“Dehydration, heat stroke, sunstroke affect everyone. And it can be deadly”, alerted Thursday on franceinfo Corinne Gonet, emergency doctor in Bordeaux, while Météo-France placed 12 departments on heat wave red alert from Friday, including part of New Aquitaine. The prefect of Gironde notably banned public outdoor demonstrations due to the heat wave, “a precautionary principle”according to Corinne Gonet who gives some tips to avoid this dehydration:
What advice do you give to avoid dehydration?
To rehydrate, it’s like when you go for a marathon in the desert. It is absolutely necessary to take salt and sugar. So all the drinks, either rehydration solutions or drinks like coke from which the bubbles will have to be removed. And above all, don’t forget that you have to drink twice as much as usual each time you take more than five degrees above the seasonal average.
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The problem is for fragile people, children, the elderly. There are a lot of discomforts of different types, a lot of headaches, sunstrokes. The best thing, if you have access to a water jet, is to spray yourself, to spray the children, to wrap them in damp cloths. Above all, do not allow yourself to be dehydrated because it goes very quickly.
The prefect of Gironde has banned public outdoor demonstrations due to the heat wave. Is that reasonable?
It’s a precautionary principle because the emergencies are already saturated, we can’t take it anymore. And we arrive with all these extra people who make all these discomforts. And so it’s quite reasonable. Because if people are told to put on a hat, to rehydrate, most don’t because they think they won’t be dehydrated because they are healthy. And in fact, dehydration, heat stroke, sunstroke, affect everyone. And it can be deadly.
Is this high heat causing an influx of patients in your departments?
Since the beginning of the week, all pathologies are increased tenfold from the moment there is extreme heat. People decompensate with chronic pathologies that were more or less stabilized. Since Monday, it’s been hot hell, hellish hell. So if people can stay at home, rehydrate, that would already be a very good thing and very good advice.
For what symptoms do you come to the emergency room?
Headache, high blood pressure, malaise. And the elderly come because at some point they are anuric, that is to say they can no longer pee. Most of the time, you have to take water with minerals, otherwise you get dehydrated. You can swallow water, it feels like you are swallowing water, but it doesn’t actually rehydrate you. And if, from the moment you don’t pee the amount of what you ingested, you start to become dehydrated, then a whole series of cascades happens.