Unexpected Cause of Heat Stroke

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.

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