 Heat Stroke Which is better to prevent heat stroke, coffee or green tea? Green tea is good to prevent heat stroke. One of the causes of heat stroke is that the water in the body is lost by the raise of the body temperature. According to a recent research, when drinking green tea, the amount of sweat was more than when drinking water in the heat, resulting in suppressing the raise of the body temperature. However, barley tea is recommended to prevent heat stroke because barley tea is rich in minerals and doesn’t contain caffeine that promotes urination, so you can drink barley tea as much as you like. 
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 LDL cholesterol delivers cholesterol which becomes the material of cell membrane to all the body through the blood vessel. But when the cholesterol is too much due to unhealthy lifestyle, LDL cholesterol leaves the excessive cholesterol in the blood vessel, which forms plaque. Plaque narrows the blood vessel and once the plaque is broken and forms blood clots, they cause stroke or heart attack (Fig. 1 & 3). HDL cholesterol collects the excessive cholesterol from the plaque and returns the blood vessel to its normal state (Fig. 4). Fig. 2 shows LDL cholesterol before adding HLD cholesterol and after adding HLD cholesterol. Red parts are LDL cholesterol. After adding HLD cholesterol, LDL cholesterol decreases. So it seems better that HDL cholesterol is more. But actually, whether the amount of HDL cholesterol is large or small doesn’t change the risk of developing stroke, meaning that there is not much point in increasing the amount of HDL cholesterol. The absorbing power of HDL cholesterol is important. When checking the absorbing power of HLD cholesterol of 50 people whose ages were from 20s to 60s, 19 people’s (about 40 %) HDL cholesterol didn’t have enough power to absorb LDL cholesterol. What makes a difference in the absorbing power of HDL cholesterol? There are 2 persons whose BMI, the amount of consumption and the habit of smoking are the same among the people who attended the above experiment. Person A’s HDL cholesterol has enough absorbing power, but person B’s HLD cholesterol doesn’t have. Person A eats a food 2 to 3 times a week and person B eats the same thing only once a month. The substance contained in the food is EPA. The food contained EPA is a blue-back fish (Fig. 5). Does eating blue-back fishes really improve the absorbing power of HDL cholesterol? 5 people whose absorbing power of HDL cholesterol had been less than the reference value (0.3) tried to eat blue-back fishes at least once a day for 2 weeks. The result of the experiment was that 4 out of 5 people’s absorbing power of HDL cholesterol increased and became more than 0.3, and 1 person’s absorbing power was the same as before the experiment. Why does a blue-back fish contain EPA a lot? Because blue back fishes migrate in the cold sea where are rich in phytoplankton which produces EPA to keep their body elastic in the cold water. EPA keeps the blood vessels soft and elastic so that EPA prevents hardening of the artery. In addition to that, it has turned out that EPA strengthens the absorbing power of HDL cholesterol. Lowering the LDL cholesterol by medication only prevented 20 to 30 % of the diseases caused by hardening of the artery so that the medication to increase HDL cholesterol was developed, but it didn’t have any effect. So the function of HDL cholesterol stated to be paid attention to. It is easy to take blue-back fishes by getting canned ones. EPA is easily oxidized by the heat, so carpaccio, which coat raw fishes with olive oil and prevents EPA from oxidization, is recommended. Summary
Other things to lower LDL cholesterol Nuts and green tea (Fig. 6): 25 grams of nuts and at least a cup of green tea a day Walking: 30 minutes a day 5 people whose absorbing power of HLD cholesterol was lower than the reference value tried taking nuts for 2 weeks, and their absorbing power was improved. 4 people tried walking and the absorbing power of 3 out of 4 people was improved. What lowers the absorbing power of HDL cholesterol is oxidization or inflammation of blood vessels due to smoking, alcohol, obesity or high blood pressure. Nuts, green tea and walking are considered suppressing the oxidization and inflammation       What do you think the cause of high blood pressure? One of the major causes is too much intake of salt so that a lot of people try to reduce the intake of salt. But it has turned out that people who have high blood pressure because they can’t discharge the salt from the body are increasing. High blood pressure is the condition that the pressure against the wall of blood vessels is high. At present, if the top number is more than 140 mmHg or the bottom number is more than 90 mmHg, it is considered high blood pressure. If the condition of high blood pressure continues for a long time, the blood vessel which was soft becomes hard and fragile, which is hardening of the artery. In near future, it can cause heart attack or stroke. The high blood pressure preventative measures recommended conventionally are (1) reducing salt and (2) doing moderate exercises. (1) Reducing salt When you eat salty food, the amount of salt in the blood increases, water is absorbed and the amount of the blood increases. As a result of that, the pressure against the wall of the blood vessel goes up. On the contrary, if you don’t take salt, the