Fatigue, exhaustion, slow movements. With the heat, energy drops inexorably. Coffee, tea, water and sugar, fizzy drinks and stimulants are the old wives’ remedies that we often resort to to ‘revive’ ourselves. The problem is that “basically these solutions don’t make much sense”, explains Giorgio Sesti, president of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine (Sime), to Adnkronos Salute. “In general, in fact, we are exhausted because we have lost more liquids through sweating, so the first remedy is to rehydrate in the right way, avoiding ‘false friends’, such as sugary and stimulant drinks”. And when perspiration is conspicuous, “this means that there is also a notable loss of mineral salts, it can be useful to take a supplement, even using the ready-made drinks on the market that athletes use or the sachets to dissolve in the glass”.
Other things “are useless. Coffee, for example: a great drink, sure, but if you abuse it you risk tachycardia because it is a stimulant, so excess can be harmful. Especially in the heat – warns the expert – because the lowering of blood pressure makes the heart respond with an increase in heart rate, and if we add the effect of coffee we make the cardiac muscle work harder: the heart contracts more frequently and therefore makes more effort”. It would therefore be better “not to overdo it with cold coffees, granitas, but also with tea (theine is from the same family as caffeine)”. The idea of resorting to espresso when you have low blood pressure “is not founded”, Sesti points out.
“Blood pressure – he adds – is too low in the heat due to vasodilation. If you want to increase blood pressure, just follow the athletes and cool the body. Those who do strenuous sports like marathon runners or cyclists use ice packs that serve precisely to lower body temperature. In everyday life, just put your hands under the cold water tap, rinse your face, soak your feet, stay in a refrigerated environment or take a cold shower”, advises the internist. It’s different if the exhaustion is accompanied by cramps, “a sign of loss of salts that need to be reintegrated”. Finally, energy is also recovered at the table, but in this case the goal must be to make the body work less. “A steak makes you burn a lot of calories because it requires a lot of work for digestion, it takes away the blood by directing it to the intestine instead of the heart, the brain. It is much better to have light meals – based on fruit and vegetables, also rich in mineral salts – so that the blood can defend the main organs, the heart and the brain, without having to concentrate on the stomach and intestine”, concludes Sesti.
#Internists #exhaustion #coffee #tea #cold #shower
