Oral rehydration salts (ORS)
Oral rehydration salts (ORS)
When sweating has been heavy for hours, plain water is not enough on its own. Salt matters too.
Healthy Environment
Health in Hot Weather
Heat, hydration and cool skin.
Indian summers are getting hotter, and heat is a genuine and rising cause of death - one that is almost entirely preventable with information.
Staying ahead of it
Drink before you are thirsty; thirst is a late signal. Stay out of direct sun between about eleven and four. Loose, light cotton. And where sweating is heavy for hours, plain water alone is not enough - salt matters too, which is what nimbu-paani with salt and sugar, ORS, chaas and coconut water are all doing.
Take particular care of the people most at risk: infants, adults over sixty-five, anyone working outdoors, pregnant women, and people with heart or kidney disease. Some medicines - diuretics and several psychiatric drugs among them - reduce the body's ability to handle heat.
Know the two stages
Heat exhaustion: heavy sweating, weakness, dizziness, nausea, headache, cramps, clammy skin. Move to shade, lie down, cool the skin, sip fluids with salt. This usually resolves.
Heatstroke: temperature above about 40°C, confusion or altered behaviour, skin that may be hot and dry with sweating stopped, collapse. This is a medical emergency. Call for help, move them to shade, remove excess clothing and cool them aggressively with water and airflow while you wait.
When someone overheating stops sweating and starts talking oddly, the situation has changed. That is the moment to call for help, not to wait.
Never
Never leave a child or an animal in a parked car, even briefly. Interior temperatures rise fast enough to kill within minutes.
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