Mt. Hamilton ride New Years Day

Chris Neary wrote:

In any of the cited events, did you see any instances of hyponatremia?

In all of them. In the two ER visits where the rider got an IV, it
was a saline IV.

Since I never got to see a doctur in my ER visit, I self diagnosed
my own hyponatremia. It was neither heat exhaustion (temperature was
normal) nor dehydration (heart rate was normal), and a few licks of
a salty arm cured me.

If someone presents on a hot day with general symptoms of fatigue,
nausea, and disorientation, check temperature and heart rate. If
temperature is high, suspect heat exhaustion. If the heart rate is
high, suspect dehydration. If temperature is normal AND heart rate
is normal, suspect hyponatremia.

The body has only about 2 grams of stored sodium, which can be
depleted through sweating on a hot day and vigorous exercise in as
little as 4 hours. I had my bout with hyponatremia after 8 hours of
hard riding in 90-112 degree temperatures.
--
terry morse - Undiscovered Country Tours - http://www.udctours.com/

Tim McNamara wrote:
In article ,
Pat Lamb wrote:

Tim McNamara wrote:
Why would you think that cyclists are any different from other
athletes? We're smarter? Better informed?
We ride longer and sweat more?

Not necessarily. A marathon can easily take longer than a typical road
race (but probably not longer than a Sunday Jobst ride).

Yeah, but I can (and often do) ride (not race!) three hours or more
every weekend, and I'm hardly an elite cyclist. I think there are far
fewer runners who run that long every weekend.

Oh, and we're naturally smarter and better informed. -)


I wonder if it's possible to correlate research results and/or
poster's beliefs favoring hyponatremia with living and cycling in
cooler, dryer climates...

I don't know if you can correlate posters' beliefs with anything! Some
of us don't even agree with ourselves. ;-)

I only half agree with you.

We've all had it drilled into us that if we feel thirst during
exercise, it's too late and we are already dehydrated. If that
were true, the species probably would not have survived. As a
result we "hydrate" preventively and can actually create problems.
Poster living in Minnesota (think cooler and drier than, say, Texas
to North Carolina), believes in hyponatremia.

80-100F in the summer with dew points 60-70F would not be unusual. I've
never been to Texas except inside the GHWB Airport and have never been
to NC or the eastern seaboard.

Like I wrote, cooler and drier. Over the last 20 years, I've decided
that it's hot when the dew point is over 70, the lows over 80, or the
temperature over 95. Some of that's personal acclimation, some of it's
based on remembering growing up 100 miles from here -- Chattanooga
usually dropped down to 70 overnight, and it seemed a lot cooler in the
mornings.

I pretty much sweat buckets when riding
here in mid-summer. My favorite rides are when the temps are 80-85F and
up to about 95F or so. I love hot summer weather.

Yeah, I love the 80-85F rides, too. Around here, that's early summer
mornings.


Pat