Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Miriam, your host for this episode, and today I will be talking with James about dealing with extreme heat, a topic that is going to become increasingly relevant for all of us until it abruptly stops being an issue for some reason. And on that note, let's hear a jingle from one of the other podcasts on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. Do do do.
I'd say burn it down!
From Embers, anarchist perspectives from the territory currently occupied by the Canadian state. Find us wherever you get your podcasts or on the Channel Zero Network. James, what did you think of that jingle? Was it—
That's a great jingle. Yeah, I really appreciated it. Ah, I see what you did there. Yep. Uh, yeah, very, very cool. Uh, which is not the topic of today's episode.
That's correct. The topic of today's episode is the other, the other thing. Um, yeah, for some reason, we at Strangers thought that it might be a good idea to discuss dealing with extreme heat. Um, it's summer and also it's climate change. So, yep. Do you, uh, you have any experience of extreme heat?
I do have some extreme heat experience, uh, a fair amount, I guess. I live in a place where it gets very hot, as we all do. It's called planet Earth. I spend a lot of time in the desert, uh, where it gets very, very hot. I've also spent a lot of time in jungles where it gets very humid and hot. I like to visit jungles for work. And I have had various kinds of heat-related medical issues over my life. Just used to be a bike racer. That used to be my job.
I was gonna say, you've probably had all of them. Like all of the heat-related issues a person can have. Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
I've had some pretty— aside from like the ones that result in death. But yeah, I haven't had heat syncope. I don't remember having that one. But yeah, I have had pretty gnarly heat stroke to the point where I was confused, nauseous, dizzy, really kind of out of it. That was a pretty rough day. I would recommend avoiding that. Don't combine heat stroke with waterborne illness. Yeah, it's a good way to be in a bad way.
Sure.
Yeah. Oh yeah, don't do that.
Okay, well, um, so what I was thinking was I have quite a bit of experience as a street medic and have dealt with my own and others' heat-related emergencies. So I want to give like a little bit of the sort of, here's what this looks like when it's happening to you or other people, and then kind of over to you on like how we can prepare ourselves and each other for dealing with this.
Yep.
So the first thing is that you will hear people talk about heat exhaustion and heat stroke as 2 different things. And as with all binaries, you will be shocked to learn that I really think of it as more of a spectrum. Because what we're talking about from a medical perspective is your body is getting too hot and is struggling to maintain its regular internal temperature, also called thermoregulation. And when we are talking about going from heat exhaustion to heat stroke, we are really just talking about the body increasingly failing to thermoregulate and going into severe distress as it fails to keep your temperature to a reasonable range. So what you will see is in earlier stages, you will see the body do something that will try to cool it down. Like, for example, sweating. That is like very popular physical response to heat is to sweat. And that can get worse and worse until sweat is basically pouring off of someone. It depends on the individual, of course, but When we really want to be worried is when the person stops sweating, right? Because that is when the body is no longer able to maintain that process that is trying to cool the person down. So let's kind of look at the getting too hot process. This is obviously all going to vary from person to person and from day to day. Some things that can affect the process include different medications.
Mm-hmm.
Different life stages, young children and older people are going to go into heat emergencies much more quickly. There's lots of other factors, but it is pretty individual.
Mm-hmm.
But in the really early stages, I think it's useful to think about what your body is trying to do to cool you down. The main things is going to be bringing more blood to the skin surface, so you get that really flushed, hot skin.
Yeah.
And sweat, which is the body trying to use evaporative cooling to cool down your skin, your blood, and ultimately your core body temperature. And the thing about evaporative cooling, which I think everybody is familiar with, right? Like, if you're going swimming and you're like, doo-doo-doo, this is great, and then you get out of the water and you're like, I'm freezing, it's because evaporative cooling is like the most efficient form of cooling.
Yeah. So your body's trying to do that, But it's why people can get hypothermic on a jet ski, even on a hot day at the beach.
Ah, okay. So what's the physics explanation for why people on jet skis become so bad at operating a jet ski and make only terrible decisions?
I think that's more of a biology explanation. It has its root in 7 beers. You know, 7 beers, listen to a Jimmy Buffett album, get on the jet ski.
I once watched a jet skier try to ride the bow wave of a cruise ship that was attempting to leave harbor.
Yeah, why not? The spirit of the 1980s lives on every time someone gets in a jet ski, I feel like.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I don't know if the overlap between our audience and jet ski enjoyers is very high, but—
I hope not. Back when I was working on boats, if the person standing up at the bow watching for things that could get in our way in the harbor. We had a number of hand signals. It was pretty common to have hand signals for different types of things that might be in our way. And one guy I worked with stopped using the regular hand signal for jet ski, which was this. I'm just miming the hand signal. It doesn't matter, audio listeners.
Yeah.
And just started doing like a pumping a pump-action shotgun and pointing it at the— in the direction of the jet ski. Yeah. People, people working on boats do not care for jet skis. Sorry. This is my, my maritime bias showing.
Hmm.
Anyway, yes, evaporative cooling, very efficient, but it doesn't work if the water, if the sweat can't evaporate, right? So if it is very humid, if the air is not moving, the water does not evaporate, the sweat does not evaporate, and you stay hot. The moisture just sits against your skin. So being wet is not by itself going to cool down. So this hypothetical person, you or somebody around you, as they get increasingly hot, their skin is feeling flushed, they're sweating a lot. And then one of the first things you're going to see when you, when things start to go wrong for this person, right? Because feeling flushed and sweaty is like pretty normal for it being hot. One of the first signs that things are not normal, that things are going badly, is muscle cramps. And this is a product of sweating, but it's, it's not exactly dehydration, it's electrolyte imbalance. Basically, electrolytes do all kinds of work in muscle cells, and without it, your muscles start freaking out a bit, and cramps, spasm, pain, and tightness are all signs that your body is no longer doing great with this heat. The effort that your body is making to cool you down are starting to have negative effects for the rest of your body. As your electrolytes get depleted.
Yeah.
And now we're moving into what's known as heat exhaustion, and it's named because one of the symptoms is feeling really tired. You can also feel dizzy, your vision may go in and out, you may get a headache, also related to dehydration, you may feel weak and sluggish, and if you're able to take your pulse, it may be going rapidly, which for an average adult at rest means more than 100 At this point, this person needs help.
