Thank you Glock-A-Roo for pulling this out of cold storage.

Dr. Giesbrecht gave some expert information and looking at his videos and documents it is worth the time to review it to know what to do both if you're hypothermic or caring for someone else who is.

This site has such great information. I thank you all for your time sharing your knowledge.

Survival Training is full of Myth's like "Don't Eat Snow" to "Don't Sleep in the Cold". I have often wondered at how bad our teaching was/could be without proper research. Modern Medical & Survival Research has changed may of our methods over the last 40 years if you look up the what and why, often advice has changed radically, once the laws of physics and physiology have been applied to the problem, instead of "Assumptions".

What is the myth?

As I know it; one should not eat snow because it is cold and therefore lowers your body core temperature when melting in your stomach. For an allready hypothermal person it makes hypothermia even worse.

But this is not a myth, it´s a sientific fact.
The heat that melts snow in stomach is drawn from the body.

In theory, yes.

In practice, not so much. Human physiology offers a direct defence against ingesting too much freezing material too quickly. It's commonly called "ice cream headache."

Normally, this suits me just fine (outside populated / popular recreation areas, of course -- I'm not fond of drinking dog poo or skiing wax). As long as I am moving about I usually have plenty of surplus heat which needs to be removed, one way or the other. Using a few calories of surplus body heat to add a bit of water in my tummy seems like a brilliant idea to me. But a mouthfull of snow doesn't have many grams of water, so this practice is just a fraction of my water consumption. And I stop eating snow when activity stops or if I start feeling cold.

On my last trip I re-learned old army tricks from my army officer friend:

• A water bottle has a wide mouth, making refilling with snow easier
  
• You start re-filling with snow immediately after your first sip, always stuffing it full (so it always contains water with snow in it, which will melt quicly, not "wet snow", which melts slowly)
  
• in sub-freezing temperatures you wear the water bottle on your body, under your outer layer of clothing

Now the water-bottle-on-your-body trick isn't really nescessary for your average day hike unless it is REALLY cold. A water bottle doesn't freeze for many, many hours if it's inside your backpack, among your extra clothes and whatnot. But the practice is sound, and something I'm happy to adapt for trips to remote areas.

Yes Snow is Colder that Tea or Hot Water, but the Calories lost are not relevant compared to how fast you will become "Combat Ineffective" from Dehydration. Inuit eat snow all the time as in there cold dry environment, they need water and the only form they have is snow.

I figure the "Don't Eat Snow" Myth came from individuals actually eating snow blocks and being told don't eat snow you will get chapped lips, which can be debilitating in the wilderness over the long-term. Then they were told to act like an Inuit and ball up a small ball of snow and suck on it. This way you cannot cool your core body temperature. Think 7/11 and Slurpee's, anyone ever die of Slurpee headache, no way, its gods way of telling you to slow down sucking on the snow lump/Slurpee. Yes Hot tea will be better and over time you will use more calories than a hot liquid, but you will become Dehydration far faster than you will lose calories.

What I think happened over time is we shortened the sentence and then over time forgot what was actually said and simply made assumptions. i have a nice case study of a guy who sucked on snow lumps for 43 days and lived to be rescued in the Himalayas. If I am thirsty and have no water I suck on a snow lump, dehydration will kill you way faster than a little low level calorie loss.

I've seen someone claim that your body would consume more water burning those calories required to melt snow than you'd recieve from same snow. This, I believe, is the source behind the revival of "don't eat snow"- myth.

I am sceptical. And stories about people surviving for days and weeks with no liquid water present, only snow, makes me think that this is bogus.