blood flow becomes calm and the pressure against the wall of the blood vessel lowers down. (2) Doing moderate exercises When you do moderate exercises, your body tries to deliver more oxygen to the muscle and the blood vessel becomes wider. That makes the blood flow calmer, resulting in the pressure against the wall of the blood vessel lower down. But there are people whose effort to carry out the above preventative measures comes to nothing. People who can’t improve their blood pressure with reducing salt and exercises are difficult to discharge salt from their body. Even if the intake of salt is small, their blood pressure goes up because salt remains in their body. If you can’t discharge 80 % of salt through urine excluding sweat, you are considered that you can’t discharge salt properly. The difference between people who can discharge salt and people who can’t is how to sleep at night. What kind of sleep leads to storing salt in the body? If you can sleep well, you can discharge salt, but if you can’t sleep well, you can’t discharge salt. If you can sleep well, you don’t have stress, but if you can’t sleep well, you have stress. The key to cause high blood pressure is hidden in the saliva secreted while sleeping. The saliva of people who can’t sleep well with high blood pressure contains cortisol a lot. People who secrete cortisol in the middle of night try to raise the blood pressure using salt so that they can’t discharge salt and salt is stored in their body. How to improve sleeping quality to promote discharging salt in the middle of night The method is one nostril breathing method. Basically, when we breathe slowly, we can expand alveoli in the lung and activate the parasympathetic nerve. Breathing through one nostril makes breathing deeper and activates the parasympathetic nerve more. One nostril breathing method: (1) Hold one nostril with your finger and breathe in from another nostril for about 10 seconds (Fig. 1). (2) Breathe out slowly from the same nostril. (3) Repeat this breathing method alternatively (right, left, right…) for 10 minutes before sleeping. Experiment 3 persons whose salt discharge had been less than 80 % and quality of sleep had been not good continued the above breathing method before their sleep for 3 days, and their salt discharge ratios were improved by more than 20 % and they became able to sleep well through the night.  
1. Decrease of amount of meals We get water from meals in addition to drinks. If the amount of meals decreases due to summer heat fatigue, even if your water supply from drinks is the same, total supply of water decrease, causing dehydration. So if you can’t eat meals as usual, it is important to pay attention to drinking more water than usual. 2. Lack of salt Drinking only water when you sweat causes cramps in the calves. Lack of salt makes calcium which controls the contraction of the muscles not reach the cell of the muscles. That causes malfunction of the muscles and the muscles are contracted too much, leading to cramps. 3. Age Aging cause the decreases of the liquid in the body. The amount of meals also decreases with aging, causing lack of water and salt. That easily causes dehydration, leading to heat stroke. 2 days after the highest temperature’s day, there are more people having heat stroke. Aging makes the body extremely insensitive to heat. Even if the body temperature goes up, an old person doesn’t feel hot and stores heat in the body. An old person feels okay on the day of highest temperature, so the next day and the day after the next day they go out and store more heat in the body and the heat becomes peak in 2 to 3 days, causing heat stroke. Talking can be a cause of heat stroke. While we are talking, we are losing water from our mouth. People who talk a lot at the time of work need to be careful. 4. Stress Stress causes the imbalance of the autonomic nervous system. That leads to the decline of the function to control the body temperature. 5. Sudden change in temperature This is caused when you go to hot outdoors from a cool air-conditioned room. 6. Hot inside the room Hot inside the room is the place that heat stroke occurs most. The kitchen is the most dangerous place because even if the room is air-conditioned, the kitchen where fire is used is very warm. When you prepare breakfast, you need to be careful because while you are sleeping, you are losing water. 7. Lack of sleep Lack of sleep declines the function to control the body temperature as well as stress. Drink good to prevent heat stroke Mix of banana, yogurt and milk Banana is rich in potassium which stores water. Yogurt and milk contain albumin which is a type of protein and produces blood and controls the body temperature. 8. Over exercise It is better to take a rest every 30 minutes under the sunshade. 9. Lack of water Lack of water decreases the amount of blood and the function of the organs declines. It is good to supply water from drinks containing more than 40 mg of potassium such as sports drinks or Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS). 10. Direct sunlight Exposing your body to direct sunlight stores more heat in the body than not exposing to direct sunlight even in the same temperature. That causes heat stroke more easily. When you go out under the direct sunlight, it is recommended to take 5 minutes rest every hour under the sunshade.  There is a type of heat stroke which takes time to occur gradually.
