As the outside temperature ramps up, staying hydrated is crucial. The human body is something like 75% water. Dehydration can leave you feeling physically sick, weak, and mentally confused.
I had an interesting experience recently. I was at an athletics match, sitting in the sun, waiting for the discus to start. My fellow tech judge Karl generously decided I could run it, because he was ‘happy to retrieve’. That translates as ‘can’t be arsed to marshall 20 teenage lads into some semblance of order and make sure that no-one gets hurt as they lob a heavy object around’.
There’s precious little shade around the track at Bromley, and unless you want to be moving your chair every 10 minutes as the sun moves, you end up sitting in the the full solar blast. On top of that, out of boredom I ate my officials lunch, being a sandwich and a bag of crisps. Concentrated carbs. I had a hat on and I was drinking (water, not booze!), but suddenly I felt my temperature rocket.
This was in the week I was experimenting with a continuous glucose monitor, so it was interesting to see what insights that gave. According to the readout on the app, my blood sugar spiked to above measurable levels. If I was diabetic and relying on the readout, that would basically have been telling me that I was about to go into a coma.
Fortunately, I have a pretty good insulin response. My blood sugar levels dropped pretty much as fast as they rose. This is always a win for a perimenopausal women, because declining oestrogen can play havoc with glucose metabolism and insulin production.
Where does hydration come into all this? I asked a fellow NT who is also a diabetes specialist nurse for her wisdom. Her comment was pithy. “you weren’t about to go into coma, the reading was skewed because you were dehydrated!”. She went on to
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