My best friend called me last night and
told me that after their basketball game
one of our really good friends had a heat
stroke. She was fine threw the whole game,
but after the whole team got into the
locker room she started feeling really
dizzy, throwing up, and ended up passing
out and they had to call an ambulance and
rushed her to the hospital. What confuses
me is that she's a really healthy person.
What exactly is a heat stroke?
How in the world can someone have a heat
stroke in the winter?
Will she recover ? And when ?
Heat stroke is a condition where body
surfers from both increased body
temperature (hyperthermia) and shock due
to water loss (dehydration). When body
exposed to any heat (not only from the
sun) that intend to increase body
temperature above normal (hyperthermia),
body mobilizes certain thermo-regulatory
mechanisms that will keep the body
temperature in normal range. The most
important mechanism for preventing
hyperthermia is sweating. Sweating by
itself does not prevent hyperthermia but
evaporation of the sweat on body's surface
decreases the body's temperature and
neutralizes temperature increase. This
means that sweating won't be efficient if
there is no evaporation. Evaporation can
be disturbed if air's humidity is too big
(no ventilation) or person wears improper
clothes. Sweating spends body's water so
it requires water intake. If water intake
is not enough body will loss to much water
and go into hypovolemic shock. Sweating
will also stop and body temperature will
increase (hyperthermia). This condition,
dehydration plus hyperthermia is called
heat stroke.
This means that heat stroke can happen
whenever there is heat exposure, high air
humidity, intensive physical efforts and
reduced water intake.
Recovery depends from the heat stroke
severity.
How is your friend now?
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This page was last updated on June 11, 2008
