Let’s talk a bit of hot weather medicine today. This will be a two part series discussing heat exhaustion and heat stroke. In addition, try out this no bake coconut notmeal for those of you who want to try something different, love coconut or need to limit carbs.

As the warm weather continues to climb, I think it’s a good idea to talk a bit about the heat. The heat itself can cause first heat exhaustion, but this can progress into a heat stroke. These next couple of posts will delve more into the each of these topics.

Today, we’ll start with heat exhaustion. The information that I am providing is not all inclusive, but hits some of the basics.

The primary way your body cools itself is by sweating.  When heat exhaustion occurs, it is because your body is unable, or no longer able to cool itself. Often, people have lost a lot of water through evaporative cooling (sweating) and are not re-hydrating leading to dehydration.

Risk Factors

There are a lot of risk factors that include certain medications, diseases etc, but we’ll just go over a few of the more basic ones.

• Elderly- especially those who don’t have air conditioning!
• Children
• Obesity
• High heat index
• Exertional
  • this can even be for those who are fit. This can be exercise, or with your work.
• Alcohol consumption-especially if you are outdoors in the heat
• Any thing that either doesn’t allow you to sweat, or makes you sweat too much and you don’t replace what you’ve lost.

Signs

• Headache
• Lightheadedness
• Fatigue/lethargy/weakness
• Cool, pale, sweaty skin
• Nausea/vomiting
• Muscle cramps
• Normal mental status and behavior

What to do if you notice these symptoms

-These are some basic measures you can take for yourself, or for someone who you believe is having heat exhaustion

• Move to a cooler place if possible.
• Cool with anything possible
  • Ice packs (try back of neck, knees, armpits, forehead), drinking cold water/ice water, fan, air conditioning etc.
• Hydrate. As above with cool/iced water/sports drinks.
• Remove restrictive clothing, shoes and hats to help further cool.
• Lay down

If symptoms don’t begin to resolve and last longer than an hour then it may be wise to get checked out by the emergency room.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. If you believe you, or someone else if having these problems, and are uncertain if it is this, or something worse please get yourself/them to the emergency department for further examination/treatment. My next post will be about heat stroke (emergency), which will help to differentiate between the two conditions.

Meanwhile, try out this no-bake triple coconut notmeal to help keep you cool.

Here are two other ones if you are interested! (Click in the blank space next to the picture to be taken to the recipe)

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Triple Coconut Notmeal [Clean, Vegan, LC, GF]

Servings 1 bowl

Author AZ@...And A Dash of Cinnamon

Ingredients

• 3 T coconut flour
• 1 T psyllium husk powder
• 1 t coconut oil
• 1 T unsweetened coconut toasted
• few dashes cinnamon
• liquid of choice

Instructions

1. Toast your coconut with your preferred method.

   
   

2. Meanwhile, mix your coconut flour, psyllium husk powder, cinnamon in a bowl

3. Add your wet ingredients including the coconut oil and liquid of choice until you get to your desired consistency

4. Top right then with your toasted coconut and eat right then, or chill in the fridge and top with coconut after.

Recipe Notes

-I use a sandwich maker to toast my coconut. You can use your oven, skillet, toaster oven, etc. Whatever your preferred method, just keep an eye on it since it doesn't take long to toast.

 

-I generally use water as my liquid of choice, but you can use coconut milk to make this even more coconutty! Or whatever your preferred liquid is. I put a bit in and stir before deciding to add more. Remember coconut flour takes up a lot of water, so you'll likely need more than you think. 

 

-I generally add liquid until it is of baby food consistency and then refridgerate it and it gets even thicker. By placing in the fridge, the coconut oil will solidify and give it an additional texture since you can bite through those oil droplet pieces. It's like something to crunch on, but I'm a texture person so I really like that. If you don't then I don't suggest placing it in the fridge.

 

I link up with Deborah and Sarah’s, and running on happy’s/ the fit foodie mama’s Meatless Monday, #recipeoftheweek, Best of the Blogosphere, Homestead Blog Hop, The Homstead Hop,glutenfreefridays,  #healthyveganfridays,  What’s for Dinner, Sunday Fitness and Food, GraciousPantry