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Dear perigee - had trouble emailing you - if you're still running your Health & Survival wiki, here's an article my friend Don sent round here after last summer's Toronto weather.
When your body gets stressed by the heat it starts to shut down
non-essential parts of your body: like the part of your brain that runs your
mind. This is the origin of the phrase "addled by the heat". This
is why it's essential to keep hydrated and to top up your electrolytes:
since the first thing to go is your mind you won't be able to handle
the upcoming emergency when yet more things get shut down nor
will you be able to do anything constructive to cool off. Chances are
you'll do something that's actually dangerous.
Chug-a-lug:
So, guzzle fluids all day long. Don't wait until you're thirsty or (god
forbid) you stop sweating. If you're as much of a poster child for ADD
as I am get something to beep every hour and down a litre or so at
those times. Your pee (except for when you get up in the morning)
should be colourless. If it isn't you're not drinking nearly enough. In
this heat I can down a litre every two hours all day and not go to the
bathroom all day.
In the long term:
But of course, sweat is composed of all sorts of things like salt and
all kinds of esoteric stuff that stains your t-shirts, emits phermones
and attracts blood-sucking bugs. Three sweaty weeks will start to
use up your stocks of these things faster than your normal diet can
replace them. Since your body doesn't use *anything* for just one
purpose you then start to get all sorts of esoteric system failures. [1]
Some of this will taste awful to some people but I assure you that
the bile in your throat as you gasp your last will taste worse. Just
think of it as a lot of medicine.
Week 1 - Guzzling your regular drinks is probably enough but
remember that a drink of ice-tea/coke/coffe or anything else with
caffeine only counts as 1/2 a drink of something without caffeine.
Week 2 - Time to get salty! Chips and pretzels are your new friends.
Eat at Chinese restaurants a lot and dump soy sauce all over everything.
Soy sauce has a lot of salt and a lot of other stuff you need as well. It's
the world's #1 sauce and was developed in hot climates for just such
an emergency.
Week 3 - Electrolyte replacement drinks are no longer optional. Get in
at least one 750 L bottle a day: two if you're physically active. Gatorade
is the most accessible and tasty but not the best stuff. Pocari Sweat,
available at all fine Japanese grocery stores, is chemically the best
but tastes like synthetic sweat: doubtless because that's what it is. I
found that SuperSapu is a good midway point between taste and
effectiveness.
Week 4+ - Same drill but the Electrolyte replacement drinks all have trace
elements of not-quite-what-you-need-to-make-sweat that build up and
start to make you queezy. I think there's a anti-Gatorade web site about
this somewhere. Take one day out to *really* chug a lot of distilled water
to clear out your system.
I feel sick:
If you do something or get something that makes you throw-up or you
get the runs (exercise care in choosing those Chinese restaurants!) you're
now in more trouble since you just dumped a lot of fluid. Time to follow
Heat Stroke protocols.
No, I *really* feel sick:
If [2]:
- you suddenly stop sweating
- you get the feeling that your body is radiating a lot of heat into the
room (as opposed to the normal feeling that the room is heating
*you* up)
- your saliva drys up
your body has activated its last-ditch, emergency cooling system:
YOUR LIFE IS NOW IN DANGER!!!!!
This is especially dangerous since your brain shut down a couple of
hours ago and you won't remember what I'm about to tell you. Get
someone else involved immediately: 911, your neighbour, whoever.
Heat stroke protocols:
1- *Don't* grab for or jump into *cold* or even *cool* things. Your
blood vessels have all dilated to the max to dump heat. An icy drink
or a jump into the cold shower will crank them all back to the other
extreme and you're in serious risk of a heart-attack. A cold drink, at
the very least, will flip-flop your stomach: causing you to throw up and
lose more fluid.
2 - You need small quantities of room temperature water or, better still,
an electrolyte replacement drink. Sip, wait for
a couple of minutes to make sure it will stay down and sip again. If
medical personnel are involved a saline drip is a good idea at this
point.