Mm-hmm.
They need to be gotten into some shade, somewhere cool. They need to rehydrate, ideally with electrolytes, and they need to cool down with evaporative cooling. So like fanning them, getting as much of their skin exposed as possible, as well as more directly through cool cloths or ice packs being put at pulse points, such as under the arms, along the neck, and in the groin. And then I'm always kind of low-key mad about how aggressively electrolytes are marketed at people, but this is a case where you need electrolytes, actually.
Yeah. I mean, I think there are times when you need electrolytes and times when you don't. A lot of times you can get plenty of electrolytes from consuming salty foods, eating salt in your diet. When you do need electrolytes, you generally need sodium. It's like you're not, in most cases, getting potassium depleted, or magnesium, or whatever, which I think some of the fancier electrolytes really push different magnesium formulations specifically.
Yeah. My understanding of magnesium is that as a supplement, it works great for migraine prevention, and everything else there's not a lot of evidence for.
Yeah. I'm not particularly well-versed in that. I can remember just from years of exercise being my job, the sodium concentration per litre is what we looked at to determine the A, the amount you're going to absorb, right? And that's different. You can have your sweat rate tested. I don't think this is something most people need to do because actually the amount of sodium in your sweat changes a lot depending on what you're doing, what you're eating, and a lot of other factors. And so like that was the meta maybe 10 years ago. Even then, right? Like if you look at what people are doing in resource-constrained settings when they're doing medicine, people use like oral rehydration solution or WHO solution. which you can formulate yourself very cheaply. You don't necessarily need to be going and buying, like, I know it's one called LMNT, which doesn't have any vowels, which is annoying to me. You also don't need to be consuming a bunch of artificial sweeteners at that time. And in fact, it's kind of counterproductive. Like, they can cause stomach upset. Like, it's just fine to have a little bit of sugar. It's nice. Yeah. Sugar helps your stomach empty.
Very few people on the planet need zero sugar. Yeah.
And it makes your drink palatable. And it, like, a certain amount of sugar, which is not zero, will encourage gastric emptying from what I understand. And so like, it's very hard actually to find like products that are marketed for rehydration that do not contain artificial sweeteners. It's also very easy to make your own, which is generally what I do with a little packet of sodium citrate. But in general, I think it can be easy to overassume the importance of electrolytes in these kind of scenarios. If you're out exercising, right, and if you're a salty sweater, which means maybe you see white streaks on your clothes, and that's me, right? I have a picture of me. We got lost on a mountain bike ride a few years ago out in the mountains, and we literally wandered into a stranger's cabin going, water.
Like you're in a Far Side cartoon.
Yeah, exactly. We wandered into— we were in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, and this person very kindly gave us some water and some watermelon. But I look like a tie-dye, but I'm not. It's just the salt, the crusted salt from my sweat on the black cycling jersey I was wearing. So if that's you, yeah, think about replenishing some of that salt when you're exercising. But if you're just like, trying to exist in a world that's getting warmer and warmer, you don't need to be going to buy Liquid IV all the time necessarily.
Yeah. Especially because Liquid IV pisses me off personally because it's not a liquid and is not for IV administration.
Yeah. Don't be IVing yourself.
It really annoys me that it's called that. Yeah. Don't put it in your vein. It's a powder.
Yeah. And also all IVs are liquid. It doesn't distinguish it from other IVs. Even if it were an IV. Someone's giving you a solid IV. Go to a Yeah, yeah, if you survive.
I do want to, while we're on the subject of electrolytes, and I mentioned earlier that certain medications will make people more vulnerable to heat emergencies, and one of the ones I want to highlight is one that is often taken by a lot of people, but specifically trans girls take spironolactone quite often.
Oh yeah.
Spironolactone is going to increase your risk of dehydration in Situations where dehydration is likely, and it is especially going to increase your loss of sodium and retention of potassium. So as James mentioned, you probably don't need to supplement with potassium. And in, in the case of spironolactone, you particularly don't need to do that, but you do need to supplement your sodium. You, you may need to supplement your sodium. So, you know, I'm not like handing out I'm obviously not qualified to hand out medical advice here, but like, if somebody is on that particular medication, that is somebody who should be taking a little bit of extra care to make sure that they're staying hydrated and salinated.
Yeah.
But there's others. There's like so many, but like, that's just one that I think comes up a lot in our community. And when I say our community, I mean cool people.
That's right. I know that like, Another big predisposing factor is already having had heat illness before. Mm-hmm.
And specifically getting sunburn is also going to make you much more vulnerable. If your skin is already burned, you're going to thermoregulate badly because thermoregulation is one of your skin's jobs, and it is going to do it less well if it— if like 40% of it is covered with second-degree burns.
Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, I've had, uh, I've had pretty gnarly sunburn before and, uh, it does. When I— another bike story. God, it's bike stories with James today. I had previously been cycling with my apparel and stuff provided by one brand, and then I transitioned to another brand of sponsored apparel and the sleeves about an inch shorter on the new one.
Mm-hmm.
At that time, I was cycling around the, uh, the border of the country of Rwanda. about a week. And, uh, I had like, like partial thickness burns over that 1 inch of my arm. It was not—
That border region, in this case, the border of where your sleeve is.
Oh yeah. Um, no, that, that, uh, don't mess around with that stuff. Um, and I know like one of the things that I think people do, and maybe I wouldn't, is People look for UPF a lot in clothing.
Mm.
When we're dealing with heat. And I understand why, right? Because it's nice to have, like, not to have to be putting cream on yourself all the time. It's annoying and greasy, and I get it. But I have generally found that higher UPF garments are less breathable, because often they're achieving that UPF just with a tighter weave.
Right.
Yeah, that makes sense. A lot of times it can be tempting to be like, oh, well, this shirt is UPF 50. Yeah, a plastic bag is also UPF 50 or UPS whatever, 100. Generally, I prefer just to use sun cream, especially when I'm in the desert. It's because I'm doing water drops, and therefore most of the time I'm going to have a bag covering half my body anyway. Right. So that's going to do a pretty good job of blocking out the sun. And so I can then sun cream the other areas. Oh God. So I've thought of another bike jersey anecdote. I don't know if I should tell. I had at one point a sponsorship that involved wearing a white jersey with a number of corporate logos on it. The sun could get through the white part better than the black part. So I had the logos burned onto my body. Ooh.
