recovery chair

[fyrball]

I have seen a few pics around of the "recovery chair" for firefighters. Basicly its a camping chair, but instead of arm rests, they are bags of ice. Do these work? Any one used one? They look kinda goofy to me. Plus, there is no cup holders for you coffee!!!!!

[dentedhead]

I have seen a few pics around of the "recovery chair" for firefighters. Basicly its a camping chair, but instead of arm rests, they are bags of ice. Do these work? Any one used one? They look kinda goofy to me. Plus, there is no cup holders for you coffee!!!!!

We have some and so far they have worked.Mostly only any good in the high heat of summer.

Dentedhead

[alwaysremember]

I have seen a few pics around of the "recovery chair" for firefighters. Basicly its a camping chair, but instead of arm rests, they are bags of ice. Do these work? Any one used one? They look kinda goofy to me. Plus, there is no cup holders for you coffee!!!!!

I saw this once in a training session, for cooling body temperature down. Except it was a muskoka chair with those long narrow planters for arm rest to fill with cool water and/or ice... Same idea. No idea if it works. It sounded like it would the way it was explained to us.

[firefighter26]

I wonder if you could keep a beverage or two in the ice pockets......

Never seen the chairs, but I have seen what looked like a PPV fan with a water spray/mister in front of it. When I was in vegas last they had similar units set up on each corner (it was 105 in the shade!!) for tourists to enjoy while walking between casinos!

[Roadwarrior]

It's called a Kore Kooler Rehab Chair by Morning Pride.
You put cool water (not cold or ice) in the arms and then immerse your forearms in it. If the water is too cold, it will constrict your blood vessels resulting in limited circulation.
Yes, they work very well; I understand that they were used a few years ago by the U.S. Summer Olympic team (not sure which olympics).

http://www.morningpride.com/Korekooler.aspx

[JrFFHopeful308]

We have some on our rehab truck and the guys that have tried them say they work pretty well.

[CrazyLadder]

My recovery chair sits in my living room, charcoal in color, shaped to fit my butt, with a handy beverage holder to the side. Not real convenient to carry on an apparatus. The Kooler chair works well for dropping core temps.

[oldarffer]

We use them for Rehab and they are very effective. They were first used by the English military during the Falklands War; they studied the daylights out of them and found forearm immersion is the most effective way to deal with elevated core temperatures.

[mattcurry]

The muskoka-style plastic chair with planter boxes velcroed to each arm works really slick, and is a fraction of the cost of a morning pride chair. All the chairs stack on top of eachother, as do the removable planter boxes.

When you start to raise your internal body temp due to exertion, your brain sends signals to release catecholamines, which relax the smooth muscles around your veins and arteries (vasodilation), which increases blood flow to your extremities, and to the surface of your body. Your body also begins to sweat, and thanks to the wonderful phenomena of evaporation, the blood near the surface of your body is cooled. Simply placing your arms in cool basins of water rapidly increases the rate of heat release, and you cool down in a very short period of time.

Think of it like soldering up a coupling on copper pipe, or heating up your marshmallow stick in the fire. You could just hold it in the air and let it cool gradually, or you could spit on it to cool it down; however, once your dunk it into a bucket of water, it cools down a a couple of seconds and you can touch the pipe without burning the heck out of your finger, cursing like a sailor, and waking up the neighbours' cat.

This is why sitting pool-side, feet in the water, with an ice cold wobblypop in each hand is quite bearable on a hot day. Cheers.

-MC