Don't Become a Beach Bum Disaster!

Ever had a summer day turn from fun to frantic? In this episode we've got some essential summer tips and cautionary tales to help you keep safety at top of mind this summer. Learn to spot the early signs of heat-related illnesses like heat rash and heat cramps before they become severe. We've also got some hydration hacks for you, from the perfect Gatorade-water mix to the unbeatable deliciousness of homemade lemonade. Plus, we'll discuss monitoring your hydration levels based on your activity and weight, as a way to help keep you cool and hydrated all summer long.

But wait!! There's more...! Hear a harrowing personal story of helping a woman suffering from heat exhaustion, and get practical advice on how to cool down quickly, including the magic of a wet cloth for your neck (sooo amazing!) and the importance of finding shade when you're over heating. We'll also chat about beach safety, diving into tips for avoiding riptides and sharing our own oceanic adventures, shark encounters and all. From avoiding jagged coral reefs to administering first aid for cuts, we'll help you make sure your beach outings are both enjoyable and safe. Ready to make the most of your summer? Tune in to soak up some sun safety!

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Chapters

• 0:26 Summer Heat Emergencies and Hydration
• 13:01 Summer Safety
• 20:19 Beach Safety Tips and Warnings

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:26

What's happening? It's your boy, jimmy, and Megs. I don't know why I got Meg that one. What was so funny? That was like.

Megan: 0:36

Well, you were looking over at the computer and I thought you just weren't going to talk. And then you just held it for so long and then you started talking, like while staring so intently at the screen. I was just staring at the screen, I was trying to figure out what you were.

Jimmy: 0:51

I was just staring at the little lines, the recording lines. Yeah, it's funny, All good. So this Life and Safety podcast we're going to talk about summer.

Megan: 1:05

Yeah.

Jimmy: 1:06

And all the things that come along with summer the fun, the good, the bad, the only, I guess you could say so summer is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love when it's warm, I love the traveling, I love the vacations, I love the beach. I love the cool nights that we get here in California. You know I love everything about summer. It's also my whole family, except for Jenny's birthdays, are in the summer, so it's always fun celebrating that. We always get to go on a cool trip in the summer. So that's fun.

Jimmy: 1:48

But with the heat comes problems and that's kind of what we want to talk about today a little bit of heat issues and then my favorite pastime, going to the beach. What are some of the issues and dangers we see there? So let's start with heat emergencies. So let's start with heat emergencies. So heat emergencies. I always tell people don't just zero in on the really bad ones heat exhaustion, the heat stroke because that's what everybody says or sees and they're like, oh, they're catching the heat stroke or they're catching a heat exhaustion or something like that. I always hear that and it's like, well, yeah, they could be, but they, we should have saw signs sooner than that. Right, because it escalates. So the first thing we might start to see is simple heat rash people just not feeling good working out in the sun. They take their shirt off and their underarms, their back, their shorts, things like that they just have a rash. It looks like acne and it's heat bumps.

Jimmy: 2:57

You know, look for something like that and just start drinking lots of water, a lot of electrolytes uh, you know your gainer aids, your pedialyte uh, you know your Gatorades, your Pedialyte Powerades, whatever you know you like. Personally, I like half Gatorade, half waters. I like to mix them, just because it just I don't know, I don't feel like I'm not getting the full. All the sugar and all the salt and stuff. I've done that one time. I don't know, I'm probably silly that way, but it's something I like to do. You know your watermelons, your juices, things like that definitely help hydrate what's your hydration go-to.

Megan: 3:40

Oh, it's actually really bad. I usually do iced tea, which is bad because caffeine dehydrates, so it's kind of an anti-hydration, but I love a good lemonade in the summer.

Jimmy: 3:55

Oh yeah, absolutely. I love a good lemonade.

Megan: 3:57

Growing up, there was always a lemon tree in our front yard, and so almost every day in summer I would pick a lemon in the morning and make myself a cup of lemonade to drink.

Jimmy: 4:06

That's awesome. Another good lemonade Right, or even a good pink lemonade or strawberry lemonade, get out of here with that.

Jimmy: 4:14

Yep, for sure, for sure. Now you get low teen exhaustion or, excuse me, heat rashes. You know you're already starting down that dark path. You should already been hydrating. You know doing things like that resting, staying cool, clear yourself off, uh, cold showers, those kind of things then you start losing electrolytes, you start working a little harder in the sun, you start getting those heat cramps, your hands start to tighten up, your muscles are tightened up. You get that charlie horse. You know we're already again. We're already down the bad path. You might be seeing your urine darken a little bit, things like that and you're going to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, cool. So with hydration, let's talk about that really quickly. There's lots of thoughts out there and lots of ways to measure it. So I always like to ask people in my class what's your weight Like, excuse me, what's your way to hydrate, like what's a good barometer for you, meg? So versus, I ask that people in classes all the time Like how much water do you feel like it's good?

