Doctor reveals why women find heatwaves more difficult
Dr Amir Khan explained that increased progesterone during the second half of a woman's menstrual cycle can raise core body temperature by up to 1°F.
Unlike men, women sweat less and depend on slower, less efficient cooling methods, such as directing blood to the skin's surface.
Higher body fat percentages in women also contribute to their difficulty in dissipating heat effectively.
Watch the video in full above.
Why are women affected more by heatwaves? A doctor explains
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The Sun
9 minutes ago
- The Sun
The 11 signs you could have Lyme disease as Justin Timberlake shares battle with ‘relentlessly debilitating' condition
JUSTIN Timberlake has opened up about living with "relentlessly debilitating" Lyme disease. The Sexy Back singer shared the news in a candid Instagram post after facing criticism for his at-times lacklustre performance while on tour. 5 5 "As I'm reflecting on the tour and festival tour, I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on with me," Justin wrote. "Among other things, I've been battling some health issues, and was diagnosed with Lyme disease - which I don't say so you feel bad for me, but to shed some light on what I've been up against behind the scenes. "If you've experienced this disease - or know someone who has - then you're aware: living with this can be relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically." Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread to humans by infected ticks - tiny, spider-like creatures that live in grassy or wooded areas. The first symptom of the illness tends to be a red, bulls-eye ring around the bite. But people bitten by bacteria-laden ticks can be struck with debilitating symptoms days or months afterwards. These can include severe headaches, joint pain shooting pains or tingling in the hands or feet, and episodes of dizziness. A number of celebs have spoken out about suffering from the disease - from Bella Hadid and her mum Yolanda, to Justin Bieber, Miranda Hart and Ben Stiller. Justin took to Instagram to reflect on his recently-concluded world tour for the album Everything I Thought It Was. He described it as 'the most fun, emotional, gratifying, physically demanding, and, at times, gruelling experience". Throughout his tour, Justin was accused of "hardly singing," with many branding his performances "lazy" - prompting a moment of frankness from the singer. "I was reluctant to talk about this because I was always raised to keep something like this to yourself," he wrote. "But I am trying to be more transparent about my struggles so that they aren't misinterpreted." The pop icon didn't say when he was first diagnosed with Lyme disease, but said he was "shocked" to receive the news. 5 5 At the same time, it helped explain some of the symptoms he'd been grappling with. "At least I could understand why I would be onstage and in a massive amount of nerve pain or just feeling crazy fatigue or sickness." For many, the first sign that they've been bitten by a tick carrying borrelia bacteria - which causes Lyme disease - is a raised, bulls-eye rash. It appears as a single circle that slowly spreads from the site of the tick bite. It may become clear in the centre and look like a target or bull's-eye, or remain red at the centre. The rash often feels warm to the touch, but it's rarely itchy or painful. It can pop up to three months after being bitten by an infected tick, but usually appears within one to four weeks, the NHS says. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) estimates that one in three people infected don't get the rash. And even when it does occur, it may be faint or on an area of the body which isn't very visible like the scalp, behind the ears, behind the knees or on the back. People who don't get a rash may notice symptoms like a fever and chills, headaches, tiredness and joint and muscle aches. But other worrying symptoms can strike days or months after an infected tick bite. These can include: Severe headaches and neck stiffness Rashes on other areas of the body Facial palsy - drooping on one or both sides of the face Arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling - particularly the knees and other large joints Pain in tendons, muscles, joints, and bones Heart palpitations or an irregular heartbeat Episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath Nerve pain Shooting pains, numbness, or tingling in the hands or feet Trouble with memory or concentration Inflammation of the brain and spinal cord Lyme disease is usually easier to treat if it's spotted early. Left untreated, the infection can spread anywhere in the body leading to around 70 recognised symptoms, according to Lyme Disease UK. Summer tick bite warning Lyme disease is endemic in many parts of the UK, particularly in woodland or heathland areas, but disease-carrying ticks can also be found in cities and gardens. UKHSA recently issued a summer warning about tick bites, after the latest