Blood Boiling and Sunbeds:A Question

Pighead

Hello there,
Quick question for all you wannabe doctors out there(Good Morning Dr.Indy).I
I was reading an article last week regarding the dangers of using sunbeds in this country because the industry is not regulated.Anyway there were various horror stories regarding women who couldnt sit down because they were so burnt or how they couldnt put on underwear because it hurt so much etc.Then there was a tale of a woman who claimed that her blood was actually boiling because the sunbed was giving out so much heat.
So basically there I was this morning recounting this blood boiling tale at the breakfast table when all of a sudden my workmates started to ridicule me and said i was speaking crap and taht this blood boiling i spoke of was nonsense and scientifically impossible.
Please clear this up and tell me did i deserve to be so harshly treated.

Rew

Im no Doc but anyone whos's blood boiled would be dead I reckon. The heat required would would kill you pretty quickly.

Kernel

I'm no doctor, but I reckon that if the blood was to boil internally, it would cause massive internal hemorhaging when blood vessels rupture. Also, wouldn't the victim suffer clots from congealed blood, and suffer stroke / heart attack etc? Or organ failure?

DrIndy, Pighead also doesn't believe you are a real doctor, when I told him you were... he's so skeptical! :rolleyes:

RE*AC*TOR

Did she say "my blood is boiling"? its a common expression meaning she is cross.

anyway - its impossible she would be dead (and cooked).

Pighead

Now my blood is boiling. :mad:
Surely somebody somewhere can verify that is is possible for blood to boil(i'm only talking a very slight boiling of blood here).
Come on "Drindy",dig me out of this hole and no more shall i doubt

Draupnir

id imagine blood boils at 100 degrees celsius, or not too far off it anyway.

impossible for blood to boil within the human body and for that body to survive, imagine 100 degree liquid poured onto the outside of your skin and the damage done. now imagine it in your veins/arteries, which are very very delicate in comparison to skin, it would burn holes in your blood vessels i would imagine. so no, it cant happen.

Zulu

If your blood boils you die. Simple.

kasintahan

Draupnir wrote:

id imagine blood boils at 100 degrees celsius, or not too far off it anyway.

It would be higher than that with all the dissolved solutes. That's why people add salt to water, to raise the boiling point.

DrIndy

Unfortunately blood cannot boil without massive tissue damage so the statement by the lady is an exageration. Blood CAN boil technically if you are very seriously burned, but not ever from a sunbed as the radiation produced is at too low a level.

Sorry Pighead........

Sunbeds are bad mmmkay..... Getting the occasional tan is ok, but a permanent one courtesy of a sunbed does considerable tissue damage - it cause premature skin wrinkles and makes you look like a vampire sucked your dry and left a big wrinkly husk face. UVB is also associate with cataracts and skin cancer.

Tan the hide occasionally when on holiday within reason is perfectly ok, but long term continuous exposure with fair skin is not wise. White Europeans are not designed for high levels of sun exposure, if we were, we'd be the same shade as pakistanis/indians!

Getting your arse so burned you cannot sit is plain stupid and if you hear of someone who did that, give them a good smack on the burn from me (doctors orders!) to hit the message home that bit harder. There is nothing more unattractive than a peeling, blistered, bright red arse! You should also not go anywhere near a sun bed if you are very fair and particularily red-haired (which goes with very fair skin). You will not tan and will do real damage.

It is sensible to accredit such sunshops as then there are threats of closing it down if the operators do not give sensible advice to clients rather than letting them burn the arse off themselves willy-nilly.

Pighead - I am indeed a Doctor, when I get back from me holidays I will post up my medical council registration number!

Of note, UV radiation is good because it helps to form Vitamin D.

DrIndy

If you want a tan - go get a spray on or get it in a bottle. Its much, much safer for you and much less effort as well......

Debyaka

I say blood would boil.... if you had a saucepan with some blood in it maybe...
Blood would certainly not boil while its still flowing internally.
It would probably coagulate and never reach the brain or limbs it would be too thick to pass through the capillaries therefore you would probably die a horribly painful death.

Do you doctors out there concur??

Pighead

Debyaka wrote:

I say blood would boil..