Megan: 5:23

Oh, more than what I drink normally. I don't know, like one of those big hydro flasks, like the 32-ounce ones, at least a couple of those throughout the day, plus you know whatever other drinks you're drinking and, like I said earlier, if you're doing like coffee or tea, add more water on top of that, because that doesn't count towards hydration very well, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you hear those things where it's like you're supposed to drink however many pounds you are. You're supposed to drink that many ounces minus you know some number divided by whatever.

Jimmy: 6:04

Yeah, half your weight. Okay, sure, it's half your weight in ounces. So you know, if you weigh 250 pounds, you're supposed to drink 125 ounces. That's a boatload of water, that's a lot of water, you're right. So you know everybody's different. I always tell people drink what you can tolerate and what your activity levels are. You know, more the better. Better always is a good thing. More water is the better.

Jimmy: 6:36

At the peak of my firefighting career, I think I was drinking a gallon of water in the morning. So I literally drink a milk jug of water before lunch. So I literally drink a milk jug of water before lunch From the time I woke up and then just drink water periodically the rest of the afternoon. But I don't know why, because I think if I caught or was on a fire or something like that, in the afternoon which is when most of them happen you know I was hydrated, I was pretty good. So I just feel like I had this weird mentality. I had to get all that water in at once, but if I walked too fast I'd start sweating immediately. So I was always damp, which was not great.

Jimmy: 7:20

So heat cramps that goes into heat exhaustion, and remember it's a gradual thing, you're not just going to catch heat exhaustion, right? Oh, they're in the heat exhaustion. Oh, they're in the heat stroke, right, it doesn't happen that way. It's a linear thing. So you want to start looking for the patient's face to start to lose color? You want to see how bad they're sweating. You want to see how bad they're sweating. You want to see how, with it, they are.

Jimmy: 7:47

Are they still asking or answering questions coherently? How are they doing with that? Right, just the basic who, what, when, where, how's? Do they know where they're at all those simple, simple questions, yeah, are they able to stay awake If they're not answering questions? They're not able to stay awake. Things are going south. They're going into heat stroke. Their internal temperature is starting to get really high, especially with athletes and anybody working outside. The only way to really truly tell if somebody is going into heat stroke and what their internal temperature is is to take a rectal temperature. That doesn't sound like fun to me. You know to give or to take, you know, but that's the best way to know. You know. So improvised cooling methods let's talk about that. Obviously, if we get somebody in an air conditioning, that's the best way, yeah, Air conditioning.

Jimmy: 8:49

And what if you get somebody in an air?

Megan: 8:50

conditioning. That's the best way. Yeah, Air conditioning.

Jimmy: 8:51

And what if you don't have air conditioning Right? Wet them off, you know. Wet them up, cool, take their loose clothing off. If you can, let that skin really evaporate right, as much as we can. Ice packs High in their crotch, as high as they can tolerate. Higher the better. In their armpits, because we're trying to cool off their arteries, we're trying to cool the blood off. Behind the neck always feels nice and on top of the head always feels nice. Ideally, though, on either side of the neck where their carotid arteries are. Back of the neck feels good. The sides of the neck is what we want. I've actually seen this. Don't like a spanish ice band, like ice packs in somebody's neck.

Jimmy: 9:33

Oh yeah, yeah, I love the intent, but the, the way that happened is not probably the best thing to do. It. Execution was not going to say that. The intent was well, the execution was not um, cool them off, cool them off, cool them off. You know, uh, really extreme situations.

Jimmy: 9:55

The taco method, the tarp assisted, uh, cooling, oscillation, oscillation it's a really big word for me. Sorry, team, I probably messed that up. Uh, method works really good. I just remember the taco part because, well, it's tacos, so what you do is you actually pour somebody, get somebody in a tarp or a blanket or something like that and you actually pour cold water and ice on them whatever you have cooler drinks, whatever you have and you lift them up and you actually shake them and you just up and down like tinder-totter motion and it actually cools all of their body and it moves around. So that's actually a really cool method to cool somebody down in an emergency. Obviously, if we have to intervene and try to cool that person down, we need to probably call 911. Especially if they're losing consciousness, if they're starting to get sleepy, drowsy. Things like that Dunk If you put them in pools and they're conscious enough to sit up in a pool, definitely a good thing.