Yeah. That's, I feel like they should have paid you extra for that.
Right. Because I'm repping them all the time. Even, yeah. Even when, when I'm at the pool. Um, in the shower, et cetera.
But how long did that take to go away? Because those like weird tan lines, that could— those can last you.
Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I think I'm still like, uh, for most of my adult life I've had like, uh, when you're cycling, you wear very tight shorts that are held up by like stretchy suspenders.
When you cycle, I, I just wear my regular clothes.
Yeah. Yeah. This is, uh, yeah, sure. This is a niche subset of cyclists. Uh, those suspenders underneath your jersey, I have had that tan line on my body for a year. Cycling gloves. I used to wear a pair of gloves in contravention of apparel agreements that had love and hate written across the knuckles. I'd get those burned into my hands on occasion.
It's kind of badass, actually.
Yeah, right. Joe Strummer wrote a song about it.
To get us back on topic, We've reached the point where we're dealing with heat exhaustion. More than talking about like the point at which this becomes heat stroke, I want to focus on the point at which this becomes go to the hospital, right? Versus go to air conditioning.
Mm-hmm.
And one of the things that is, I mean, a real tipping point is nausea is a very common sign of heat exhaustion.
Mm-hmm.
If the nausea is preventing the person from drinking water, they need to go to the hospital. If they start vomiting, they need to have already gone to the hospital. Like, that is a real emergency because obviously you're dehydrating faster.
Yeah.
Nausea is a warning sign. If somebody is starting to get nauseous, start to think about, are they able to rehydrate themselves in the traditional way? And if not, please get them to somebody who can rehydrate them intravenously.
Yeah.
Not using Liquid IV brand electrolytes, but an actual bag of a liquid IV. If they are dizzy, that is another warning sign because losing consciousness is what follows that. And if somebody is unconscious, they cannot drink liquids. And if somebody is less conscious, like they're kind of in and out, maybe they seem kind of drunk, maybe they like are not able to like fully keep their eyes open or keep their head up, it is dangerous to try to give them liquids because they could choke on them.
Mm-hmm.
So if somebody is at that point, that is also, they are past the point where they need to be at medical care. So that is, that is a situation where you should really be trying to get them to some kind of actual care situation. Another thing to look for, the sign that, that heat stroke is here, is when the person is no longer able to sweat. when their skin becomes dry, that is again a true sign that an emergency is happening. The body is not able to thermoregulate on their own. So that is the point, those are the points where it is dangerous to get to, or it is dangerous to allow this person to, or to continue with this person not going to the hospital. If they are unconscious, do not try to give them anything to drink. Choking is more immediately dangerous than dehydration in this situation, because choking prevents you from breathing. The thing to do is to put the person in recovery position and call 911 if somebody has lost consciousness due to heat. Recovery position is on your side. There's more to it than that, but on your side is a good start so that if they vomit, the vomit will drain out of their mouth. Yeah.
Yeah. You don't want to be choking above. There are like active cooling measures. that generally you will facilitate the person getting to a medical professional who will do the active cooling measures. I think it's probably the best way to talk about that rather than describing active cooling with ice packs. Unless you want to talk about those.
Yeah. No, you talk about that. You brought it up. Let's talk about active cooling with ice packs.
Yeah. So that is a thing, right? You'll see this if it's a sporting event and it's very hot, right? And they're concerned about people. That is done, like, it's not something to just be randomly doing, I would say. You don't want to just be dumping people in ice. It's to be done with a degree of, I guess, medical training, or at least understanding of what's happening here. So the way that's generally done is with ice packs on the groin and the neck, and sometimes the armpits, I think.
Mm-hmm.
These areas where you have a lot of blood flow. the goal is to drop someone's core temperature as rapidly as possible with that. And that's what you're trying to do, right? With the understanding that you can— the temperature will continue going down after the person— after the— especially the person's like fully in an ice bath, that the temperature will continue going down after they come out. And you can get rebound hypothermia, especially when that person's like already exhausted. Yeah, right. Let's say they've done an endurance exercise event in the heat, right? That they're really Their ability to regulate and maintain their body temperature is somewhat depleted to begin with, I guess. And so when you are doing that, there is generally a guideline for the body temperature, and this is core body temperature at which to remove them. If you want to get more detail about that, the way I learned about this was through taking a wilderness first responder course, which I think is a really good medical course for someone who's not practicing medicine professionally. Yeah.
I took that a long time ago and found it really useful. You definitely learn things that you would not use in a non-wilderness context, but a lot of what you learn is really useful. And of course, if you are going into a wilderness context, it's really useful.
Yeah. And the way they define wilderness context is by your distance from definitive care. So if, for instance, you are in a natural disaster, you could be in a wilderness context in an urban area. If the provision of 911 services where you live is shite and you live more than a short drive from a hospital, you could be in a wilderness context. So it's a useful thing for people who are interested in preparedness, even if you yourself do not spend a great deal of time in literal federally designated wilderness.
I think the way they define wilderness for the context is like more than 2 hours away from assistance.
2 hours from definitive care. Yeah. That's the definition a lot of people work with.
So you can be abruptly in wilderness. Yeah, if there's a hurricane, you know, in your area.
I mean, I remember a time a couple of years ago here where San Diego is a city run by fools. And so we have a stadium here, recently built stadium, doesn't have a roof. Now the issue with that is that it's also a sunny place and it's getting hotter and hotter. So when they opened that stadium, a number of people were suffering with heatstroke. I dare say that people were also drinking and that probably made them more predisposed, right? But they had a situation there where they were like, it was wild, but they were running the ambulances on just like on a rotating chain of just pumping people. Like, simply 911 services being overstretched and underfunded could result in you being in a quote unquote wilderness context. So like, I highly recommend that course. It's not cheap, It's something like 80 hours of instruction. It's a lot of time, but if it's something that you're interested in and it's important to you to take care of other people, it is very much worth your time if you're able to spend that time and money.
