‘Listen to your body’: Staying fit in the heat

With the temperatures looking to remain in the low triple-digits over the next two weeks, staying or getting in shape may be a challenge for some around the Central Valley. Dr. Abel Ojeda Jr., a sports certified specialist at Porterville’s physical therapy office, PROPT, offered advice on how to avoid heat-related illness.

With the temperatures looking to remain in the low tripledigits over the next two weeks, staying or getting in shape may be a challenge for some around the Central Valley. Dr. Abel Ojeda Jr., a sports certified specialist at Porterville’s physical therapy office, PROPT, offered advice on how to avoid heat-related illness.

“If you’re feeling cramps already, heat cramps, that’s your first sign that something is going on,” he said. “Listen to your body. Drink water.” www.recorderonline.com

Heat cramps are the first stage of a heat illness. They can be followed by heat exhaustion and the most serious condition, heat stroke.

Avoiding heat cramps is where drinking sports drinks, like Gatorade, every 10-15 minutes during a workout or run, become important. Those drinks replenish electrolytes lost during the activity.

“The muscles use a lot of electrolytes like calcium, magnesium and sodium,” said Ojeda. “So what happens is when you’re exercising and you’re losing all that, [the body] starts to fire wrong and that’s what causes the cramps.”

Cramps can be felt in the quadriceps, hamstrings or calf muscles, as well as the abdominal area.

“People talk about abdominal pain, and that’s because of the water loss and your gut is working too hard to excrete the fluids in your gut so the muscle cramps usually happen in the abdominal areas,” said Ojeda.

Signs of heat exhaustion are feeling light headed, nausea, having a headache or cramps that won’t go away. If any of these symptoms occur, stop the activity until they no longer PAGE 1B persist.

If at any point during an activity you or someone’s symptoms begin to include vomiting, Ojeda said to stop immediately and get into a cool area.

“If you’re vomiting, you’ve got to get yourself into a cool area,” he said. “Cool yourself off right away or call somebody because vomiting is probably the next stage before a heat stroke.”

With a heat stroke about to surface, Ojeda said a person only has 20-30 minutes to cool down before something bad can happen. Heat strokes are

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