Megan: 11:00

If they're unconscious, don't stick them in pools. Yeah, that's bad.

Jimmy: 11:04

Don't give them anything to drink either. Yeah, don't force anything out of their mouth.

Megan: 11:08

Oh, that brings up a good point um what's? The symptoms, um, that I like to talk about when I talk about heat emergencies is nausea and vomiting good that definitely comes up. Um, I would say it starts around the heat exhaustion point and definitely in the heat stroke point yeah um. So if they're super, super nauseous, even if they're conscious, don't be forcing a bunch of liquid down their throat to get the hydration, because they'll probably just end up vomiting that up and that's losing hydration, which is the opposite of what we want.

Jimmy: 11:38

Right, yeah, yeah, did I tell you about our Savannah banana story?

Megan: 11:43

No, oh, please tell.

Jimmy: 11:44

Oh man. So my family and I were lucky enough to go see the Savannah Bananas in Sacramento a couple weeks ago and it was their first hot weekend in Sacramento. So it was like 90 plus degrees and we're standing in this concrete patio basically in front of the baseball stadium. They told us to get there early for less entertainment and stuff like that, and it was cool entertainment and they had water fountains and water jugs. Basically you could drink free water at, which was fine, but there was like no shade and people were just, you know, getting woozy, not doing great.

Jimmy: 12:23

Uh, my poor little niece that went with us was feeling not great, so we kept pouring. I was like I'm gonna pour water on you. It's not going to feel good, but it'll make you feel better. So I kept pouring water down on her back and I kept wetting her hair and she was feeling better because the evaporation was cooling her off. So that was working out really good. And then we actually got her in some shade and got her an ice pack, but the so they kind of herded us together at a rope drop and then they let us get, because it was general admission, and then they let us move a little bit farther into the stadium, the closer the game got, but they kept herding us together. So think of 80 people packed into this little cement patio beating down the sun. Lots of heat.

Megan: 13:10

Yeah.

Jimmy: 13:11

And I was giving this lady, this family in front of me room and this lady was kind of just not being very nice about things and she was like, well, if they're going to do this, I'm going to just try to get as close as I can and the line's three or four people deep, it's not that big of a deal. So she flexes and kind of gets behind me and I was leaving the room because I didn't want the lady in front of me to get overheated because I was hot. So she gets in that space and it looks at her husband or whoever she's with her partner and he goes. It's really hot and I can't heat exhaustion really easy, which is true If you get it once, it's easier to keep getting. So back to hydration.

Jimmy: 13:56

And then the lady sits down and she's in a long sundress, Looks like she's dressed appropriately for the heat, Sits down and then flips her hair over her face to cool her neck off and I'm like that doesn't look very comfortable to me. But I don't have hair. Most people know this. Even when I had hair I wouldn't have done that. So I'm like man. So she's like yeah, I don't feel good. So her partner starts pouring water on her. I'm like all right, cool. Well then the rope drops and we have to start moving forward. So I have a, you know, moral decision.

Jimmy: 14:41

I step around this lady and step over her and stay in line, because she cut in front of me, yeah, or I help her up and get her to aid, and that side, one in that the angel on my shoulder of one. So I picked her up, I grabbed her arm and her partner picked her up and she said I don't feel good and she started dry, heaving, and then she covered her mouth and I kind of pointed her to the wall and walked away from her, because yeah, you know her partner was there to take care of her at that point and she decided just to basically spray paint the wall of the baseball stadium with her vomit, you know, and I was like then I actually got pinned in so I actually couldn't get back to help her.

Jimmy: 15:23

But my brother, who was behind me by about six people, with all our family in between us, there was a water cooler at his knees for like sodas and stuff like that Cause we happened to stop right in front of the beer stand and a concession stand and I was like dude, start passing those waters out. And so we were able to actually get that lady a cold bottle of water, put it on her neck and she was actually pretty good. I spent $150 in bottled water in like five minutes and I was like, geez, the water in this place is so expensive. They're like that's why we put free water outside. We're like, well, that didn't help us in this cattle call right, yeah. So it kind of goes back to Megan's point. Sign the symptoms. You know, if you're hot and you start getting nauseous, you're down a bad road. You need to cool yourself off, however that works out for you. So, meg, what's your go-to cool-off method?

Megan: 16:24

Ideally a pool. I am a fish out of water. I love being in water.

