Heat Safety Measures - Riding a Motorcycle or NOT

The escalating temperatures can be a person's worst enemy in the summer. Whether you are walking or working outside or riding a motorcycle.

Whether you are on a motorcycle or not - you can or MUST take measures to protect yourself in the heat.

Body Automatic Thermostats
Your body has automatic "thermostats" to protect the core organs from heat stress, including sweating, vasodilation, increase in heart rate and reduction of blood pressure. Prevention measures are not put into place to keep core temperature within the redline, the body gives you warnings such as heat cramps, even more serious, including heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Sweating

Sweat glands to keep the skin damp. Evaporating sweat sucks heat from the skin, and transfers it to the air. Sweat is water and some electrolytes. It’s critical to keep hydrated. The body needs to about a pint of water every hour during hot, dry conditions. This rule of thumb is even more important for motorcyclists. At highway speeds, the sweat glands may not keep up with the evaporation causing dehydration with even more serious complications.

Vasodilatation
To help cool down the body, blood vessels enlarge to circulate more blood and body heat towards the skin. If ambient air temperature is lower than body temperature, excess heat can be absorbed by the air. But if the air gets hotter than the skin, the increased blood flow simply soaks up more heat from the air and pumps it back to the body.

Heart rate and blood pressure

The heart responds to increasing heat by increasing the heart rate to pump more blood into those enlarged blood vessels. As the air temperature rises, heart rate can increase 50% to 70% faster than the normal resting rate. The increased flow causes blood pressure to drop, and blood flow is shunted away from muscles and brain, towards the skin.

Symptoms of trouble
The human body won't take much of an increase in temperature without complaining. The symptoms of overheating are leg cramps, tired muscles, headaches, dizziness, and even fainting. The various symptoms are trying to tell you how overcooked you're getting.

The bottom line and your first line of defense is HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE!