Why Heat Waves Kill So Quickly
It's been a sweltering week for many in the northern hemisphere. Temperatures in parts of England rose past 104 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday , a record never before seen in the country, while more than 100 million Americans were under excessive heat warnings as of Tuesday evening. The heat is not just uncomfortable. It can be deadly.
Part of the insidiousness of heat-related deaths is how quickly they can happen. Older individuals are more at risk, often because their cardiovascular systems are less resilient to the strain caused by excess heat, according to a 2014 article in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise . But in extreme enough temperatures, even young, physically fit people can succumb quickly.
The medical term for excessive body heat is hyperthermia. The first phase is heat exhaustion, a condition marked by heavy sweat, nausea, vomiting and even fainting. The pulse races, and the skin goes clammy. Muscle cramping can be an early sign of heat exhaustion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
These leaky toxins trigger a massive inflammatory response in the body, so massive that the attempt to fight off the toxins damages the body's own tissues and organs. It can be hard to tell what damage is caused directly by heat and what is caused by the secondary effects of toxins, according to Wilderness Medicine. Muscle cells break down, spilling their contents into the bloodstream and overloading the kidneys, which in turn start to fail, a condition called rhabdomyolysis.
In the case of a hiker on a trail, there may not be time to get to a spot that's cool enough to reverse the damage. Similarly, people who live in urban areas and lack air conditioning may end up disabled in their own homes, unable to get help before they die from heat stroke. "They tend to find themselves socially isolated," Keller said."And that's really, far and away, the biggest risk factor for dying during a heat wave."
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