Megan: 16:30

If I could I would live there, fish out of water. I love being in water. If I could, I would live there. Um, but yeah, you know, uh, something cool on the back of the neck, that's a good one. Um, I like to uh like, if I'm wearing like a t-shirt, particularly like a cotton t-shirt, um, get that wet, wring it out slightly and wear that. Um, you know, going back to that evaporation concept shade, just not being directly in the line of the sun yeah, sure, nothing like a nice cold lake for me or a nice cold river.

Jimmy: 17:05

Those are my go to's. Alright, team, thanks for joining us today talking about some heat, some summer issues. Oh, we didn't talk about the beach. Oh yeah, beach, beach issues. How do you get injured at the beach? All right, team, thanks for joining us today. Talk about some heat, some summer issues. Oh, did you talk about the beach?

Megan: 17:17

Oh, yeah, beach, beach issues. How do you get injured at the beach? Well, I mean, I can think of a few, depending on your level of stupid. Talk to me, kid. I mean, I guess the biggest one is riptide If you're out swimming in the ocean and get caught up in the riptide and aren't able to swim back to shore that's going to be one of our biggest and more dangerous of the possible things that can go wrong at a beach. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jimmy: 17:56

Do you know what to do if you get caught in a riptide? A couple train of thoughts this one you should relax and let it take you out until you stop moving and then swim sideways. Never help to come at you. I'm not a good swimmer, though, so I don't think that really would work for me.

Jimmy: 18:11

Or you're supposed to swim along the beach yeah laterally, which I think would probably work better for me. Me personally, you know, uh, yeah, I like the ocean, I like swimming the ocean a little bit, but I don't like being part of the food chain. So you know there's sharks and stuff out there, so, yeah, and I have been to a shark bite accident so I know what they do to you, so I'm good.

Megan: 18:37

Yeah.

Jimmy: 18:38

I'll jump in the ocean and I'll swim a little bit, I'll paddleboard or not even paddleboard, I'll like body surf a little bit and then, yeah, I'm good.

Megan: 18:46

Yeah, I mean, as far as the riptide thing go, yeah, the one that I've heard most often is to swim parallel to the shore until the um you're out of the riptide and are able to swim back. But just swimming, trying to swim straight back to shore if you're caught up in the riptide is almost definitely not gonna work, unless you're like you know, michael phelps, and even then maybe not um. So don't uh, you know, swim parallel and keep going, and even then maybe not Um. So don't uh, you know, swim parallel and keep going. Actually, my aunt and my nephew, I believe um were caught in a riptide and they use that method and you know, they're alive today, so I would say that it works.

Jimmy: 19:23

Yeah.

Megan: 19:23

Um, some other things. I uh, like I said, whenever possible I am in water and so I've gotten my fair share of cuts, you know, while I'm swimming out in the ocean and I step on something sharp, yeah.

Jimmy: 19:43

So so what would you so like? What if, like, you're like an area with lots of coral and you get cut? So the belt objects, right, try not to pull it out, rinse it off, clean water, but you can't and get help. You never know what you stepped on. You can step on an urchin or something like that, be poisonous. Who knows what's going on with that. So always get it checked out and evaluated. You never know. Lifeguards are usually pretty good about that stuff. They're going to know what the dangers are in that area.

Jimmy: 20:19

Don't step on coral, right, it's living, it's nice, you don't have to do it. It's inevitable. Sometimes it happens. My little brother just got back from Hawaii and he stepped on coral and he had a big piece of you know coral at his foot and he pulled it out. He actually had to wound, pack it, he actually had to buy. Well, he says he had to buy new flippers, new sandals for him, you know, and I was like, yeah, that was just your excuse to shop in Hawaii, but just be careful with that. Some things I've seen is, you know, nothing like a jerk with a glass bottle or something like that on the beach that breaks bottles or something like that on the beach. You don't see it. So people step on that. You know. Clean it the best. You can, direct pressure if you need to, with any bleeding, you know. So what happens if you get a Coke bottle and you're playing with toys improvised toys and you get your finger stuck in a Coke bottle, what should you do?

Megan: 21:26

Well, speaking on the story that I was just told, apparently the best thing to do is go to the ocean and, you know, let that um the water, the coolness of the water, help yeah get it out more successfully so remember, your fingers will heat up and expand and it'll expand inside the heated bottle.

Jimmy: 21:47

So if you want to go, cool off your figure and the more cold it is the better your finger will retract right. So that'll pull it out. That may or may not have happened to one of my family members just recently, this past Memorial Day. I was not there so I didn't see it. So it's hearsay. Thanks, team, and we'll catch you in the next episode.