annual data showed that there were 1,581 laboratory confirmed cases of Lyme disease reported in 2024. "While cases have fallen by 5.2 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023, the number of confirmed cases is likely an underestimate of the true burden of Lyme disease in England," the health watchdog warned. Most confirmed cases were reported in people living in the South West, South East and London regions, though cases were detected all over the country. Cases tend to peak in the spring and summer months as the risk of exposure increases. "It's important to seek treatment as soon as possible if you start to develop symptoms of Lyme disease after a tick bite," UKHSA went on. "Some people may not notice that they have been bitten as ticks are small and their bites rarely cause pain, which is why it's important to check for ticks on all parts of the body soon after spending time outdoors this summer "Not all ticks are infected and not everyone who is bitten by an infected tick will develop Lyme disease. "To pass on the infection, the tick needs to be attached for many hours. "You are unlikely to develop Lyme disease if you just see a tick crawling on you which has not yet attached and fed." How to prevent tick bites and remove the critters Tick bite prevention and correct removal is crucial when it comes to avoiding Lyme disease. Here's what you can do to cut your risk: Carry a tick removal tool with you at all times. Use insect repellent during outdoor activities. Avoid walking through long grass and stick to pathways. Tuck trousers into socks if walking in grassy, wooded and overgrown areas. Wear light-coloured clothing so you can spot and brush off any ticks. Check for ticks when you get home. Check children and pets too. Remember that you could be exposed to ticks whenever you spend time outdoors, including in grassy areas, woodlands, parks, or even your own garden. If you are taking part in a high risk activity, it is possible to buy pre-treated clothing from camping or outdoor activity shops that has been sprayed with the repellent permethrin. You can also spray clothing and shoes with this product yourself. Use repellents safely. Always read the label and product information before use. You can use fine-tipped tweezers to remove ticks. Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull upwards with steady, even pressure. Do not twist or jerk the tick as this may leave its mouth parts embedded, or cause it to regurgitate disease-causing fluids. 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BBC News
38 minutes ago
- BBC News
The world is getting hotter – this is what it is doing to our brains
As heatwaves become more intense with climate change, scientists are racing to understand how extreme heat changes the way our brains work. When Jake was five months old, he had his first tonic-clonic seizure, his little body stiffening and then jerking rapidly. "It was extremely hot, he had overheated and we witnessed what we thought would be the scariest thing we would ever see," says his mother, Stephanie Smith. "Unfortunately, it wasn't." Seizures began to crop up often in hot weather. As soon as the stifling, humid days of summer would arrive, the family would resort to all kinds of cooling methods and a fierce battle to keep the seizures at bay would ensue. Following a genetic test at the age of 18 months, Jake was diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome, a neurological condition that includes a form of epilepsy and affects around one in 15,000 children. Seizures are often accompanied by intellectual disability and a range of comorbidities such as autism and ADHD, as well as difficulties with speech, mobility, eating and sleep. Heat and sudden temperature changes can bring on a seizure. Jake is now 13 years old, but has endured countless seizures with the turn of the weather, his mother says. "Increasingly hot summers and heatwaves are adding to the burden of living with this already devastating condition," says Smith. Dravet Syndrome is just one of many neurological diseases that are exacerbated by higher temperatures, says Sanjay Sisodiya of University College London and a pioneer in the field of climate change's impact on the brain. A neurologist who specialises in epilepsy, he frequently heard from patients' families that they had more troubles during heatwaves. "And I thought to myself, of course, why shouldn't climate change also affect the brain? 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This means our bodies have to work hard to keep it cool. Blood circulating through a network of blood vessels helps to maintain its temperature, whisking away excess heat. This is necessary because our brain cells are also extremely heat sensitive. And the function of some of the molecules that pass messages between them are also thought to be temperature dependent, meaning they stop working efficiently if our brains get too hot or too cold. "We don't fully understand how the different elements of this complicated picture are affected," says Sisodiya. "But we can imagine it like a clock, where all the components are no longer working together properly." Although extreme heat alters how everyone's brains work – it can, for example, adversely affect decision making and lead to people taking greater risks – those with neurological conditions are often the most severely affected. This is for many reasons. For example, in some diseases, perspiration may be impaired. 