Fifty million Americans in ten western states are under extreme heat warnings. Hundreds of daytime highs and nighttime highs have already been broken, as a dome of high pressure camps out over the western U.S. Utilities from Texas to California, Arizona to Wyoming are warning folks of possible brownouts.
Yes, this is an energy conservation news site, and yes I encourage everybody to raise their thermostat, close the blinds, and take advantage of evaporative cooling from fans. Drink lots of water to stay hydrated, don’t go barefoot on hot asphalt, and wear high-SPF sunblock whenever you’re outside during the day.
The health issues are usually neglected, other than the bare minimum. However, your body has by far the most efficient cooling system on the planet. It’s called sweat. If you park yourself in a swimming pool, that water will extract 1 calorie of heat for every gram of water per degree centigrade. If you get wet and stand in front of a fan, that water evaporating off your skin extracts 540 times as much heat (540 calories per gram of water per degree).
Physiologically, there’s a fine mesh of very small blood vessels right under the skin. When it’s hot outside, those blood vessels get larger so that more blood flows to the surface of your skin, releasing heat. (When it’s very cold, those same capillaries contract and reduce the flow of blood, creating an insulating layer from the cold.) Sweating adds the awesome power of evaporative cooling, and brings your core temperature down very fast and very efficiently.
Sitting in front of a fan moves the air that’s been heated up away from your body and accelerates the whole process.
The problem is that with age those capillaries don’t function so well. They don’t expand in response to heat, so even if you do sweat, your core temperature drops more slowly, if at all. One cheap and effective remedy is to take folic acid pills (or eat lots of citrus fruits), which invigorates those capillaries in no time at all. Scientific studies have shown that folic acid pills can be a very effective remedy during heat waves, to help the elderly cope.
When I read about the benefits of folic acid, I started taking folic acid pills a couple of years ago. I noticed an immediate improvement in my heat tolerance (and later, cold tolerance in the winter) ~ even though I already was drinking a big glass of orange juice every morning (half fresh squeezed). As with all new medications, even vitamins and minerals; it’s okay to try them, but if you don’t notice any effect after a week or two, stop. That’s my rule of thumb, on the recommendation of my VA doctors.
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Excerpted from Going Green, available as an eBook at this list of eBook retailers online.