Thursday, June 23, 2011

Death By Heat Exhaustion... in Bed

Sleeping at 29C and 70% humidity is not pleasant.

I can sort of understand why so many elderly people die of heat exhaustion and dehydration in their own homes during the summer here. There are several contributing factors here that I thought I would share with you:

1. People here turn all the fans off at night because they believe here that blowing air over you with a fan will kill you.
2. They also don't use the AC like we do in the outside world; they tend to turn it OFF at night.
3. Then they close their windows and shutters at night (privacy?), so the place turns into a low-temp oven.
4. The standard drink here is tea, not water, so the diuretic tea enhances water-loss, thus contributing to a lack of fluids, which can exacerbate the heat exhaustion issue.
5. Old habits die hard.
6. The high humidity prevents the skin from breathing, causing higher temperatures to rise in the body (even if only a fraction of a degree, but that fraction can be a killer).
7. Elderly people often lose the body's ability to control temperature through sweating. But not me! Gah!

I don't like waking up in the early morning with my body feeling totally itchy and oily, but that's life. *guzzle guzzle peeeeeeeeee*

I love you!
Cam

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