This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show broadcast on 1560TheGame. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Richmond and Sugar Land, TX. Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment. Our special guest today is Dr. Terence Chang, a family practice physician Board Certified in Sports Medicine from Physicians at Sugar Creek in Sugar Land, TX.
Here’s the transcript of the first portion of the Show:
Good morning Houston! This is Dr. J. Michael Bennett coming at you live from 1560 The Game. Welcome to Saturdays with Dr. Jay, your one-stop shop for all of your information on sports medicine and wellness. We’re talking about heat-related illnesses today, and it couldn’t be more appropriate considering that it is hot in Houston right now. Lately we’ve been getting some record breaking temperatures and we’re still out there playing our sports and doing our activities and if you don’t take that into consideration it can actually be a very dangerous thing – especially when it comes to kids. So our topic today is going to be about the Texas heat and heat-related illness.
If this is the first time for you to tune into the show, we appreciate you tuning in, and I am Dr. J Michael Bennett. I am a board certified orthopedic surgeon and I did my fellowship in sports medicine and I practice out here in the Greater Houston area. This show here is to update and inform and to really clarify any myths, misunderstandings and misconceptions regarding sports medicine and wellness. Because there are a lot of smokescreens out there and really between the marketing and the Internet, you really don’t know what you’re getting and what to believe so we’re here to clear up some of that stuff. I’m bringing in guests intermittently to address some of these issues and to clarify some things and y’all are more than welcome to call in –281-633-8600 – with any questions you have during the show. We also want to give a shout out to our sponsors at the Texas Sports Medicine Institute which is a great facility between Katy and Sugar Land and is basically a one-stop shop for orthopedics and wellness and we have sub-specialty trained surgeons and orthopedic specialists all working together under one roof and you also have a Plex facility there as well.
But, anyway, getting back to the show today we once again have our expert panel. We’ve got Bob Lewis from 1560, he is our patient advocate here, breaking things down in case we get a little bit out of touch with our lingo when we do our doctor talk. We have also brought back Dr. Terence Chang, he was here with us last week and we appreciate him coming on last week and we talked about sudden death issues and cardiac issues previously and this week we’re talking about heat illness. Dr. Chang is a family practice physician board certified in sports medicine and practices with the Physicians of Sugar Creek. We appreciate him joining us today.
So anyway we’re going to go ahead and dive right into the topic. Once again, we’re talking about this Texas heat and how ridiculously hot it’s getting. It’s not even summer and we’re breaking 105 degrees. According to the statistics, I think Texas leads the nation in the most heat-related deaths in general, and I think that what I’ve seen or at least read lately is that we were at 105 degrees on June 5 and I think that was the record of the highest temperature ever set in June and the highest temperature in the nation that day so I think this is really important.
I want to go over some basic fundamentals regarding a normal response to heat and what to expect. And basically this is what’s called acclimatization, where the person that’s training, their body basically adapts to the surrounding temperature. Your core temperature is trying to decrease itself when you are at rest, and usually your heart rate increases when you’re exercising, you increase your perspiration rate, you sweat at a lower core temperature, you have thirst at a lower core temperature, and you have less losses of electrolytes and sodium because the body wants to hold onto those electrolytes because that allows it to maintain what we call your plasma volume. Plasma volume is your blood volume, and the reason it wants to do that is because if you have more volume in the system, you have more cardiac output, which means more fluid for the heart to pump which means there’s less heat for the heart to pump out of the core and that keeps your body cool. So the body’s main response in this hot weather is to keep its core cool. So that’s normal and we refer to it as acclimatization. Dr. Chang, how long of a period of time does it take? I was under the impression that it was like two weeks or so, but what do you think about any of this?
CHANG: Two weeks is about right. Two weeks is about how long it takes for a person to acclimatize to a new environment which is one reason why most of these heat illnesses happen at least for American football during their first three days of practices. Kids are coming out from summer break, they haven’t done anything all summer, and all of a sudden they have a football practice, they have swim practice, and they’re out in the heat and they get sick, they feel awful.
BENNETT: I think that’s something that more and more schools are taking into consideration; they’re actually being very proactive in regards to some of these heat-related problems. But there are also some schools out there that are not taking it seriously and I still see kids out there that are practicing full pads when they start out. And I think the things that they need to do are:
I mean, I’m dying out there in shorts and a tee-shirt in 105 degrees – I can’t imagine being in full pads. I mean that’s crazy. But it’s happening.
If you have questions about heat illness or other sports medicine issues, please contact our office.
