Recognizing Signs of Hot and Cold Weather Illness
Recognizing Signs of Hot and Cold Weather Illness
Severe weather can come with tons of risks and hazards, mostly in the form of conditions brought on as a result of temperature. Most of these conditions and illnesses are fairly harmless if caught early, but if you persist and don’t do anything about them, they can quickly turn severe and can bring on many dangerous health hazards.
Hot weather conditions tend to be less harmful than cold weather ones, but they still pose a very real threat if ignored. The big things you need to watch out for in the extreme heat are heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and heat rash.
The least threating one is heat rash. Essentially, when some people get too hot outside, their sweat ducts clog up and they develop an itchy rash. This isn’t particularly dangerous, and it doesn’t require medical attention.
If you develop a heat rash, simply go inside and drink some cool water. It can, however, be an indicator that it’s too hot for you to be outside, so you should avoid going back out so that you can avoid heat exhaustion.
Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are somewhat similar, with one being far more dangerous than the other. Heat stroke requires immediate medical attention to be treated, while heat exhaustion can be taken care of by going inside, cooling off, and rehydrating.
Some of the main signs of heat exhaustion include lots of sweating, a faint feeling in your head, an upset stomach, and sometimes cramps. Heat stroke, on the other hand, involves no sweating, a harsh headache, and possible loss of consciousness.
Then, there are the cold weather conditions. There are two that you need to be careful of in most cases: hypothermia and frostbite. Both are very dangerous if unattended, and both often result from lack of proper clothing.
Early hypothermia symptoms aren’t always easy to catch. One of them is shivering, which is natural in cold weather, but you might also start to slur your words, start to feel confused or tired, and experience minor lapses in your memory.
Once it gets severe, you’ll experience poor breathing, very poor decision making skills, and no shivering. It’s crucial that hypothermia symptoms are caught early on, because once it gets severe, it can easily lead to death.
Finally, there’s frostbite. Frostbite attacks the extremities of the body, most often your fingers, toes, and nose. One of the easiest signs to spot is that your skin has a weird or unusual color.
It could become much more red, or much paler, but once it starts changing colors, you know you have to cover those body parts up. Once you catch it, warm that part of your body back up. If you caught it early enough, you’ll be fine, but if you waited a long time, there could be permanent damage and possible amputation.