Cheers debyaka,at last the voice of reason has spoken!
Drindy i eagerly await your registration number.
Ps Doctors dont take holidays,they work 122 hours a day,7 days a week,hence you my friend are a fraud
QED

Kernel

Pighead wrote:

Cheers debyaka,at last the voice of reason has spoken!
Drindy i eagerly await your registration number.
Ps Doctors dont take holidays,they work 122 hours a day,7 days a week,hence you my friend are a fraud
QED

Quote taken out of context... next time Pigboy, when you hear something, think about it before believing!

Debyaka

OI, dont be taking my post and twisting it around!!
You my friend were wrong, you were ridiculed, admit it..
Oh and dont believe everything you see in the daily sport.

DrIndy

We are occasionally allowed out of cells to squint at the sun and smell the fresh air...

Victor

Meat (i.e. human beings) cooks at about 80+ C degrees, so the blood would never get to the point of boiling, the flesh would cook first, trapping the blood.

The blood probably can't congeal within the blood vessels because the blood isn't being dehydrated (as would a pot of soup).

Also, the circulation system is very good at cooling the skin - this is how people walk (quickly!) across hot coals.

Capt'n Midnight

DrIndy wrote:

We are occasionally allowed out of cells to squint at the sun and smell the fresh air...

Have you stayed in to watch independence day again recently ?

Blood clotting is a complex thing and as we all know can happen on a cold day so you probably don't need to actually hit boiling point. Also when a part of the body is too hot blood vessels expand so more blood can cool that part. Some tumours don't have a good blood supply so you damage them more than the surrounding tissue if you do it right.

At the end of the day , burns are burns and indicate tissue damage and increased risk of cancer, whether from heat, radiation or chemicals .

wheresthebeef

Dont forget the dangerous threat of Enzyme Denaturation which would no doubt occur if the circulatory system had reached a temperature of boiling.
Plus boiling only occurs when all of the blood wouldve reached 100 degrees, you cant boil slightly. Some of the blood would have technically vaporised by then, i.e the blood would be dehydrated and thus just clumps of damaged red cells. No doubt if your blood had been partially vaporised you would die of an embolism or a stroke. Thats only assuming you would be alive long enough to experience boiled blood.

Also if your blood was boiling your core temperature would have reached close to 100 degrees and its scientifically impossible for a person to live past a core temperature of around 45 degrees i think, or something like that. Again cos of the enzyme optimum values and denaturation, osmoregulation (water balance). Also at 100 degrees the other proteins in your body would begin to lose their native shape.

This is one of the most absurd medical questions i have ever heard.

*by the way. i am also not a doctor. i am a leaving cert biology student. and prospective student nurse.

Talliesin

You could get the blood to boil if you had a rapid enough change in conditions. Best way is to go on a spacewalk and play with a nailgun.

Zulu

Talliesin wrote:

You could get the blood to boil if you had a rapid enough change in conditions. Best way is to go on a spacewalk and play with a nailgun.

Excellent point. ..and I'm kicking myself for not noticing it.
You can get the boil - go on a deep dive, and assend quickly. Naturally you'll die though.

Rew

Zulu wrote:

Excellent point. ..and I'm kicking myself for not noticing it.
You can get the boil - go on a deep dive, and assend quickly. Naturally you'll die though.

Thats bubbleing not boilling though isn't it? Liquids boils at lower temps when the pressure is lower isn't it?

Talliesin

Correct on both counts. You're dead either way.

Zulu

Rew wrote:

Thats bubbleing not boilling though isn't it? Liquids boils at lower temps when the pressure is lower isn't it?

Bubbleing/boiling - if it happens, you won't care too much! You're right though. You're blood would fizz like opening a coke bottle.

John

Zulu wrote:

Excellent point. ..and I'm kicking myself for not noticing it.
You can get the boil - go on a deep dive, and assend quickly. Naturally you'll die though.

It's not boiling. Boiling is when a substance goes from a liquid phase to a gaseous phase. This phenomenon (called the bends) is when gases dissolved in the blood come out of solution and form bubbles in the blood. These block blood vessels and cause serious damage.

