A few months ago I wrote about a heatstroke my wife suffered and how useful my training (25 years ago) in CPR turned out to be. I remembered enough to start her breathing again quickly and called the local doctor (the Mexican ambulance never came). I continue to advise people to take a First Aid and CPR course. You never know when you may need it.

The American Heart Association offers a website that will give you the location of the nearest classes on the basis of your ZIP code.

As a good Blog- and Desicritic I started up the old search engine and began to research heat-related illnesses: heat exhaustion and heat stroke. They are, I learned, more prevalent and more dangerous than we tend to know since they are not as popular as heart attack, diabetes, cancer, and all those telethon, TV-ad-campaign diseases. Like heart attack and some other serious diseases, they are preventable. They are also treatable. However, if they are not prevented and not rapidly treated they can cause serious problems or death.

With the hot months coming (let alone global warming), children will be playing hard in the sun, athletes, runners, and players of various hot sports will be doing their things. They are at risk.

The elderly, those with serious diseases, and those whose immune systems are impaired are also at risk.

There are two basic varieties of heat-related illnesses: exertional and classic. In an excellent article on Emedicine.com, Dr. Jason Hoppe explains the types:

Heatstroke traditionally is divided into exertional and classic varieties, which are defined by the underlying etiology but are clinically indistinguishable. Exertional heatstroke typically occurs over hours in younger athletic patients who exercise at elevated temperatures for a sufficient period of time to cause the rate of heat production to exceed the capacity of the body to dissipate heat. Classic heatstroke more commonly develops during heat waves when air temperatures exceed 102.5°F (39.2°C) for 3 or more consecutive days in older or debilitated patients who are unable to avoid extreme environmental conditions. In both cases, thermoregulatory mechanisms fail if the stress becomes too great, which results in accelerated hyperthermia with an increased expression of heat shock proteins, an exaggerated acute-phase response, and end-organ dysfunction.

The problems can be avoided by acclimatizing the body to the hot temperatures and the need for sweating, increasing fluid intake and increased cardio-vascular performance. However there is no acclimating "... in chronically ill patients or patients with cardiovascular disease. Patients on medications that cause salt and water depletion or impair physiologic cardiovascular responses are at an increased susceptibility to heat injury."

... According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1979-2002, a total of 4,780 heat-related deaths in the United States were attributable to weather conditions and that, during 1993-2002, the incidence of such deaths was 3-7 times greater in Arizona than in the United States overall. The exact number of persons seeking treatment for heat-related disorders is not recorded but reaches the thousands.