3 - Get to a *moderately* air-conditioned or slightly cool environment
4 - Spritz a mist of slightly cool water all over your body starting with
your head and chest
5 - The medics may decide to pack your groin and armpits with ice
packs. This is a Pro trick. Do not attempt this at home!
6 - Elevate your feet
Slow down grasshopper:
As a further note, try practising your Tai-Chi in all your movements
during a heatwave. If you halve your motion speeds you more than
halve your energy generation and cooling isn't such a big deal.
See that 100 year-old granny drifting up the sidewalk in ChinaTown?
There's a reason she's moving at that speed: that's how she go to be
100! I've used this to excellent effect. Once I and a fellow
Torontonian jumped out of a plane in Taipei: both of us were
completely un-aclimatized to the 43 C/90% humidity. I decided
to go site seeing in slow motion and my friend tagged along at
his normal RPM for things like turning his head, pointing at things
and talking. I was fine: he melted.
This "Island Time" speed of doing things sometimes leads we
Northerners to assume laziness on the part of Southerners.
From the fabulous NetSpace Cafe at College and Spadina,
/Don
Notes:
[1] This is the mechanism that shuts down your brain. You run out of
the potassium and calcium that you use to fire synapses. Since the
signal to your heart ("beat", "OK, beat again", "OK, beat again")
has priority, optional entertainment systems like memory and thinking
get the heave-ho. If you are on psych-drugs you are especially
vulnerable to these loses and some of the other synapse nutrient
deficiences since you're fiddling with your synapses anyway.
[2] The traditional list also include "hallucinations" but how do
you tell if they're your regular hallucinations or a recreational
hallucination? I mean, like, what if someone tells you that
Mel Lastman became Mayor of Toronto? Can such things be
real?
Further notes:
Surfaces that are nice and cool but normally too flat and hard to sleep on, such as your
basement floor,
can easily be modified with colourful, squishy alphabet tiles. A must-have for any
abecedarian and currently on sale at some Grand & Toys for $10 a package.
When your body gets stressed by the heat it starts to shut down
non-essential parts of your body: like the part of your brain that runs your
mind. This is the origin of the phrase "addled by the heat". This
is why it's essential to keep hydrated and to top up your electrolytes:
since the first thing to go is your mind you won't be able to handle
the upcoming emergency when yet more things get shut down nor
will you be able to do anything constructive to cool off. Chances are
you'll do something that's actually dangerous.
Chug-a-lug:
So, guzzle fluids all day long. Don't wait until you're thirsty or (god
forbid) you stop sweating. If you're as much of a poster child for ADD
as I am get something to beep every hour and down a litre or so at
those times. Your pee (except for when you get up in the morning)
should be colourless. If it isn't you're not drinking nearly enough. In
this heat I can down a litre every two hours all day and not go to the
bathroom all day.
In the long term:
But of course, sweat is composed of all sorts of things like salt and
all kinds of esoteric stuff that stains your t-shirts, emits phermones
and attracts blood-sucking bugs. Three sweaty weeks will start to
use up your stocks of these things faster than your normal diet can
replace them. Since your body doesn't use *anything* for just one
purpose you then start to get all sorts of esoteric system failures. [1]
Some of this will taste awful to some people but I assure you that
the bile in your throat as you gasp your last will taste worse. Just
think of it as a lot of medicine.
Week 1 - Guzzling your regular drinks is probably enough but
remember that a drink of ice-tea/coke/coffe or anything else with
caffeine only counts as 1/2 a drink of something without caffeine.
Week 2 - Time to get salty! Chips and pretzels are your new friends.
Eat at Chinese restaurants a lot and dump soy sauce all over everything.
Soy sauce has a lot of salt and a lot of other stuff you need as well. It's
the world's #1 sauce and was developed in hot climates for just such
an emergency.
Week 3 - Electrolyte replacement drinks are no longer optional. Get in
at least one 750 L bottle a day: two if you're physically active. Gatorade
is the most accessible and tasty but not the best stuff. Pocari Sweat,
available at all fine Japanese grocery stores, is chemically the best
but tastes like synthetic sweat: doubtless because that's what it is. I
found that SuperSapu is a good midway point between taste and
effectiveness.
