with hand cream to protect tissues. And again look in front of you, the landscape of Courchevel is superb, and live the real life !!!