Today was one of those days when I was shooting from the hip in my attempt to educate my patients. My theory was that humidity helps keep us hydrated by breathing in all that moisture. After doing a little research I found that for the most part I was wrong. The truth of the matter is that heat and high humidity dehydrates us more than dry heat and it comes down to how our body tries to cool itself. High heat as we all know causes us to sweat. The reason we sweat is the body attempts to cool down by producing sweat, that sweat then evaporates on our skin which causes a cooling effect. In dry heat this system is very efficient. With high heat and humidity we sweat but don’t get the cooling effect of evaporation because the air is more saturated already. Our body continues to stay hot and sweat continues to flow, so in essence we get more dehydrated in hot humid weather. Under both conditions it is vital to good health to stay properly hydrated. I promise to do my research in advance next time.
