Heat Stroke - Prevention

With fall sports beginning around the country, it is critically important for parents to be pro-active when it comes to preventing heat illness.  "Parents need to be empowered to question coaches," says Dr. Susan Yeargin.  "Coaches are often viewed as 'knowing best.' But that isn't always the case."

In 2009, the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) issued a set of high school-specific pre-season heat- acclimatization guidelines as part of its ongoing effort to reduce the number of heat-related athletic injuries in secondary schools.

 

 

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Blowing cool, dry air flowing under and through football shoulder pads reduces core
body temperature and heart rate dramatically, thereby reducing the likelihood of heat illness,
says a 2008 study.

Youth football coaches should adopt practice modifications and employ a strategy to acclimatize players to perform in the heat, along with a fluid replacement strategy in anticipation of young players who begin practice already dehydrated, according to new recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the world leader in the scientific and medical aspects of sports and exercise. The guidelines are outcomes from a recent expert panel convened for an ACSM scientific roundtable on youth football and heat stress.

Every year the start of summer football practices around the country is accompanied by horror stories of coaches forcing young athletes to practice in hot, humid conditions without taking appropriate precautions against heat-related illness and of the deaths of youth athletes from heat stroke.

Extremely hot or humid weather may require that sports practices or games be modified or even cancelled because of the risk of heat illness. In deciding whether to do so, you should keep in mind that hot, dry weather can be extremely dangerous. Because sweat evaporates very quickly in such conditions, your child won't feel sweaty, and neither you nor your child may recognize how much water he or she has lost. As the relative humidity increases, the effectiveness of sweating in cooling the body also decreases. When the relative humidity is high, sweat drips off the skin so that the cooling benefit of evaporation is lost even at cooler temperatures, resulting in a build-up of body heat.

Among the steps for preventing heat stroke among student-athletes are acclimatizing athletes to the heat, limiting or cancelling practices in hot, humid weather, and recognizing the warning signs of heat illness.