This Is What Heat Stroke Does To Your Body

Temperatures were in the 100s when Vanessa Dunn, a 29-year-old Los Angeles-based makeup artist, was driving back home to California from Virginia last summer. After hours on the road and drinking limited water, she was struck by a severe case of dehydration and heat stroke. ”I wasn’t drinking enough water because I didn’t want to stop to pee,” she says. When she finally pulled over for the night she felt light-headed, and she couldn’t keep food down when she tried to eat. She even threw up blood. ”I was in incredible pain, and dizzy,” she says. “[I went] to the ER, turned out there was blood because my throat was so dry.” Her story is not unusual. In 2014, more than 13,000 people visited the emergency room because of a heat-related illness such as heat stroke, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. And on average, about 675 people die in the U.S. every year from heat-related illnesses. Heat stroke is the most severe form of heat-related illness. It’s less common than other issues such as heat exhaustion (characterized by heavy sweating, weakness, cold, pale or clammy skin, fainting, a fast or weak pulse, and nausea or vomiting) or heat syncope (fainting). But heat stroke can happen quickly, to anyone, and can result in irreversible damage or death. function onPlayerReadyVidible(e){'undefined'!=typeof HPTrack&&HPTrack.Vid.Vidible_track(e)}!function(e,i){if(e.vdb_Player){if('object'==typeof com...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news