Hey everyone, thanks for
joining us here at 90s.
Plus I'm Chris Bianchi and joined
by our Nine News medical expert
and extraordinaire, Dr Paoli,
for a look at heat exhaustion,
what you can do?
It's obviously the middle of summer now,
So what you can do to protect yourself
and make sure you avoid heat stroke,
heat exhaustion,
and a few tips on that.
But first of all,
Doctor Cooley is heat exhausted and
as simple as it sounds as it just
your body basically overheating.
Sort of is crisp, but I I don't
wanna say that it's just exhaustion
cause it's so much more than that.
It's your body essentially going
into a stressed response because
the temperature is getting too high
and so our body does a really nice
job of regulating our temperature,
which keeps our organs happy,
our brain, our heart, the electricity,
and our heart, our lungs, our kidneys.
When that gets dysregulated,
things can fall off kilter very quickly,
and that can happen much more
quickly than people realize.
With just, you know,
even a few minutes in the extreme heat can
lead to dehydration and can lead to heat.
Exhaustion,
which can sneak up on you and people may
not even realize that they're having
it. So what are those early
signs of heat exhaustion? Yeah,
so sometimes you just feel very thirsty.
First of all, cause usually you
know you you need more water,
you feel your heart racing.
You can feel dizzy or lightheaded.
You can feel queasy or nauseated.
You can have a headache,
and you know sometimes you're like.
Oh, I just spend too much time in the heat,
and that's why I have a headache.
But those are actually the earliest
signs that your body may be
going into that stress response.
Responding to that excess and temperature.
So what does your body do? So when you're?
You said your body's going into that stress.
What does your body actually doing it?
Yeah, so the basically the way our
body gives off heat and we have
a little sensor in our head that
regulates our body's temperature.
So when the temperature
gets too hot in our body,
just like with a fever or our sensor
kind of kicks into OverDrive and
tries really hard to open up all
the blood vessels and release.
Basically release the heat so it vasodilates.
So that's why my skin feels so
warm when we're feeling warm
because they're trying to lose
heat through the skin essentially.
But what that also does is it causes.
What we call insensible losses by
opening up the blood vessels by
breathing a little heavier and faster
to try to give off some of that
heat as well and cool ourselves.
We're losing water,
which then propagates the cycle,
because then you start to get dehydrated.
And when you're dehydrated then your
heart pumps even harder and faster,
and that can cause more heat from inside,
which can then cause more vasodilation,
more dehydration.
So you get caught in that cycle
essentially where the body is
trying to compensate,
but by compensating and trying to
give off heat, it's actually causing.
The problem to get worse causing
dehydration to get worse so you
have to interrupt that cycle.
Hmm, very interesting.
I mean not plus Physiology lesson.
Yeah down effect.
What is the difference between
heat exhaustion and heat stroke?
So it's the same illness
on different spectrums.
When you're getting to heat stroke,
your temperature is greater than 104.
It's a life threatening emergency.
And think about it like a fever when
your body temperature gets too high,
you can have a seizure.
You can have a cardiac arrest.
You can have permanent neurological damage.
All of those things.
What happened with heat stroke as
well in extreme so you never wanna
let it get to that point at the
earliest signs of heat exhaustion,
which is your body kind of starting
that compensatory mechanism you want
to interrupt it so it doesn't get
to the point where you heat stroke
where the body is just kind of.
I can't do anymore.
It's given up and.
And that's a life threatening emergency.
So it's a normal summer
Dame it's 8590 degrees.
How do we act differently on
an 8590 degree day versus, say,
a fall day with 60 degrees?
Great question.
Many different things that you can
do so the worst the first is to keep
our bodies cool so you wanna wear light,
airy clothing you don't wanna wear
anything too synthetic.
You want to stay out of the sunlight
and the kind of the hottest part of the day,
which is the late morning kind
of to the early evening.
So if you have to go out,
try to go early in the morning
or late in the evening.
You want to keep the body
cool from the inside.
And that includes drinking
a lot of cool water.
Sometimes people when they're starting
to have symptoms can also put ice packs
and things like that on themselves,
but if you're really feeling
yourself overheating,
you really want to cool down the
body from the outside by putting
something cold on your skin,
taking a cold shower,
and then you want to keep your
home cool so people say in the
summer I don't need the AC.