Week 4+ - Same drill but the Electrolyte replacement drinks all have trace
elements of not-quite-what-you-need-to-make-sweat that build up and
start to make you queezy. I think there's a anti-Gatorade web site about
this somewhere. Take one day out to *really* chug a lot of distilled water
to clear out your system.
I feel sick:
If you do something or get something that makes you throw-up or you
get the runs (exercise care in choosing those Chinese restaurants!) you're
now in more trouble since you just dumped a lot of fluid. Time to follow
Heat Stroke protocols.
No, I *really* feel sick:
If [2]:
- you suddenly stop sweating
- you get the feeling that your body is radiating a lot of heat into the
room (as opposed to the normal feeling that the room is heating
*you* up)
- your saliva drys up
your body has activated its last-ditch, emergency cooling system:
YOUR LIFE IS NOW IN DANGER!!!!!
This is especially dangerous since your brain shut down a couple of
hours ago and you won't remember what I'm about to tell you. Get
someone else involved immediately: 911, your neighbour, whoever.
Heat stroke protocols:
1- *Don't* grab for or jump into *cold* or even *cool* things. Your
blood vessels have all dilated to the max to dump heat. An icy drink
or a jump into the cold shower will crank them all back to the other
extreme and you're in serious risk of a heart-attack. A cold drink, at
the very least, will flip-flop your stomach: causing you to throw up and
lose more fluid.
2 - You need small quantities of room temperature water or, better still,
an electrolyte replacement drink. Sip, wait for
a couple of minutes to make sure it will stay down and sip again. If
medical personnel are involved a saline drip is a good idea at this
point.
3 - Get to a *moderately* air-conditioned or slightly cool environment
4 - Spritz a mist of slightly cool water all over your body starting with
your head and chest
5 - The medics may decide to pack your groin and armpits with ice
packs. This is a Pro trick. Do not attempt this at home!
6 - Elevate your feet
Slow down grasshopper:
As a further note, try practising your Tai-Chi in all your movements
during a heatwave. If you halve your motion speeds you more than
halve your energy generation and cooling isn't such a big deal.
See that 100 year-old granny drifting up the sidewalk in ChinaTown?
There's a reason she's moving at that speed: that's how she go to be
100! I've used this to excellent effect. Once I and a fellow
Torontonian jumped out of a plane in Taipei: both of us were
completely un-aclimatized to the 43 C/90% humidity. I decided
to go site seeing in slow motion and my friend tagged along at
his normal RPM for things like turning his head, pointing at things
and talking. I was fine: he melted.
This "Island Time" speed of doing things sometimes leads we
Northerners to assume laziness on the part of Southerners.
From the fabulous NetSpace Cafe at College and Spadina,
/Don
Notes:
[1] This is the mechanism that shuts down your brain. You run out of
the potassium and calcium that you use to fire synapses. Since the
signal to your heart ("beat", "OK, beat again", "OK, beat again")
has priority, optional entertainment systems like memory and thinking
get the heave-ho. If you are on psych-drugs you are especially
vulnerable to these loses and some of the other synapse nutrient
deficiences since you're fiddling with your synapses anyway.
[2] The traditional list also include "hallucinations" but how do
you tell if they're your regular hallucinations or a recreational
hallucination? I mean, like, what if someone tells you that
Mel Lastman became Mayor of Toronto? Can such things be
real?
Further notes:
Surfaces that are nice and cool but normally too flat and hard to sleep on, such as your
basement floor,
can easily be modified with colourful, squishy alphabet tiles. A must-have for any
abecedarian and currently on sale at some Grand & Toys for $10 a package.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 04:21 am (UTC)From:*gets heat stroke just thinking about sunshine*
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 01:31 pm (UTC)From:If you'd like to do it, or Don would, that's cool too. Just tell me an e-mail address and a username you'd like (spaces are OK) and I'll create youse accounts.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 04:15 pm (UTC)From:You can make me an account as moon custafer, aspecht@interlog.com
ta v. muchly