Thursday, April 30, 2009

Heat Exhaustion

By Ian Kleine

A lesser known form of heat stroke, but ideally all the same as dangerous as it, is heat exhaustion, or heat prostration as it is known in some other people. It is the condition where the body exerts too much effort to maintain your local core temperature to the safe, and normal level.

The normal reaction of body to external heat is to perspire liquids. Sweat forms on the skin and readily evaporates, carrying heat away and subsequently cooling you down and preventing temperature to raise up to unbearable levels. Sweating and perspiration, is also a double edged sword. With the evaporation and loss of sweat means the loss of liquids and salts sacrificed to cool you down. Normally, you would be able to replenish these by drinking liquids and partaking your normal diet.

However, prolonged sweating because the high temperature persists, and the person not immediately replenishing his liquid and salts stocks; this could lead to exhaustion of the body to maintain the normal balance of salts and electrolytes. This results to the diminishing rate of blood circulation, which could coincidentally hinder responses from your brain, heart, lungs and other parts of the body. This is what we deem as heat exhaustion.

Symptoms of the condition include heavily sweating, pale, clammy and otherwise cold skin, pupils that are dilated, a different temperature reading in other parts of the body, cramps elsewhere and weakness, dizziness and nausea, headaches, confusion, and sometimes, complete unconsciousness. It is important that first aid be immediately to anyone who reports any of these signs so proper first aid can be given.

First aid includes removing the person from the source of the heat. If the person is outside, bring him in the shade or in a building with sufficient ventilation, air movement, and lower temperature. Raise the person's legs to divert blood from the legs to the brain, where it is needed the most (the weakened blood circulation makes this impossible at the moment). Loosen and/or remove any clothing article that hinders blood circulation and cool the body down with an ice pack or a wet compress. Do not use alcohol.

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