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Part of this may be due to age – older people are less able to regulate their body temperature – but their cognitive impairment may also mean they are less able to adapt to extreme heat. They may not drink enough, for example, or forget to close the windows, or go out into the heat when they shouldn't. Rising temperatures have also been linked to an increase in stroke incidents and mortality. In one study that analysed stroke mortality data from 25 countries, researchers found that out of 1,000 deaths from ischemic stroke, the hottest days contributed two excess deaths. "That may not seem like a lot," says Bethan Davies, a geriatrician at University Hospitals Sussex, in the UK. "But given that there are seven million deaths from strokes a year worldwide, heat may well be contributing to over 10,000 additional stroke deaths per year." She and her co-authors warned that climate change is likely to exacerbate this in years to come. A disproportionate share of the burden of heat-related stroke will be in middle- and low-income countries, which are already most affected by climate change and experience the highest rates of stroke. "Rising temperatures will exacerbate health inequalities both between and within countries and social groups," says Davies. A growing body of evidence suggests that older people as well as those with a low socioeconomic position are at an increased risk for heat-related mortality. A hotter world is also harming the neurodevelopment of the very youngest. "There is a link between extreme heat and bad pregnancy outcomes such as premature births," says Jane Hirst, professor of global women's health at Imperial College London in the UK. One recent systematic review of the scientific research found that heatwaves are associated with a 26% increase in preterm births, which can lead to neurodevelopmental delays and cognitive impairments. "However, there is a lot we do not know," adds Hirst. "Who is most vulnerable and why? Because clearly, there are 130 million women who have babies every year, a lot of them in hot countries, and this does not happen to them." Excessive heat due to climate change may also put additional strain on the brain, leaving it more vulnerable to damage that can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. Heat also affects the barrier that normally protects the brain, making it more permeable and increasing the risk that toxins, bacteria and viruses can cross over into our brain tissue. This could become more important as temperatures increase, as so too will the spread of mosquitos that transmit viruses that can cause neurological disease, such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. "The Zika virus can affect foetuses and cause microcephaly," says Tobias Suter, a medical entomologist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. "Rising temperatures and milder winters mean that the mosquito breeding season begins earlier in the year and ends later." (Read David Cox's story on how the US's mosquito season is already changing.) Heatwaves are capable of influencing a whole range of factors, from the electrical firings of the nerve cells to suicide risk, climate anxiety and even the stability of medication for neurological conditions. But exactly how rising temperatures affect our brains are still being investigated by scientists. Heat affects people in very different ways – some thrive in hot weather, others find it unbearable. "Different factors might be relevant for this differential sensitivity, and one of them may be genetic susceptibility," says Sisodiya. Genetic variants could influence the structures of proteins that might render some people more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. "There may be thermo-latent phenotypes that will only become apparent when those environmental pressures are sufficient to bring them out," he says. "What we're seeing today in people with neurological disorders could become relevant for people without neurological disorders as climate change progresses." There are still other questions that remain to be answered too. For example, is it the maximum temperature, is it the length of a heatwave or the nighttime temperature that has the greatest impact? It may well differ for each person or by neurological condition. But identifying who is at risk and why will be crucial to developing strategies to protect the most vulnerable. These could include early warning systems or insurance to compensate day labourers for lost wages due to extreme heat. "The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced, when July 2023 was confirmed to be the hottest month on record. Climate change is here and it is intensifying. The era of the hot brain is just beginning. -- For trusted insights into better health and wellbeing rooted in science, sign up to the Health Fix newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Father-of-two with inoperable brain tumour warns others about the strange symptom he ignored