I don't need to run the AC,
but it's really recommended that
during the day that you don't let the
temperature inside the house exceed 90,
and at night you don't let
it exceed 75 degrees,
because it's really important
to when you're sleeping.
Know that your body's regulation
of heat can change.
Alright, so you don't
wake up in a sweat, right?
That's exactly if it happens to us.
Sometimes it happens to me whenever
I'm in a hotel room because that
temperature just fluctuates all the time,
right? I don't have that,
or a West facing window or
somewhere or anything like that.
What should we do?
So if we think we're starting to
enter some of those phrases that you
mentioned about heat exhaustion,
heatstroke, what do we
do? So? The first thing is to cool
yourself down quickly so you come home,
turn on the AC you put, you know,
a cool ice pack or something on
your forehead or in your armpits.
That's an outside way to cool
your temperature quickly.
Also cool from the inside by drinking
cold water and plenty of it.
So you want to make sure you stay hydrated,
because that starts to interrupt that cycle.
If it's not getting better and you're
feeling like things are progressing
because you're symptoms are progressing,
then you want to really seek
medical attention pretty quickly.
Because then they can actually
cool you using chilled saline,
basically giving you fluid that's
called inside your your veins.
Drink more water and imagine is
part of it and there's that rule.
What 8 glasses a day supposed to
have? Yeah, so let's talk about
that because 8 glasses a day,
maybe enough for you on a regular day.
But with the temperatures we've
been having here in Denver.
And if you're out and about,
maybe you're running or exercising,
you're giving off a lot more water,
so you always want to adjust the amount of
water you're taking in according to what?
You're doing and so it shouldn't
be the same amount every day,
because if you're sitting at a desk all day,
the amount that you might need maybe a lot
different than if you're out and about,
especially in the heat.
So I like to say two things.
Tell us how much water we need to drink.
One is our thirst and that really
works in young people and older people,
their thirst mechanism gets
impaired as they get older,
so they don't even realize
that they're thirsty.
Their brain doesn't signal that thirst,
but for young people,
thirst is is a big sign that
you're following behind.
You need to pick it up OK,
and then the second is the
color of your urine.
So you want your urine to be kind
of light colored or colorless?
If it's coming out medium yellow,
dark yellow you're you're
not getting enough liquid.
OK, so just kind of listen and pay
attention to your body a little bit.
It's not just a steadfast rule.
Drink X amount. Pay attention to body.
It's basically what
you pay attention to body and pay
attention to what you're doing.
So if you're doing something that's
gonna give off more heat than be
sure you know give off more water.
Be sure to drink more water now.
There is such a thing as water poisoning,
so there are some people who
drink and drink and drink.
This is pretty rare,
but you can actually drink so much that
you dilute the salt in your body so
you don't want to drink to the point
where the urine is completely clear,
because then you might have done too
much or you're going multiple times a
day so everything in life is a balance,
but on our hot days we especially
want to be mindful of our fluid.
Intake and this can be just water.
It can be watermelon.
It can be, you know, clear tea.
It can be all the different
types of liquids that we have.
It doesn't just have to be water.
OK, so different kinds of water as well.
Who would be what population
demographic groups would be most
at risk for heat exhaustion,
so this is something for us to keep in mind.
So our kids, because they don't always
tell us when they're thirsty and B the way
that they give off heat is a little bit
different than the way that adults do,
so it's important for parents to be mindful.
Of whether the kids are drinking enough
and staying cool are older people,
especially the ones that live,
you know, in assisted living
or potentially nursing homes.
But even regular older people
because they're thirst mechanism,
gets impaired.
So again, really important for them.
They also sometimes on medications
that can cause them to lose water,
and that can be exacerbated on hot
days and then pregnant women.
So it's really important for
pregnant women who can very easily
have sensitivity to heat because
their blood vessels already tend
to be more dilated than everyone
else's that they pay attention,
all right. There you have any
final thoughts on exhaustion.
No, I just think it be.
The summer isn't really exciting time.
We all want to be outside.
I just came from Florida but we know
we have to listen to our bodies and
after just a few minutes outside,
sometimes it's really time to take a break.
Go inside, drink water,
hydrate and then you can
come back out and do it.
But just don't don't just push through it,
especially if you're doing
exercise or something strenuous.
All right. Don't push through it
kind of tell myself that as well.
Sometimes thanks Doctor Paul,
Kaleo good look there and he.
Thanks for joining us here on this plus.