People who are easily attacked by this type of heat stroke are elderly people. The symptoms are gradually progressed taking several days without notice that they are attacked by heat stroke. At the time of onset, the condition is severe and the worst scenario is loss of life. In the case of young people, heat stroke occurs suddenly by playing sports or working in the heat. What is the difference? There are sensors to feel temperature under the skin. When the sensors feel hot, the signal that it is hot is sent to the brain. The brain receiving the signal orders the body to sweat. But when the sensors are dull with age, the sensors can’t feel the heat so the brain doesn’t send the signal to sweat. Our body lowers the temperature by sweating and evaporating the sweat. If you can’t sweat, the surface temperature of the skin doesn’t go down so the body temperature gradually goes up. If you don’t notice the rise of the body temperature, the heat keeps being accumulated in the body for a few days, causing the onset of heat stroke. This is the reason why elderly people easily have heat stroke taking a few days until the onset. The gradual onset of this type of heat stroke makes the person and people around difficult to realize that they are affected by the heat stroke and that makes a lot of cases serious. Even if the heat stroke is cured, there can be aftereffects such as dementia, difficulty of swallowing or difficulty of walking, which is involvement of the brain. The sensitivity to temperature starts to become dull from 40’s. At first, distal portion of the legs such as toes and bottoms of the feet becomes dull and the dullness spreads out to the whole body. So even people in their 40’s and 50’s have to be careful about the heat stroke because their sensitivity to temperature is already dull. Countermeasures against heat stroke Effective drink for prevention of heat stroke is Ume Konbu Tea (tea with Ume plum and kelp) which contains various nutrition such as salt, sugar, amino acid and citric acid. Ume Konbu Tea contains about the same density of salt (sodium) as Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS). The important point is salt. When we sweat, salt goes out from the body with water. When salt decreases, the function to store water in the body becomes weak. To prevent heat stroke, it is important to take salt as well as water. Effective timing to drink is before and after you do something making you sweat. It is better to drink it cold to cool down the body. When it is difficult to get Ume Konbu Tea, you can use sports drink or easy ORS introduced in the following article. http://www.cozyacu.com/blog/counter-measure-for-heat-stroke There is a case that heat stroke occurs even if AC is on?!Even if AC is on, the temperature of the wall doesn’t lower down easily. It is called radiation heat which is heat stored by a wall of a building exposed to sunlight during the daytime. Radiation heat releases the heat stored in large amount in the wall to the room, taking for a long time. Elderly people, drunken people or people with diabetes easily have heat stroke by radiation heat. If your bed is attached to the wall, it is important to put your bed about 5 inches away from the wall.  It is getting hot!
In the beginning of summer, it is difficult for our body to adapt to sudden elevation of the temperature because our body has not been used to it. So we have more possibility to have heat stroke. You may think that heat stroke only happens when you are outside on a hot day, but even if you are in the air conditioned room, you have a risk to have heat stroke because the temperature near the window is as high as the one outside. What happens when we have heat stroke? The lightest symptom is heat syncope which is fainting or dizziness as a result of overheating. Why does heat syncope happen when you have heat stroke? When your body temperature elevates due to the heat, blood flow on the surface of the skin increases to release the heat and the blood flow in the brain decreases, resulting in fainting. Which is better for water supply at home or in the office? (A) Water (B) Tea The answer is (A) Water. Since tea contains caffeine which has a diuretic effect, if you drink it too much, water is excreted as urine. Therefore, water is better, but the temperature of the water is also important. If the water is cold like iced water, the stomach shrinks and it becomes a burden on the stomach. The proper temperature of water is 5-15 degrees C (40-60 degrees F) because its rate of absorption is good and it is effective to cool the body. The quantity to drink at a time should be 150-250 ml (5-8.5 fl oz) and it is better to drink often. If you drink too much at a time, your body can’t absorb the water. Oral Rehydration Solution is drinking water with modest amounts of sugar and salt added, which is used to treat and prevent dehydration. Recipe of Oral Rehydration Solution you can make easily at home Mix the following materials. Water: 1 litter (1 qt) Sugar: 20-40 gram (0.7-1.4 oz) Salt: 3 gram (0.1 oz) Lemon juice: 1/2 piece (adding lemon makes it easier to drink and helps us take potassium which helps the movement of the muscles.) How to build up the body unlikely to have heat stroke Making the body easily sweat is important because the body becomes strong against heat. (1)Interval fast walking Interval fast walking is a walking exercise that fast walking and slow walking are performed alternately 3 minutes each. The purpose of Interval fast walking is to train the muscles of the legs and increase the blood flow. As a result, you will be able to return blood to the whole body, especially to the brain. Fast walking: walk with wide strides and pace to pant. Slow walking: walk with looking around like taking a walk. (2)Drink a glass of milk It is effective to drink a glass of milk within 1 hour after the interval fast walking. It helps repair the damaged muscles. If you continue the above for 10 days, you can increase the amount of blood flow. However, it is dangerous to exercise under the blazing sun, so please walk when the air temperature is low such as early in the morning or in the evening.  MMA Vol. 27 What you need to know to prevent Heat Stroke (Dehydration) is added to Home Therapy page in my website.
Do you think you just need to drink water to prevent Heat Stroke? Unfortunately, that is not enough. Please find out what more you need to do to prevent Heat Stroke. For more detail, please click the following LEARN MORE. |
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