A fit and healthy father-of-two received a devastating brain tumour diagnosis after a bizarre symptom triggered a violent seizure—a lasting smell of bleach. Sam Suriakumar, 40, from London, didn't think much of it the first time he smelled the strong ammonia-like chemical, assuming that his wife, Sindu, had just cleaned the bathroom. 'The smell of ammonia, bleach or some sort of cleaning agent was almost filling up my mouth, it was really strong,' he recalled. 'I felt like I needed to lean against the wall to stand, I felt very strange but didn't think much of it.' But, when the strong smell returned the following morning whilst he was working out outdoors, accompanied by a bout of dizziness, alarm bells began to ring. On the tube home, the musician suffered a violent grand mal seizure—also known as a tonic-clonic seizure—which causes a person's muscles to stiffen and their limbs to jerk uncontrollably as they lose consciousness. Recalling the lead up to the events, Mr Suriakumar said he felt drained of energy on his commute home on the busy Northern Line of the London Underground. 'I closed my eyes and it felt like half an hour went by, but we had only moved one stop,' he said. He closed his eyes once more, hoping to drift off on his journey home, but to his surprise he woke up 48 hours later at St George's Hospital, Tooting. He said: 'My medical team told me that I had suffered a massive grand mal seizure. 'I seized so bad that I dislocated my shoulder,' he added. The father-of-two was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, during which time he suffered two more seizures. After a series of tests including a CT scan which showed a 'large shadow' across the left side of his brain, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which doctors suspected was a low grade glioma on February 4 2024. When he was told that the tumour was covering the part of his brain responsible for speech, movement and memory, he said his whole world 'spiralled out of control.' 'My mind went straight to my girls, who were only three and five at the time,' he said. 'All of a sudden, your priorities become very clear.' Despite Mr Suriakumar being 'in the best shape of his life', doctors were hesitant to operate on the tumour. Instead, they decided to go for a less invasive approach, treating Mr Suriakumar symptoms rather than the tumour itself. 'It was a case of not wanting to poke the bear,' he added. For two years his condition remained stable, enabling him to run the London Marathon in 2023 to raise money for Brain Tumour Research and becomes a support ambassador raising £60,000 to date. However, in July 2023 when he was in Brazil for a wedding, Mr Suriakumar received a sobering call from his neurosurgeon: the tumour had grown. 'It knocked me to my feet,' the musician recalled. Shortly after flying home, he underwent surgery to have some of the tumour removed—which confirmed a diffuse oligodendroglioma, a type of glioma which is often benign but can become cancerous. Just two weeks later, he started the first of 30 gruelling rounds of radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital. This was followed by nine long months of chemotherapy, which the father-of-two successfully completed in September last year. Determined not to give up and lose faith, the avid gym-goer completed the HYROX indoor fitness competition in Belgium just six months later—tackling eight kilometers of running and eight functional workout exercises. His medical team are now closely monitoring his condition through regular scans every six months to better understand the impact of the treatment, in what Mr Suriakumar described as a 'sitting on the fence' phase. Looking back, he said: 'Brain tumours are the biggests killers of children and adults before the age of 40, so reaching that milestone on July 26 was a big deal for me.' He is now urging anyone in a similar situation to stay positive. He said: 'Your brain talks to every single part of your body and it's so important to have a positive mindset. 'It's not going to come every single day, but try to find those things that inspire and encourage you to move forward.' Over 12,000 patients in Britain are diagnosed with a brain tumour each year, with about half of these cases being cancerous. Glioblastomas, one of the deadliest types of brain tumour, have been highlighted in recent years after killing a number of famous faces. The disease, which is the most common type of cancerous brain tumour in adults, killed the Labour politician Dame Tessa Jowell in 2018. And in March 2022, The Wanted singer Tom Parker died following an 18-month battle with the cancer.
