🔥 Is it heat exhaustion or heat stroke? 🔥

Jay ValenciaContributor - August 14, 2020

Advice

I’ve read a few articles about the heat wave some of us are currently living with. It’s not super bad where I am, but it’s definitely not fun. I found this while looking for warning signs since I’ve been wearing a mask so often.

Got any hot weather tips?

I’ve heard spicy food is actually a good idea to stay cool?

9  

Unless you’re actually in a daze and collapsing, probably exhaustion. A mask will have an incredibly small effect on this. A hat with a decent brim and a space of air, like in a cowboy hat, not a baseball cap, would make a really massive difference. heat stroke is really bad short term, and long term. met a man that got heat stroke at one point in his life, his skin was greyish and body temperture was permanently lowered because of it. I cant image thats good for your organs.

 

Never knew about the space of air thing with cowboy hats. I’m guessing bigger bucket style hats work the same way?

 

Yes. The material and moreso the air will insulate you against of the energy radiated from the sun away from your head and neck. Much like the top of a tree while standing in the shade, though to a much lesser degree. Another massive part of it is that your body will sweat, instead of getting absorbed into the fabric and sticking against you, it has somewhere it can evaporate too. a lot of people on the equator, middle east, north africa, india, horn of africa, wear light hoods and robes for this reason. light and spacious clothing does a lot against the sun.

 

That’s really helpful. I genuinely wonder if clothing styles will change a little in the US over the next few decades if temps keep going up. Less yoga pants and more flowing clothes like you described?

 

What are some good lightweight fabrics that allow good air flow? Are you going to want natural or synthetic materials?

 

I find natural is a better choice, cotton is OK, thin linen is preferred, unless you’re looking for a sun screening shirt (factor 30 or 50 fabrics etc…) that will stop you from burning but they don’t breath as well though

I usually have a wide brimmed hat and a shemagh scarf to keep the sun off my neck and back

 

 I don’t even know if I own any linen clothing, I’ll have to take a look. Thank you for your comment LadyKaos.

 

NP 🙂 linen is annoyingly hard to get because cotton is cheaper so clothing manufacturers use it instead, I think it’s a shame because in my experience linen is slightly more hard wearing

linen does breath slightly better but if you can’t get it cotton is a very close second best

 

I’ve had good luck finding all linen knit tops at TJ Max, best to get a size larger as they shrink & looser is better. They wear well and knit ones don’t wrinkle as much. I agree it’s cooler than cotton.