I just realized, I think what I took was not Wilderness First Responder, but Wilderness First Aid, which is a less intense version of that that I think was— it was fewer than 80 hours. I think it was taught over the course of a weekend, maybe 20 hours. But also quite useful.
Yeah. Also, no, an excellent course. Really good. Wilderness First Aid, Advanced Wilderness First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, and then Wilderness EMT for medical professionals after that. They're all good courses. I think generally if we're looking for a first aid syllabus, they do a really good job. Used to be able to find them on REI. I think not so much now, but REI does union busting anyway, so go somewhere else.
Yeah. So can you talk to us a little bit more about preparing for heat?
Certainly.
You, you specifically, you've had a lot to say about clothes that will give you funny tan lines.
That's what you want to aim for.
What should we wear?
So if you can get like a white shirt and then you just spray paint a black circle A, that's what you're going for.
Yeah, that's rad as hell.
Yeah, then you'll look sick. So generally, If I think about this weekend, I was in the desert and I was walking around in the sun all day. And so the way I prepared for that, firstly, I hydrated beforehand, right?
Yes.
Salty snacks.
The time to start hydrating is definitely before your body starts pouring sweat.
Exactly. Yeah. So if you're peeing and it looks like a highlighter or straw, like a darker color, then you want to be hydrating more before you go. And then in terms of preparedness, what did I do? Okay. First of all, I wore loose-fitting, light-colored clothes that covered my whole body. So it can be tempting in the heat, right? And I know as kind of just crusty people, we like to wear sleeveless shirts a lot. I too enjoy cutting the sleeves off my shirts, but this is not the time or the place. So I wore a sun hoodie. I like to wear a lot of sun hoodies and collared shirts. They're light in color, baggy, and very breathable. when it's hot. I think it's really valuable to have something that covers the back of your neck.
Yes.
It's an area where you can really get— I guess your bones are sort of close to the skin there. It's an area where you're very vulnerable to sunburn, and you really don't want to get sunburned while you're out there in the heat, especially if you're a long way from a place where you can get out of the sun. So, I know a lot of cultures that live in hot places, wear very baggy but sometimes dark-colored clothes. I guess black absorbs heat, right? So I guess it could potentially absorb the heat from your body, but then it's also holding it there. So I think maybe what those people are doing is just— it's mostly the bagginess of those clothing that has value.
Yeah, those dark clothes are not sitting right against their skin.
Exactly. Yeah. Not wearing skinny jeans.
And neither is the sun.
Yes. the sun is still not touching their skin, which is what we want to avoid, right? Like, touching skin doesn't actually—
Not the literal sun. If the literal sun touched your skin, you would be exploded, I think.
But yeah, so I also wear like fancy-ass sun cream that I buy in airports in Europe that lasts for a lot longer. I think the US just approved a new active ingredient in sunscreen, but for a long time The FDA had not approved active ingredients in sunscreen that are very commonplace in the rest of the world. So I like to buy my sun cream abroad, which is one of the weird things about me. But yeah, I applied sun cream right to the areas of my skin which were exposed to the sun. And then I made sure I was able to hydrate adequately. The way I do that when I'm out and about is I have an insulated— it's not actually a CamelBak, it's made by Hydrapak. But I think people will be familiar with the term CamelBak as a generic term.
Yep.
And then also an insulated hose. 'Cause otherwise, the water sitting on the top of your shoulder there, it gets really, really hot.
Insulated is so smart, because when I have used a CamelBak, I have not used an insulated one and have just sipped warm, plastic-tasting water all day. And it does keep you hydrated, but it does not make you happy.
Yeah, and you're probably not gonna drink as much because it tastes foul. Right.
Although that means I don't chug all my water all at once, which is, you know, a problem for me.
Yeah. Yeah. Generally, like, you should drink to thirst rather than trying to hit a certain, like, guideline for drinking. I think most people's thirst will be an adequate mechanism for making sure they drink enough. But I like to make sure you can easily go through a liter of water an hour in the heat, and you should plan for that. Right. So if you're going out for a long walk in the heat, you need to plan to have a serious amount of water. So I generally do an insulated bladder. I would say that if you are out and about, it is unwise to rely on just a bladder. Like I blew out a bladder last week. It sucks. Everything in your bag is wet and you are wet and suddenly you don't have any water. So just, I normally take a, like a hard-sided container as well.
Mm-hmm.
And I use that to mix my electrolytes. So then I'll put a little powder in there, mix it up. And that, that's how I have my, uh, legs. Then I don't have to clean out the, uh, the bladder and the hose, right? Because it's really annoying to clean those out. So that's how I take care of my hydration. I also wear a hat.
Hats are so key. And I, I was a, I was a late, late arrival to the concept of hats, but man, really helps. Really helps.
You can accessorize many outfits. You can look cool in different ways. Have a little slogan on there. So the thing with the head there is that the brain is inside it. You don't want to fry that. And also your hat is on top of your body, so it can shade the rest of your body. And so I like to wear a nice wide brim hat. So like instead of a baseball cap, looking for something where the brim gives it all the way around, 360-degree coverage there. And then again, you want— Back of the neck. Yeah, cover the back of the neck. You can get those like the French Foreign Legion style hats. Where they have a cloth that's draped down the back.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I've experimented with those. It's not my aesthetic preference, I'll admit.
It is a hell of an aesthetic choice.
Yeah, it's a choice, and it's not one I often make. What I'll generally do is either pull up my sun hoodie and then put a hat over the top of it, generally. And that way I've got a whole bunch of layers.
That sounds like so many layers. Does that not make you hot all by itself?
Not really. I'm wearing a pretty light cap. I don't have it with me, but like, uh, just a, just a pretty light, uh, it's like got mesh sides and it looks, it looks like a sort of, it looks like I'm in Oasis.
Like a, like a fishing, a fishing type hat, I think.
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a better term than looks like I'm in Oasis. But yeah, it's a bucket hat, I think, is what the kids say. And I also have a couple of like really wide-brimmed straw kind of a hat. So, sometimes, you see folks who work outside, and there's a reason that folks who work outside have gravitated to that kind of thing, right? Another thing I like to do is use something called a sunbrella.
Is a sunbrella different from a parasol?
