"It depends on the individual," says Lewis Halsey, a professor of environmental physiology at the University of Roehampton in the U.K. How hot is too hot?Įxperts say there's no absolute temperature at which extreme heat can turn dangerous. If your core body temperature rises to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, Jay says, that's where you risk heatstroke. Jay says the goal is to cool down so you don't progress to severe heat exhaustion, where you might start vomiting or seem to lose coordination – signs of neurological disturbance. Immersing your feet in cold water can also help. Drink plenty of water and wet your clothes and skin. If that happens, Jay says, get out of the heat and into the shade or indoors ASAP. Watch for the first signs of mild heat exhaustion: More than 80 million people have been under heat warnings, as relentless temperatures continue to bake the western and southern U.S. "People with kidney disorders can be at greater risk of a negative health outcome during extreme heat exposure," Jay says. That can strain your heart and your kidneys. And if you don't replenish those fluids, you get dehydrated and your blood volume shrinks, which makes it harder to maintain blood pressure. People can sweat as much as a liter and half per hour, Jay says. The third deadly danger has to do with the fluids your body is losing in extreme heat. Those spikes in the heart rate can be triggers for a heart attack, he says, especially for the elderly and those with underlying heart conditions. So now you're asking the heart to do a lot more work," Jay says. "We might have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, all of a sudden, we might be asking the heart to contract 100 times per minute, 110 times per minute. Your heart has to pump faster – which can make you feel lightheaded – to keep your blood pressure up. The second way people die in high heat also has to do with your body pumping more blood to the skin. "And at that point, it's pretty irreversible," Jay adds. Those clots can lead to multiple organ failure. And the white blood cells are going to attack this contamination in the blood, creating coagulation" – or blood clots, Mora says. "They say, Oh my God, we're getting attacked right now. And that sets off a cascade of effects that ultimately result in death," Jay says.įor example, those toxins can activate white blood cells, says Camilo Mora, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has researched how heat can turn fatal. "So, nasty things like endotoxins that usually reside and stay inside the gut start leaking out of the gut, entering the circulation. If these conditions go on long enough, your gut can become more permeable. But that means less blood and less oxygen are going to your gut. When your body is exposed to heat, it will try to cool itself down by redirecting more blood to the skin, says Ollie Jay, a professor of heat and health at the University of Sydney, where he directs the Heat and Health Research Incubator. But when it's very humid out, that sweat won't evaporate as well and cool you down. When the surrounding temperatures approach your internal body temperature – which is about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for most of us – your body starts to cool off through evaporative cooling, better known as sweating.
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