Recognizing and Treating Heat Exhaustion or Heat Stroke

In the hot summer heat, your body sometimes can’t cool off fast enough, especially when your active. We cool ourselves when our sweat evaporates from our skin, taking heat away with it. That’s why it feels cool when a breeze blows on our sweaty bodies. Your body cools off by evaporation of sweat but gets overcome or “exhausted” when you produce heat faster than you can sweat it off. Heat exhaustion is characterized by fatigue, weakness, dizziness, nausea, and cool, clammy, pale or red skin.

If a situation persists, the victim’s condition may progress to a heat stroke in which the body simply quits sweating, while the internal body temperature continues to rise, in many cases to greater than 105°F (40.5º C). Persons with heat stroke may have signs of confusion, delirium, or may fall unconscious. The skin will be red or pale, and hot and dry, even under the armpits.

Treatment and Expectations: The first line treatment is immediate cooling of the victim’s body with a room temperature bath or covering the exposed body with towels soaked in cool water. Also have the person slowly drink lots of cool water, a little at a time.

Seek Professional Medical Attention If:
The victim has signs or symptoms of a heat stroke.
The victim has any change or decline in mental status, confusion, or loses consciousness at any time.
When in doubt.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

9 Comments so far

  1. Rob Goodwin on June 12th, 2009

    If the victim is in advance stage of heat stroke (hyperthermia)evidenced by unconsciousness, or extreme lack of response, IMMEDIATE medical attention must be sought. Minutes make the difference between recovery or permanent damage or death.

    It is generally advised to take the victim to a medical facility instead of waiting for an ambulance. Ice baths or a frozen hyperthermia vest can be applied to immediately lower the core temp of the body. One of the aspects of heat stroke is that the body can no longer control its temperature so measures to lower it immediately are important.

    Heat Stroke in the early stages can respond to the advice above, but not advanced stages.

    Again, minutes count.

  2. Mark Testa from sell my house on internet on October 1st, 2009

    Yeah drinking lots of water can be a good thing because to sweat, you need enough amount of liquids present in your body.

    Take the example of car, if there’s no water in radiator, after some time your car will get heat up and may get switched off after some time till it cools down again.

    You need to intake water regularly during summer so you can avoid this situation.

  3. Ashley on January 22nd, 2010

    During summer we have take more and more of water to control heat stroke.Other cooling methods include:

    Apply cold compresses to the groin, head, torso, and neck.

    Situate the victim in front of a fan. The moving air will evaporate the sweat and cool the body.

    Bathe the victim in cool water, but do not wrap him in wet blankets or towels, as they may hold heat in.

    Immerse the person into a bathtub of cold water, but monitor vital signs carefully.

    To prevent heat exhaustion, use sunscreen and limit outdoor activities in hot and humid weather. Wear light-colored clothing to reflect heat, loose fitting clothes, and natural fibered clothing such as cotton, which is cooler than synthetic blends.

    Try this also!!!

  4. Victoria from Amazon Deals on May 18th, 2010

    Yes, I’m glad you posted this. I planned to post something similar but now I don’t need to. Would you mind if I link to it from my livejournal? My readers might like to read it too. Kind regards, Victoria

  5. Bathtub Refinishing Corp on July 13th, 2010

    Thanks for this post it was helpful..lots of benifits.

  6. Reglazing Now Corp on July 14th, 2010

    sensible topic like it…very well.!

  7. Car Insurance Radar Company on July 16th, 2010

    Heat-Related Illnesses – Health Topics – Southern Nevada … If heat exhaustion is untreated, it may progress to heat stroke.

  8. Avcan from Bathtub Refinishing Corp on July 21st, 2010

    thanks for the blogs….

  9. cahn from Reglazing Now Corp on July 22nd, 2010

    Heat stroke occurs when heat exhaustion is left untreated and the victim’s …
    Heat Exhaustion – Heat Exhaustion Treatment

Leave a reply

This site uses KeywordLuv. Enter YourName@YourKeywords in the Name field to take advantage.