Only, I think, in that one sounds quite pretentious, and so people prefer to— but if you want to use a parasol, we can call them parasols. I think the genre of product that a sunbrella is, is a subgenre of parasol.
Yeah, I think it might be a gender distinction, actually.
Oh, really? Yeah, I think—
I think if somebody who is trying to gender things in a masculine way carries a parasol, it might magically become a sunbrella.
Okay, yeah, gender-affirming parasol for boys is what I take out.
Exactly, in tactical black.
Yeah, well, no, you want it to be silver on the top, right? Because it reflects.
Right.
So I guess maybe that's what defines a sunbrella.
Tactical silver.
Yeah, yeah, tactical silver. That's a diversion I won't go into. The silver sunbrella is great. And the way I do that, it's just like attached. The one I have is made by a company called Six Moon Designs who make lots of fun ultralight stuff. And it comes with a couple of bungees and I just literally attach it to my backpack. So it's just there. Gets a bit ungainly, right? If you're going through canopies and stuff.
Yeah.
But that's what I do for the desert. In the jungle, things are a little different because it's so humid.
Right.
That your evaporative cooling isn't working as well. I'll do days above 110 in the desert, not without issue. It's hot as shit, but I prefer—
Yeah, that sounds awful.
Yeah, it's better to be there than days where you've got 100 and 80, 90% humidity in the jungle. That is brutal, the sort of just the weight. of that heat. It is, it's really profound. And in that situation, it's harder to cool, right? Because your evaporative cooling isn't working so well. And so you want to encourage air movement however you can, generally by like wearing baggy clothes that allow the air to like move through your body. I take care with my backpacks to have them kind of spaced off my back if that's what I'm doing. Like when I went into the Darién Gap, right, I had a huge-ass backpack because I had to carry We'd like a shit ton of podcast machines. And it's very easy to get prickly heat when your backpack's rubbing against your back all day in that kind of temperature. So having some kind of like a mesh or like a bolster that stands it off your back is super important.
When you say prickly heat, are you talking about like a heat rash?
Yeah, I think that might be the better term for it. When the backpack rubs against your back all day in the heat.
There's also, there's a phenomenon where basically you're sweating, but the sweat isn't getting out of your skin.
Yeah.
And that I think can be exacerbated by like different, different things. But basically it is sweat getting trapped and that can cause like a bumpy, unpleasant type of rash associated with heat.
Yeah, I think that's kind of what I've experienced in hot, humid places. And there you also want stuff that dries really quickly, right? So again, like your cottons aren't going to dry particularly quickly, right? That is one of the issues with cotton. It gets wet and stays wet.
Yeah.
So I generally tend to choose synthetic fabrics for all of this. Same deal when I'm out in the desert, actually. Like, I want to sweat and that sweat to wick away from my body and then evaporate away and cool me. I don't want to—
Are we talking about these like high-tech wicking fabrics? Like, is there something in particular?
Yeah. I mean, most of the, you know, there are different, various different formulations, just different trademarks, right? But something I go for, something that's light-colored, not particularly high UPF, and breathable. There are sort of ways to measure breathability, but I haven't found a great deal of difference in between different products and brands. Like, people like the Patagonia Capilene stuff, people like Columbia stuff. Like, I don't think it matters hugely. I have a bunch of Outdoor Research stuff that I find really good, but I don't think it matters a great deal, to be honest. Like, there are some that are not very good. Like, I wear wool for a lot of things, but I don't think it's a great— this is not a great use case for that.
No, definitely. I mean, my understanding of wool is that it is admired for its ability to stay warm when wet, which is the exact opposite. It continues to insulate you when it is wet, which is exactly what we don't want it to do in this situation.
Yeah, yeah. It also just tends to be a thicker fabric, a heavier fabric. It's just more It's impossible to get wool as thin as some of those very thin synthetics.
I'm a big wool fan, but I feel like even saying the word wool on a hot day makes me uncomfortable.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just yucky.
Yeah, it's not a good choice, at least for me. That's not my preference, I would say.
Sheep seem to do fine, so...
Yeah, yeah. Well, we do cut their wool off before the hottest month of the year, right? That is traditionally how we help them. Those are my main, I guess, my main considerations. I do have little chemical cold packs that I have used on occasion, not for me, but for other people who have really been not doing well due to the heat. They're not as effective as an ice pack. Like, I know that.
They're really not, 'cause they don't, that's been what I've found as well, that they don't get as cold and they don't stay cold very long.
No, and I didn't think—
Whereas, like, if you're using actual ice, it starts out colder, and if you drain it, the part that's ice will continue to be as cold as ice throughout.
Yeah, exactly.
Whereas the cold pack just sort of starts getting warmer as soon as it's activated.
Yeah, it provides a bit of relief, but not a great deal of real help, I think, in dropping your body temperature. You can dump water on yourself.
The number of times I have gone to pull a chemical cold pack out of my medic pack and found that it activated like a week ago when I wasn't paying attention because something heavy went on it is not zero.
Yeah, I don't think you should be relying on them really as your first line here. And yeah, you can dump water on yourself, especially in environments with lower humidity, right? And it evaporates off. It's just generally, if I have water, I'm going to be drinking it. I prefer to use my water. that way. Water is heavy, and generally I'm out there carrying a lot of water for other purposes anyway, so I don't want to carry even more water. My backpack's already heavy enough. The other thing we do, of course, is—
Drinking the water will ultimately lead to evaporative cooling as well, because some of that water will turn into sweat.
Yeah, exactly. The other thing we do, of course, is we start uncomfortably early. And I think that's the other big thing here is like, as our cities get warmer and our planet gets warmer, we're just going to have to start doing shit at 5 in the morning. There is less sun and therefore you are absorbing less sunlight as you go about your activities, right? So especially if you're somebody who likes to exercise and you're someone who, where you live hasn't been hot and it's getting hotter every year and you're finding it hard, you've got to start early. That's really the best method of Exercising in the heat is avoiding the hottest part of the day, right?
I know you're right, but I don't wanna do anything at 5:00 AM.
Yeah, it is. I mean, I was up, uh, I was— I did 3:00 AM the other day.
No, hate that. Sorry.
I know it is rough. It is, it is, uh, socially debilitating to, uh, get up that early, right? Like, you're not going to see your friends unless you're doing cool shit with your friends at 3:00 in the morning.
