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Keeping Your Cool During the Summer Season
By Gifty Kwakye
I still remember the cold, bleak day when I first arrived in the U.S. Not having properly done my homework, I had no idea that my trip to ‘paradise’ was actually scheduled to occur during the winter season. The scruffy taxi driver who picked me up from the airport to my hotel gave me one look over, grinned and shouted over the din, “You from Africa, huh?” You would not need a rocket scientist to figure that one out since my mother had insisted I wear a matching tie-dye pant suit and tied my freshly woven braids tightly with a kente scarf. “Now you just wait for summer time to come around, missy, and it will be nice and toasty as it is in Africa,” he assured me as I rubbed my palms vigorously.
Huddled in the back seat of the cab, I played this sentence over and over in my mind, taking comfort in the knowledge that winter would pass and then it would be sunny as it was in Ghana. It was a phrase I returned to several times that winter especially on those ‘below-freezing point’ days. Then with much excitement, summer finally rolled in after a rather short spring.
But instead of the nice warmth I had anticipated, the sun scorched the earth with a vengeance made all the more unbearable by the humid New England weather. I learnt on the news that this heat could actually cause severe illnesses, especially in children and the elderly – a concept so foreign to me despite having lived in a country that received most of the sun’s direct rays all year round given its location on the equator. The reporter called it heat stroke with a milder variant known as heat exhaustion.
Heat Exhaustion
The human body is generally well equipped to handle the temperature changes we experience daily. For instance, when it is hot we sweat to help our bodies to naturally cool down. We lose quite a lot of fluids and electrolytes when we sweat, especially when we exercise or work for long periods in hot, humid environments. When we fail to adequately replenish lost fluids, we can develop a condition called heat exhaustion. People who experience heat exhaustion tend to complain about muscle cramps, headaches, weakness and thirst. They might look pale with cool moist skin, sweat profusely and feel faint or dizzy. When their temperature is taken, it usually exceeds 37.7°C (100°F). The pulse is typically fast but weak to the touch and breathing might be rapid. When not treated, heat exhaustion can easily progress to heat stroke, a more serious form of illness.
Heat Stroke
This is due to an abnormally elevated body temperature (41.1°C/106°F) resulting in both physical and neurological symptoms and can be fatal if not treated immediately. There are two general causes of heat stroke:
- the body’s inability to quickly and effectively respond to intense, hot humid temperatures
- dehydration (the body does not have enough circulating fluid to release as sweat in order to cool the internal system).
People particularly at risk of developing heat stroke include infants and the elderly; those with several chronic diseases affecting their heart, kidney and lungs; people on specific types of medications such as antihistamines for allergies; and athletes. Typical symptoms include high body temperature, dizziness, hot red or flushed skin with no sweating and difficulty breathing. Some people experience an altered mental state with confusion, hallucinations and in extreme cases, seizures, comas and even death.
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