Speaker 1: I refer to the Doctor. I’m talking about Dr. David Soria, the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Wellington Regional Medical Center, here to answer common health questions as we do every week on this time. And we’re talking about heat exhaustion and heat stroke today. What’s the difference, Doctor?
Dr. Soria: Well, one is more serious than the other. Heat exhaustion is when your body tends to get real dehydrated cause you’re out in the heat a little too long and you’re not keeping up with your fluids. And so, from that fluid loss you start to develop symptoms like headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness. And your temperature, though, remains normal and you’re very, very sweaty. So when this occurs, very important you stop, get in the shade, drink plenty of fluids. Heat stroke is another animal.
Speaker 1: Different story.
Dr. Soria: That is a medical emergency. That’s when your body is unable to keep up with cooling itself. You become dry, very hot. Temperature’s greater than 104. You become confused and you can even go unconscious.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Dr. Soria: So, if you see a colleague, if you work out in heat every day and you’re working, and you see a colleague that develops these types of symptoms, please call 911. But prevention is the key. Stop every 15/20 minutes have a glass of water. Go out in the shade, get out of the heat. Prevent it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Dr. Soria: You’ll be much better off, obviously.
Speaker 1: When we get to the heat stroke symptoms, time is of the essence.
Dr. Soria: You bet.
Speaker 1: Get them to a health professional. Can heat cause migraine headaches and is there a treatment for that, doctor?
Dr. Soria: You know there is. And heat is a known trigger. Matter of fact, there was a study some time back that showed, they looked at 7,000 patients, and what they found was very interesting. For every nine degrees change in temperature, so about an 8% increase in migraine trigger.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Dr. Soria: And that goes for both ways though.
Speaker 1: That’s right.
Dr. Soria: Up or down. And what they found was that it wasn’t necessarily the abrupt or the absolute temperature, it was that change. So even if you went from 60 to 70 degrees, you can actually trigger a migraine more than if you went from 90 to 95 degrees.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Dr. Soria: So the bottom line is, know your triggers.
Speaker 1: Yup.
Dr. Soria: And, know that you have to get acclimated to it, and that will prevent you that suffering in the long run.
Speaker 1: Helping us stay safe …
Dr. Soria: You bet.
Speaker 1: … here in this hot weather right in the middle of summer here. Hey, if you have a question for Dr. Soria, go to our website WPTB.com, the right-hand side, just scroll down and click there, and you can enter your question. Hopefully, Doctor can answer for you. All right. We’ll be right back after this.