Right, at 3:00 in the morning.
Yeah, when all the cool people are awake.
Well, when you're cool, if you're awake, because it's not hot yet.
Oh yeah, none of the hot people are awake because they're still sleeping off. Yeah, I don't like it either. It's not fun. I like sleeping, but I hate the— yeah, I've had really gnarly heat stroke and I don't want that again. So we tend to start early. If you're doing stuff with your friends, it's nice. You have a commitment device, right? Someone calls you if you don't show up at 4 in the morning. So yeah, it helps you get out of bed. But that As our world gets hotter, that's just going to be part of our lives, is getting up early.
All right. If you say so. Can I do everything late at night?
You can do— generally, it's not as cool as in the morning, right? Because you haven't had that period of darkness beforehand. So generally, it's going to be cooler. You can, though. I've got friends who do full moon hikes and meet at midnight. We used to do a full moon—
That's also pretty cool.
Yeah, we used to do a full moon 100-mile bike ride every August on the full moon there. It was kind of fun. So that's late at night or early in the morning, depending on how you approach it. But yeah, just avoiding those hottest parts of the day, right? And that can go for like the folks who I feel really like are being exposed to heat illness in a really dangerous way, and don't have so much control, like folks who work in outdoor jobs, folks who work in delivery jobs.
Also, yes.
That is rough because you have a schedule that you have to work on, right? Some job sites, some states have protections for workers in extreme heat. Some job sites will have protections. If you are part of a union, then this shit should be something you're able to talk to your union about, right? But Lots of the other clothing tips still apply. I've worked outside in the heat and it fucking sucks. You can get like a brim that you stick on your hard hat.
Yeah.
But having to wear steel toes and various other items of safety equipment in the heat, it's suboptimal. You're going to get hotter faster and you need to be really fucking careful.
Yeah.
And unfortunately, capitalism forces us to do these things which we know aren't good for us. that is part of the whole problem. We're working on it, but—
We are working on it, probably not fast enough for people who have to be at work at 1 PM tomorrow. You know, I mean, not starting work, you know what I mean?
Yeah. But like lots of cold fluids also, just like you can help people out. Like you can, you can provide people with cold fluids, right? Like people who don't have an air-conditioned place to go, people who live only— last summer, Fuck, last summer someone died in San Diego of heat exposure and they found their remains and thought they had been burned, like with fire.
Jesus.
Because that person had been out in the heat, right, for a period of time, even after passing. And that really made me very angry.
Yeah.
And so my friends and I have, we'll like, you can get insulated backpacks. I have an insulated backpack and I'll freeze up those little 500 milliliter water bottles and go take them to people. You can do that too. You can provide cold water even to folks who are working nearby your home or who are delivering things to your home. Like, you know, if you are in a place where you have access to that stuff and you see people who aren't, then we have an obligation to take care of one another. And you can do that. It's nice to give someone a coffee.
Especially like when you are, for example, choosing to like order a bunch of stuff online that somebody who may not be getting paid very much is bringing to your home for you. You do We know the company they work for is not taking care of them.
Yeah. Jeff Bezos isn't giving that person a popsicle in the cold water so you can.
No.
And this is how we build communities so we can get through the worst of climate change, right? Is taking care of each other. Take care of your animals too.
Yes.
This is the thing that people seem to forget, or I don't know, just like you don't need to go running when it's 105, neither does your dog. But your dog still does need to go outside. So go for a walk in the morning. Make sure your animals have water, plentiful shade. You can get misters. I run a mister for my chickens sometimes. You just have to be careful with making it too humid. That's not good for them. But having the mister in a place where the chickens can go but also choose to go away from.
Are your chickens just running in the sprinkler?
Yeah, if they want to. It's available for them.
Yeah.
And then when it gets really hot, I freeze a watermelon and then give it to them.
Honestly, give me a frozen watermelon. That sounds fucking great.
Anytime you want to come down to my chicken coop, Miriam, you can share.
It sounds great. It sounds nicer than most places, if I'm honest.
I like to be nice to my chickens. But yeah, I think people sometimes assume that animals can tough it out or whatever, but they don't have a way of telling us. that they're too hot until they're really, really too hot. Right.
They start laying hard-boiled eggs.
Yes, that is how they respond. I've carried people's dogs off trails because their dog was so hot that it wouldn't walk anymore. Several times I've been bitten by someone's dog that I wasn't even carrying. It was just freaking the fuck out because it was hot.
Oh, wow.
Really uncomfortable. Yeah, it was hot and it was uncomfortable. And these people were just not handling the situation well. I think they saw it as like a disciplinary issue, and then I was just running past and it kind of freaked out that I was too close. But yeah, I'm no dog behavior expert, but that was my read on the situation.
Well, I'm about to start speculating wildly about the fact that in times past, people have had this association between summer months and rabies, which I don't think is actually reflective of when animals get rabies. But now I'm wondering if it was because in an era before understanding of microbes, people were like, man, dogs are freaking out. Must be rabies. I don't know. I'm speculating wildly.
Yeah. Interesting. Maybe. I don't know. I'm more mad when it's hot.
Yeah.
But yeah, like, you wouldn't force someone you cared about to go on a death march in the heat. Don't do it to your animals either. You know, make sure they have shade, just like you want to have shade. Make sure they have access to plentiful cold water, just like you would want to have access to plentiful cold water. Right. Just do all the things that you would want to do for a human, plus anything special that's needed for your animals. I guess the last thing I would say is that a thing that can happen, that is happening— anecdotally, it seems to be happening more, but maybe that's just my— I'm paying more attention to it. It's a thing called hyponatremia. And you're going to get hyponatremia. It's a too low sodium, right? And that will happen if you are exercising in the heat and just guzzling water without replenishing any sodium and you're sweating a lot. That is a thing that happens to people. I think sometimes it's just not knowing or thinking that like you can tough it out or you don't like the sports drink that's provided at a marathon or your stomach is whatever, whatever, right?
You only have the red kind of Gatorade, which is Yeah, just gross.
