Monday, June 26, 2023

Because of technology many people believe they are immortal basically and don't take proper precautions in the extreme heat lately

 I had heat prostration several times in my life. It's one of the reasons why I never worked as a firefighter because I knew I didn't do well in the heat. As time has gone on I also understand more why I was susceptible to heat prostration. The first one might be obvious to many but I have very fine and very thick scottish brown hair. I also get hair in my ears like many northern or Nordic people do. It's and adaptation to not get ear infections or extreme ear aches in extreme cold if you had to live outside like our ancestors often did in the snow in the winter.

However, over time I realized that having really thick hair with each strand fine but numerous made my head to warm and helped cause heat prostration because my body wasn't designed for the heat but for the cold genetically.

But, it took me from my 30s to 40s to figure all this out. In the meantime I got heat stroke at age 10 building a tree house on G Hill in Glendale in about 1958. Everything turned Yellow and black like if you took a photo that was black and white and instead made it yellow and black instead. AS a 10 year old I had no idea what was happening to me so I got on my bicycle terrified and rode as fast as I could all the way home. I made it home and had a headache for three days really bad but I eventually recovered. This was my first heat prostration that I survived.

Later I was planting trees and I was a new father and I had been a foreman at an electronics plant in San Diego County before so I wasn't used to working this hard for about a year or so. But, at the time planting trees didn't pay by the hour but instead by how many trees you planted per day. And at that time we could plant about 100 dollars worth of trees per day which was a lot of money to us at the time being college age kids (actually I was about 26 or 27) but I wanted to live in Mt. Shasta with my wife and baby because I loved it there and this was one way to start out in summers making money there. However, again I got heat prostration. So, this became a problem then too in 1976 that summer. I was planting trees near Quincy, California in the mountains there.

The point I'm trying to make here is the people who will tend to die from heat prostration are children to about 30 year olds because they feel they are immortal and cannot die. But, they can. By 30 most people have suffered enough in life to where they take better care of themselves (or else they are already dead or wish they were).

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