To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl You can also create a simple kind of AC by placing a fan in front of wet laundry. That will make your rooms more humid, though.
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@Remittancegirl You can also create a simple kind of AC by placing a fan in front of wet laundry. That will make your rooms more humid, though.
@VerenaRupp What a good tip! And it dries your laundry too!
It is very good for high, dry temps.
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@Remittancegirl @svenscholz Which makes me really wonder why on Earth the floor-mounted internal AC units are so popular in the US.
@vriesk I know, right? Do they not understand that hot air rises?@svenscholz
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@Remittancegirl You can also create a simple kind of AC by placing a fan in front of wet laundry. That will make your rooms more humid, though.
@VerenaRupp @Remittancegirl I was told this only works up to a given air humidity.
In those cases Putting a bottle of frozen water in a bowl in front of a fan seems to work better and also dehumidifies the air (again, hearsay, still need to try that)…
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@Remittancegirl No, I absolutely don't think you're lying or anything like that. 38C dry-bulb is definitely happening in many places, also the humid ones.
Also, your hot-weather advice is very sound and good.
Just that during the peak-temperature hours, the relative humidity is likely even lower than 80% even during the wettests months, as 38C with even 80% is 34.8C, still on the edge of survival for humans. Vietnam is not listed to ever get above 34C in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Heat_waves_with_high_humidity
Cheers. Wet-bulb temperature and how it's different from a dew point is something i learned today.
@Remittancegirl -
@VerenaRupp @Remittancegirl I was told this only works up to a given air humidity.
In those cases Putting a bottle of frozen water in a bowl in front of a fan seems to work better and also dehumidifies the air (again, hearsay, still need to try that)…
@dec_hl @VerenaRupp @Remittancegirl it should work though probably a very minimal dehumidifying effect. Condensation will form on the bottle and run down in to the bowl, just a fairly small amount because the surface area isn't very high. Still, more than nothing
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@vriesk I know, right? Do they not understand that hot air rises?@svenscholz
@Remittancegirl @svenscholz um, well, they do have this vibe of a country that knows everything better than anyone else, don’t they.
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Are you sure about those numbers? 38C with 90% humidity is 36.5C wet-bulb.
That is not survivable by a human and sweating does not cool one down at all in such a temperature. Also, according to Wikipedia, the highest recorded wet bulb temperature ever was 36.3C in UAE.
Come to Japan in August...
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl A wet flannel on the back of the neck also works wonders in this heat.
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl how do i sweat less sticky? -
@Remittancegirl @svenscholz um, well, they do have this vibe of a country that knows everything better than anyone else, don’t they.
@vriesk @Remittancegirl @svenscholz lol, we're plenty stupid, but this one is easily understandable. Those vents get used for both heat and cooling. Having them in the floor for heat makes sense and we've traditionally been more of a heating country (times, they are a changing). In the South, ceiling fans are ubiquitous.
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@vriesk @Remittancegirl @svenscholz lol, we're plenty stupid, but this one is easily understandable. Those vents get used for both heat and cooling. Having them in the floor for heat makes sense and we've traditionally been more of a heating country (times, they are a changing). In the South, ceiling fans are ubiquitous.
@Secret_Squirrel @Remittancegirl @svenscholz my experience comes mostly from (north) California, Florida, and Louisiana, so I don't know.
They all look more like a lazy construction work than anything (mounting a non-split unit on the top of the window is harder than just ripping a hole under said window and putting the thing on the floor).
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl 4) is key when you're feeling overly sticky. A 36°C shower feels lightly hot but when done makes you feel way better. I have such showers just before going to sleep.
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl I have also lived in this kind of climate for 20 years. Singapore, close to and often at 100% humidity and temperatures around 32 degrees. It's at the equator, so the temperature and humidity is about the same all over the year.
I can only agree with the recommendations.
As someone who regularly go on high intensity mountain bike rides in this kind of weather, make sure you stay hydrated with added salts. Sweating will remove the salts, and if you replace it with plain water you'll feel pretty bad after a while. Also, when exercising it's possible to lost hydration faster than your body can absorb it, so you need to take breaks.
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl I have a hard time sweating and I'm interested in sweat-triggering foods!
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@vriesk
Yes, absolutely. They help evaporate sweat, even if just a little, even if they're not cooling you down directly.I notice that fans really stop helping at about 40. But it never got that hot in Vietnam where I was. But when I was in Cordoba, which is very dry heat, I noticed that fans started to feel like a hair-dryer on hot at 40C. If anything, it made it feel worse.
@Remittancegirl @vriesk @svenscholz
Fans still help at 40+ if you're wet, the problem is you dry off fast enough that things get right back to hair dryer. I think at a certain temperature, with the fan on you can't sweat fast enough to keep it cooling you down.
It's like hand dryers in bathrooms. The air in them is hot but they still feel cold until your hands dry off.
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@Remittancegirl I have a hard time sweating and I'm interested in sweat-triggering foods!
@peluchecero @Remittancegirl Hot curries do it for me. Interestingly, food with just chilli in (like Mexican foods) don't nearly so much, although they are often just as spicy as hot curry; so it must be some other spice which triggers the sweating.
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To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.
I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.
1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.
@Remittancegirl I'm from Portugal, we also get a few toasty days over here. I'll also leave a tip. A small cotton wet towel around the back of the neck helps keep your head cool.
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@noodlemaz I agree with you. The places where the temps are soaring are just not prepared or built for them.
Also, especially elderly people need acclimatisation to live with heat. The radical change to the body is really hard on fragile bodies.
Regarding the showers. Believe me, I know the lure of an ice cold shower. It seems like it's going to make you feel good, and it does for a short time, but the body's re-heat response kicks in and you feel worse than before you got in the shower
I'd also want to remind people that bodies adapt, but in their own time (48h or more, normally, IMO, longer if you don't "shock" them hard, see next toots).
Going up to 40°C where winters are cold and in the Summer the ordinary max daily temperature is in the low 20°C is tough.
If, however, one has weeks hovering between 26 and 35°C and then T goes up to 40, then (most) bodies are prepared and will cope a LOT better.
1/n -
I'd also want to remind people that bodies adapt, but in their own time (48h or more, normally, IMO, longer if you don't "shock" them hard, see next toots).
Going up to 40°C where winters are cold and in the Summer the ordinary max daily temperature is in the low 20°C is tough.
If, however, one has weeks hovering between 26 and 35°C and then T goes up to 40, then (most) bodies are prepared and will cope a LOT better.
1/nAs an Italian in the UK, I deliberately make efforts to get my body-adaptations going, when the season changes. And it works. 1st few times the T drops below 18C in Autumn feel awful, and come December it's the norm and I don't mind.
It's harder with extreme heat, as I can't make it happen regularly and on command, but I find that ability/disposition to sweat does respond to "training".
2/n