And everyone knows that blue is faster, so you want to have the blue one, and you're mad about it, so you're just drinking water. But like, it is something to be aware of. Like, you do want to be putting in a little sodium. I know some people are concerned about the amount of sodium in their diet, but like, when you're exercising in the heat, it's not the time. The more pressing concern—
Yeah.
It's other shit.
Most people do not actually need to be too worried about their salt intake. There is— I actually, Another podcast. Yeah, we can all get all our education through podcasts, I think. Another podcast, Maintenance Phase, which does great work, recently talked about the trend to low-sodium diets, which came from— and this is me off the cuff trying to remember what they said on this other podcast. You should probably just go listen to that other podcast.
Yeah.
But my memory of what they said is that in some people with high blood pressure, Limiting sodium intake, and by limiting it, they mean like almost no sodium, like ludicrously low amounts of sodium, can be helpful for lowering blood pressure, but that for most people, you don't really need to worry about your sodium.
Interesting.
It's just not really a thing for most people. But the idea of salt as unhealthy sort of entered popular consciousness. And in fact, as you're saying, when people are dealing with extreme heat, it's actually low sodium that we should be concerned about, not high sodium for most people.
Yeah, I think for most people, like, consuming salt to taste is going to be just fine, just fine, especially when you're living in a hot place, right?
Yeah. People also will want saltier things when they need it often. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily be guided exclusively by that, but like, I remember a friend of mine who grew up in Texas told me about when he was in high school being out mowing the lawn and then walking inside into the kitchen and before he realized what he was doing, unscrewing and bringing to his mouth a jar of pickles and just drinking the brine because that was what his body was telling him to do. And I think that's a thing people may not have experienced to that exact extent because I think you probably don't get to that point without mowing the lawn in Texas. Fuck lawns. But that craving for salt does sometimes happen when your salt is getting depleted because you're just sweating it all out and you're replacing your fluids but not your electrolytes.
There was a— for a while, people were doing pickle juice as a way to prevent cramping, but it's a different thing. I think the massive sodium content of it stimulate some kind of nervous response. But yeah, people like pickle juice. People do pickle popsicles.
Pickles just taste good, man. Just have a pickle.
Yeah, have a pickle. Yeah, you can get sodium from any number of things, but yeah, pickle never goes down badly. I would say, like, I'm trying to think if I have missed anything from my list of things.
I have a question about a type of product. What do you think of those wearable fans that people that people have? Like, I see a lot of people with like around their neck battery-powered fans. Do you think those are doing anything?
I don't think I've ever found one of those that did anything that I felt was useful. It's more weight to carry. It's another thing to charge. When it's really hot in ambient temperatures, like, uh, my preference is not for cheap electronics. Overheating batteries is not a fun day. So I've used a fan before, just a straight up Spanish fan.
Yeah, I mean, a folded— when I was in elementary school, we would always make those little folded paper fans and fan ourselves when it got hot, and our teacher told us that by fanning yourself, your muscle exertion was heating you more than you were cooling yourself with the fan, and I only realized last year she was just annoyed by all the fans in class, That wasn't true. We were keeping ourselves cool very efficiently.
Yeah, no, I did think that.
She just was distracted and felt like we were distracted too, probably, which, to be fair, we probably were.
Yeah, but by the heat, like by being uncomfortably hot. Yeah.
And but yeah, like a piece of paper, you can, you can make a meaningfully useful fan that way, I think.
Yeah, I've done it with my hat, right? Big, big old hat. When we sit down, sit down in the shade, I've done that for someone who's too hot too. You give them the hat, especially get a bit of water, and then you give the hat and you get the evaporative cooling going, that can help a lot.
A Frisbee is another good impromptu fan once you've got somebody in the shade.
Yeah, I never thought of that, but yeah, you could take a Frisbee or any other flying disc. No brand.
Yeah, sorry, not, we have no brand loyalty here.
Yeah. Yeah.
We have only brand hostility to Liquid IV.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So that's the official stance of this podcast. Fuck all flying discs. I don't know, Frisbee brand ink. No, just don't use an Aerobie. Obviously, the hole in the middle would make it less useful there.
Oh. Yeah.
So that's our official flying disc recommendation. Yeah, I've used a fan, and those are nice. Done one of those before. The other thing, I guess, is one thing that's nice when you're sleeping in the heat is using a hammock because you're getting away from the hot ground, right? So then you have the ability for air to circulate around all of your body, including the parts of it which are normally lying on the ground. For the same reason that you get conductive heat loss sleeping on cold ground, right? That's why sleeping pads have insulation values. Sleeping in a hammock, that's what I tend to do when I'm in the jungle for a number of reasons, right? The ground is always wet and covered in things that want to bite you, but also it allows that air to circulate around all of your body. And that's why people who live in hot places sleep in the hammocks, right?
Yeah.
And Darién Gap, I stayed with an Emberá family and we all slept in hammocks. They always slept in hammocks. And it's kind of nice, kind of nice tropical vibe, sleep in a hammock. But yeah, that's something if you're camping in the heat, I do like to have a hammock.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought about that aspect of hammocks, but that makes a ton of sense that you just that way, yeah, you don't have to be in contact with the ground as it you know, gets heated by your body and also maybe is already hot.
Yeah, and, uh, yeah, it has a lot of nice benefits. So I'd say if you're, uh, if you're just now thinking, I would like to go camping in a hammock, buy one that's big enough for you. The biggest mistake I see is people making— because you don't want to sleep like a banana, you want to sleep flat, right?
Yeah, I think you'll see people say like, oh, hammocks are really bad for your back, and it's like, well, There's entire cultures where everybody has slept in hammocks. So probably it's not that hammocks are inherently bad. Probably it's that our tendency to pick the 2 closest together trees and then sleep in a U or V shape is the issue.
Yeah, you're hammocking wrong if you're doing that. But yeah, getting a hammock that's big, learning how to sit upright. Pretty easy to make. Pretty easy to make a good lightweight camping hammock, actually.
And they're, yeah, they're light to carry. They're Every time I go camping, I somehow end up sleeping on the sharpest rock in the world, but you can't sleep on a sharp rock in a hammock.
No, you can fall on one if you pick the wrong tree. But yeah, I love hammock camping. Like I said, I do it a lot for work. So something to consider if you're outside, right? Or if you live outside and you're trying to really struggling with the heat, maybe if that's an option where you're at. Might be worth looking into.
