As reports of heat illness have increased due to high temperatures across the nation, an emergency-room physician said that four types of medicines might also contribute to increased risks of heat-related illness.
Wei Chih-wei (魏智偉), director of the emergency room at Tung General Hospital in Taichung, said that as many people are traveling and enjoying outdoor activities in the summer, they should take preventive measures to minimize the risk of heat-related illness, including heatstroke and heat exhaustion.
According to Ministry of Health and Welfare data, 181 emergency rooms have reported 659 visits for heat illness from July 1 to Friday, which is 1.8 times higher than the 370 visits reported in the same period last year.
Photo provided by a member of the public via CNA
As of Friday, 1,722 emergency-room visits for heat illness have been reported this year, which is about 40 percent higher than the 1,248 visits reported in the same period last year, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said in a news release yesterday.
Wei said that the most severe heat illness was heatstroke, which is caused by prolonged exposure to high temperatures and when the body’s ability to regulate heat is overwhelmed, leading the body temperature to rise to 41.1°C or higher.
Early symptoms of heatstroke might include dizziness, headache, nausea, tiredness or rapid breathing, Wei said, adding that without immediate treatment, a person could experience an altered mental state or confusion, agitation, delirium, loss of consciousness, seizure, vital organ damage and even death.
“While elderly people, children, people with chronic diseases or excessive alcohol use have a higher risk of heatstroke, some medications also affect the body’s ability to regulate its temperature, causing increased risk of heatstroke,” he said.
Wei said that anticholinergic drugs — such as antihistamines for treating congestion and some drugs for treating the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease — could stop the activation of sweat glands, while sympatholytic drugs, such as caffeine and ephedrine, could cause blood vessels to narrow and increase metabolic heat production.
Some types of drugs used to lower blood pressure, such as beta blockers and calcium channel blockers, could reduce the cardiovascular system’s ability to regulate temperatures, he said.
Other drugs, like antidepressant and antipsychotic medications, could reduce sweating and disrupt the body’s ability to reduce its core temperature respectively, he added.
Wei said that people who are taking these four types of medicine should drink plenty of water, wear a hat or use parasol under the sun, and avoid abruptly discontinuing their medication.
The HPA also says that people should drink at least 2 liters of water per day and drink frequently when outdoors, not only when they feel thirsty.
People should also drink at least 500ml of water every 30 minutes if they are working or exercising outdoors, it said.
It also recommend that people avoid outdoor activities between 10am and 2pm, take preventive measures against sun exposure if they must go out during these hours, and leave a high-temperature environment and seek immediate medical treatment if they begin to show symptoms of a heat illness.
Additional reporting by Yang Yuan-ting
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS