Record heat is about to loosen its grip on Italy: from Sunday, and most likely until the first part of next week, experts predict that summer will undergo its first real break. We will go from muggy to milder temperatures, if not downright cold. “Not without consequences for the body. Temperature changes, from excessive heat to sudden cold, are harmful to healthy people but put the health of the elderly, frail and children at particular risk”. This is what Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of Simit, the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases and full professor at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, told Adnkronos Salute about the effects that the fluctuating climate can have on our body.
“Generally, our body is able to compensate for temperature changes well – explains Andreoni – with sweating when it’s hot or shivers and muscle contractions when it’s cold. This thermoregulation system works well in healthy people, although exposing oneself to very low or very high temperatures is harmful even to subjects without any pathology”. Those who are “less able to compensate for these temperature changes – underlines the infectious disease specialist – are the elderly, the frail, people with chronic degenerative diseases, with kidney failure, heart patients, diabetics, decompensated and children, that is, the subjects most exposed to hypothermia or hyperthermia with significant consequences for the respiratory tract and the cardiovascular system”.
For these people “it is necessary to protect themselves with adequate precautions from too much heat or too much cold to avoid dehydration, loss of consciousness or respiratory tract diseases and cardiovascular problems which can also be serious” he concludes.
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