I saw a very cool hammock somebody had made of just old plastic bags the other day. Yeah.
It's very cool. Well, yeah. Probably that would not breathe as well as—
No, but it was like a net. Oh, okay.
It was netting. Like a mesh. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, that was a good idea.
Yeah, like they wove a net out of it.
Okay.
It was cool.
Fascinating.
People are cool.
Yeah. People do cool shit.
So we've had like about an hour of how not to overheat. Anything else we need to touch on?
Yeah, I guess it's pretty easy to make a cheap swamp cooler. You can Google—
Oh yeah, talk us through that.
How to do that. I mean, you're just— it's better explained in a non-audio medium.
Fair.
So I would suggest people looking for a video or like a visual how-to guide. But if you're not in a place where air conditioning is something you can access, a swamp cooler is. Obviously, If you are someone who is medically sensitive to the heat and you do rely on air conditioning for your well-being, just be aware that— I know I live in San Diego, our power goes out all the time. Fucking 7th largest city in the US, again, run by clowns. And so our shit doesn't work, right? Because we have to give all our money to the cops. And so if you're able to financially, having some kind of backup power supply, can be very handy as part of your preps. If you're someone who lives in a hot place, right, like heat should be part of your preparedness concerns.
Right.
Like heat is a natural disaster. It just happens all the time. People in Europe die every summer in heat waves now, right? We tend not to have air conditioning, homes that are as well insulated and stuff. So considering stuff like the insulation of your home, considering stuff like an alternative to AC or a backup power supply. You'd need a pretty chunky one because AC's kind of demanding on power.
Yeah.
If you find yourself in that situation, right, having one room of your house that you keep cool, it's going to be a more efficient use of your power than trying to keep your whole house cool, especially if you are fortunate enough to live in a big house, which none of us are. But just thinking about if we run out of power, if there is another natural disaster, how will I deal with the heat should be part of all your preps going forward because it ain't getting colder anywhere. And so I know that's something I think about a lot just with blackout curtains and strategies for opening the windows at night and then closing them in the day and all the things that people who live in hot areas do anyway. Thinking about those sort of non-electric ways we can cool our homes down. And then also having a room, maybe even considering making sure that room is relatively well sealed, just your door doesn't have a gaping 2-inch hole at the top or whatever, and try to keep a room of your house cool. I know something that my community college does is have dedicated cooling rooms so that anybody who needs to cool off can come in and cool off. And that's something that Again, I guess our communities face hotter and hotter summers, right? Folks who don't live inside don't have access to air conditioning. Folks who live in their cars, you can't run your car and run the AC all day. So having community spaces where people can cool off is really important too. And that's something you should think about if you're trying to help your community get through the coldest summer of the rest of our lives.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's, um, it's only getting hotter, and we should both work on stopping that to the extent that we can. But yeah, it's— it just has to be a part of, of what we're thinking about when we, when we think about surviving a disaster, any disaster.
Yeah. Oh, a little fun way to cool yourself off. Ooh, a fun way! A fun— a little fun trick is, uh, if you have a tiny little cotton bag cloth bag and you get it wet and then whip it around a bit.
Oh, that is fun.
Yeah, if you've got your little bottle of water in there or whatever, it doesn't do a lot, but it's kind of a fun little trick.
Nice. Yeah, that sounds like it could actually cool down a small space a little bit.
Yeah, or just a little drink of water if you want to have a little cold drink.
Oh, you mean it can cool down the beverage? Oh, that's That's so smart.
Don't do it with a carbonated beverage, obviously.
Or do, and hand it to somebody and be like, here's your perfectly chilled soda, and then run away.
Yeah, you could do that too. But yeah, there's, uh, I mean, we should learn from the people who live in the hottest places, right? And how they stay out of the sun in the heat and the little tricks and tips.
Take a nap in the hottest part of the day.
Yeah, being out the sun and in bed is great in the hottest part of the day. One of the things I enjoyed about living in Spain.
Um, perfect. Well, thank you. Thank you for coming on and talking about how hot people become cool people. That's the tagline I just came up with. So it is now the time of the podcast where we thank the people who support us on Patreon. That is That is, people who support us at the $20 a month or more level, we will thank on our podcast. If you support us less than that, say $10 or more, uh, we'll send you a zine every time, every month. And for $5, you get a discount on everything we sell. And for $1, there's stuff, there's lots of stuff. Anyway, these are the people who support us at $20 or more. They are the people that we thank, or they are the name that the people wrote in. to the form. So with that, let me thank Nicole and Tikva the dog, Micaiah, Chris, Kirk, Micah, Dana, David, Paige, SJ, Theo, Milica, Papa Runa, Allie, Janice, and Odell, Princess Miranda, Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lord Harkin, Carson, Julia, Toki_Red, Boldfield, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Appalachian Liberation Library, Ephemeral, Amber, Sunshine, Aiden and Yuki the dog, Jenny and Phoebe the cats, Jason, Sholva, Blinkcat, Feral in West Virginia, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association, Karen, Lancaster Chooses Love, Enchanted Wraths of Turtle Island, Max, Hyunhee, A Future for Abby, Alexander Gopal, the incredible Renurai, the KO Initiative, the Golden Gate 26, Tiny Nonsense, Mark, your Canadian friend, Mr. Crafty, Sarah, Baby A-Cab and her 3 great pups, TSNB, which could stand for virtually anything. Opticuna, the Athens People's Assembly of Athens, Georgia, the Astoria Food Pantry, the Kiwanis Socialists, Pocono Pink Pistols, the truth that, quote, we will outlive them, the first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis. I haven't read that, but I bet those first 2 chapters are worth thanking. Bike smut film and performance. Simone Wiles, staying hydrated, brought to you by Hannah, potatoes, Tenebris Press, arguing about what to shout out, Experimental Farm Network, accordions, Dolly Parton and Edgar Meowlin Poe the cats, the Black Trowel Initiative, Groot the dog, Nico, the Waterfront Project, Tikva's favorite stick, Ulysses and Alder, N.A., Be Kind and Talk to Strangers, Cool Zone Media, and as always, the immortal Hoss the dog. Thank you. Thank you.