8 ways to help your body cope in hot weather

CBC News

· Posted: Jun 23, 2025 3:25 PM EDT | Last Updated: 37 minutes ago

As radical crossed Ontario, Quebec and large cities successful the U.S. swelter nether a June vigor wave, aesculapian experts are urging them to instrumentality precautions successful the perchance deadly weather.

Much of Eastern Canada is dealing with utmost vigor and humidity.

Matt Grinter, a meteorologist astatine The Weather Network based successful Oakville, Ont., said Toronto's Pearson airdrome broke the humidex grounds for June connected Sunday, making it consciousness arsenic blistery arsenic 46.3. The agelong of precocious temperatures is expected to past 3 days, Grinter said.

In summertime 2021 successful British Columbia, 619 deaths were attributed to a vigor event, according to a B.C. coroner's report. Many of the radical who died had chronic wellness conditions, particularly schizophrenia, depression, substance usage disorders, diabetes, bosom illness and respiratory disease.

Dr. Edward Xie, an exigency doc astatine Toronto's University Health Network, said nationalist wellness units, doctors and nurses absorption connected 26 C, because the B.C. lawsuit showed the highest hazard of decease was related to indoor temperatures supra that somesthesia passim the vigor event.

Here's what Xie and different experts accidental happens to the assemblage successful the vigor and what they urge to enactment safe.

Heat-related symptoms to ticker for

"We person lukewarm skin, we mightiness look flushed, we whitethorn consciousness that our bosom is pounding faster and we're breathing much to get that humor moving," Xie said, listing symptoms of vigor exhaustion.

Our bodies are precise effectual astatine mean quality assemblage somesthesia of astir 37 C.

But erstwhile the upwind is hot, humor vessels grow to transportation much humor to effort to get escaped of the other vigor faster done the skin, Xie said.

Symptoms of vigor exhaustion tin besides see dizziness, headaches, accelerated breathing and thirst, which tin impact anyone. When that happens, the idiosyncratic needs to chill down wrong 30 minutes.

WATCH | What moving retired successful the vigor does to the body:

"The astir important happening is to get determination chill arsenic rapidly arsenic possible," said Greg Wells, a elder idiosyncratic astatine Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and an workout physiologist.

Tips to forestall overheating

To effort to enactment cool, Wells and Health Canada besides suggest:

• Get retired of the prima and caput indoors, preferably wherever determination is aerial conditioning.
• Wear light-coloured clothing.
• Put connected a hat.
• Keep the prima disconnected your body.
• Consider getting workout successful the greeting oregon successful the evening.

If you're already overheating, they recommend:

• If there's nary A/C, Wells said to usage what's available, specified arsenic towels with chill h2o connected them to assistance suck immoderate of the vigor from your body.
• Stay hydrated to guarantee you person capable fluids to sweat and support the vigor coming disconnected the body.
• Take chill showers oregon baths until you consciousness refreshed.

What impairs sweat

While it whitethorn odor unpleasant, sweating is your body's friend.

That's due to the fact that sweating aims to get vigor to dissipate into the environment. And the higher the somesthesia gets, the much sweating becomes the main mode the assemblage cools, Xie said.

Wells said erstwhile it is truly humid, that makes it adjacent harder due to the fact that the sweat doesn't evaporate disconnected your tegument arsenic rapidly to propulsion the vigor from your body.

Babies, large radical and those aged 65 oregon older aren't capable to nutrient sweat arsenic effectively.

Xie said immoderate aesculapian conditions besides impair the body's quality to sweat and immoderate medications whitethorn marque it easier to dehydrate.

"There are galore bosom medications that let radical to get escaped of h2o successful their body," Xie said. "Well, you tin ideate that during a vigor wave, they request that other h2o to not get dehydrated."

Those medications include, but are not constricted to, antihistamines, anti-inflammatories, bosom medications, thyroid medications, ADHD medications and antidepressants.

In vigor stroke, the body's halfway somesthesia goes supra 40.6 C — a aesculapian exigency that tin pb to semipermanent organ harm and death. Symptoms see accelerated breathing, disorder oregon seizures, and nausea.

"The astir important happening is to usage yourself arsenic a laboratory," Wells said. "Pay attraction to however you're feeling. Pay attraction to your bosom rate, wage attraction to however overmuch you're sweating, enactment hydrated."