Undercoverguy

I work for Tan.ie and some handpicked staff went through about several says of Tanning about how UV works, Health Matters, etc. (Spread over a month or so) Anyway some simple facts.

1) I am yet fo find a SunBed that gives out enough heat were it would make your blood boil.

2) You would die if your blood reached such temps.

3) The only reason thick stupid men and women burn from artf. UV its beacuse they dont listen to us when we say "The hotter the unit is the less affective it is. Our bulbs in tan.ie work best at low temps like pretty much all sun lamps. But Nooooo! Men and Women refuse to believe this (women more so), As far as these idiots are concerned "If it aint hot it dont work"...... FOOLS!

I must go now before i get more angry than i am increasingly becoming lol

Kernel

Undercoverguy wrote:

I work for Tan.ie and some handpicked staff went through about several says of Tanning about how UV works, Health Matters, etc. (Spread over a month or so) Anyway some simple facts.

1) I am yet fo find a SunBed that gives out enough heat were it would make your blood boil.

2) You would die if your blood reached such temps.

3) The only reason thick stupid men and women burn from artf. UV its beacuse they dont listen to us when we say "The hotter the unit is the less affective it is. Our bulbs in tan.ie work best at low temps like pretty much all sun lamps. But Nooooo! Men and Women refuse to believe this (women more so), As far as these idiots are concerned "If it aint hot it dont work"...... FOOLS!

I must go now before i get more angry than i am increasingly becoming lol

Didn't know that about the tan lamps, then again never used one.. I will add it to my pub knowledge now.

I was on holidays in Mallorca, where the temp was hitting 40 and they have sun ALL summer, and noticed a couple of tanning shops. Crazy eh? It almost made my blood boil!

Panserborn

I've heard it told (granted by a non-scientific source) that if you went out for a walk on Mars that your blood would boil 'cause of the atmospheric pressure and the likes - not sure how true this is. Also, getting hit by a rail-gun shot or a microwave gun (both obviously theroretical weapons) might do the job - don't ridicule me about this info, just passing on crap I've heard! :rolleyes:

The effect of UV on the skin is one of the main projects in my Ph.D. The severity is, of course, dose dependent and also depends on if the UV is UVA, UVB or UVC (awful bad stuff, doesn't come through the atmosphere thankfully). An overdose of UV does do some wierd and bad things to mammalian cells but the worst of the cellular damage doesen't occur until about 8 hours after the exposure. Essentially, ya gota be very very careful around UV, a burn usually heals but the cellular damage and possible mutation can catch up!

As a side note, research is beginning to realise that caffeine applied to the skin AFTER exposure to the sun may go a long way to stopping tumour development. The main paper that drove this home is here. For those not ar*ed to read a paper, the researchers treated some hairless mice with a caffeine solution and others with a non-caffeine solution. All the mice were zotted with UV and after an incubation period the mice with the caffeine treatment showed way fewer lesions than the non-treated mice ............ cool. An easier to read summary of the data is here.

dearg_doom

lol.. Nescafe Sunscreen!

you heard it here first!




if Nescafe happen to be reading this, PM me for licensing:)

Talliesin

Panserborn wrote:

Also, getting hit by a rail-gun shot or a microwave gun (both obviously theroretical weapons).

Not sure what's theoretical about those. A rail-gun hit wouldn't be that different from any other projectile weapon. Microwave guns mainly do short-term surface damage, which is why they're being developped for crowd-control (and torture of course, but they don't say that, but put a weapon that hurts like hell and doesn't leave marks into the hands of a military force policing an area and you know it's going to happen).

Rew

Yeah, rail guns exist, people have built em in their back gardens. They wouldn't make your blood boil.

Panserborn

Rew wrote:

Yeah, rail guns exist, people have built em in their back gardens. They wouldn't make your blood boil.

Do I have the definition of rail gun right? When I think "rail gun" I think of the gun that accelerates shards of aluminium to near the speed of light. People have made these in their back gardens? Cool.

Yup, nescafe sunblock. Spread it on good and thick after the sun and drink whats left over - everyones a winner!

Rew

Your right except for the speed of light bit

http://www.rollette.com/railgun/ - U will find loads like this on google including handgun style ones.