West Michigan's Morning News
Staying Cool in Extreme Heat
It's hot weather can be super dangerous not withstanding just plain unpleasant this is West Michigan's morning news Steve Kelly and Brett Bikita Schmedi back with us on Monday Doc Applegate former family physician of the year in the whole state of Michigan back on the live line Doc thanks for doing this today my pleasure so talk to us a little bit about some of the intrinsic dangers out there when temperatures get as uncomfortable as they have been and will be for a couple of more days well the thing that's important is we're now beginning to recognize that heat is dangerous especially for the elderly now it used to be that we just sort of poo pooed it and said you'll you'll get over but now we now have heat ended heat and danger indexes that we're paying attention to so when biologically when we look at your body you lose heat in four different ways first of all there's a classic evaporation the classic sweating and the sweat evaporating from your skin that helps cool you you lose it by radiant energy if you've ever put your hand up to somebody and they feel warm especially when they're running a fever that's probably the time we felt it the most you just sort of lose the heat out of your body that's called radiant and then there's also when you wet your skin it will you'll lose heat that way so there are a lot of ways that you can go to try and stay cool and that's the most important thing so the first of all to recognize it's going to be dangerous day and you want to make plans on how you're going to stay cool so there are lots of ways to do that you can sit in the air conditioning if you're lucky enough to have it you know when I grew up we never had air conditioning so we spent these hot days in our in our basement again a nice cool place to be but you need to plan for it and you need to recognize it can always take a shower or a bath to stay cool that's another good way of doing it and if you get in trouble and you're not staying cool and I think you start feeling sick I've had some heat illnesses over the years you need to call somebody call a family member force comes to us call the police will help you but you need to recognize the dangers and try and get cool as much as possible and those are some great suggestions to do it doc what about this weekend outdoor events for athletes that are participating like the Meyer State Games I mentioned my daughter's playing the soccer in the sand which it'll be super hot as it always isn't grand even but also spectators to make sure because you're out there in the Sun for a long time and people don't realize you know the effect it has just sitting in the Sun right oh that's right because you absorb that heat and your internal body temperature will start to raise so we always tell people at an event to stay hydrated because you're gonna sweat and you're going that's your body's way of trying to stay cool but if you sweat too much and you don't keep up with it you're gonna get dehydrated and that's when you can get really bad your electrolytes came out of get out of balance you can get confused you can act sort of a little bit crazy so recognize it so if you have a family member that's playing go watch them play but then go find some shade go find a way to cool off if worse comes doors go sit in your car turn the air conditioning on it's really important that you stay cool and recognize again I've said this before you need to do it recognize the dangers of the heat and to do something about it and make plans around it the worst heat of the day is from 11 to 2 and especially if there's Sun out you need to get out of that direct sunlight and lastly we've had this issue with my mom and Sandy's mom to dehydration in the elderly it's fascinating how it presents and it can be deadly oh totally if you because you're what happened is you start to sweat a little bit but the elderly don't quite have the mechanism to sweat as well or get those signals and they can sweat a little bit and get dehydrated very very quickly because they don't stay hydrated they don't recognize the dangers of it so you can get confused you can collapse you can have a total cardio vascular collapse so if you know somebody who doesn't have air conditioning who's not staying cool watch over them give them a call maybe invite them over to your house to try and stay cool there are cooling centers that are going to be around you might need to take use of you need to stay cool and that's the important thing and stay hydrated make sure that you're you know you're you're in a sort of a very light yellow then you know that you're staying hydrated it gets really dark and really concentrated that's when you're starting to run into danger Dr. Jim Applegate always great stuff - Thank you.