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Summer Safety
Don't Let Your Kids Get Dehydrated By Jill Weisenberger
Keep your kids cool at sports camps and all summer long. Before they zip up their duffel bags and head off, make sure they have a water bottle, sports drinks and a game plan to stay hydrated. Dehydration is more common than most parents realize, and the consequences range from mild to severe to even life threatening.
It's not just a matter of quenching thirst. In fact, thirst is often a poor indicator of fluid needs during exercise. Encourage your children to drink often. Teach them the signs and symptoms of dehydration, and make sure they know how to stay cooled and hydrated. Explain that even mild fluid losses hinder their performance and affect their health.
Even when water and sports drinks are readily available, kids may not drink enough to stay hydrated, says Douglas Casa, Ph.D., director of athletic training education at the University of Connecticut. Using various urine tests, Casa assessed the hydration status of 58 boys and girls, ages 10 to 14 years, participating in four-day overnight soccer camps in Pennsylvania. Most campers were dehydrated by the second day of camp, and by the fourth day, 59 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls were significantly dehydrated. He found similar results with boys ages 9 to 18 at football camps.
"The kids believed that hydration was important to their health and performance, yet they didn't drink enough," says Casa. He observed that the children socialized during breaks more than they tended to their fluid needs. "It's a real safety issue," he says. "The good news is that it is preventable."
Heat exhaustion occurs when the body cannot get rid of its heat fast enough, and the athlete's body temperature begins to rise as with a fever. Sweating is the body's way of cooling. As sweat evaporates from your skin, it pulls heat from your body. This continuous loss of heat with sweat keeps your body at a healthful temperature. But when excessive fluid has been lost, the body fails to sweat and cool properly.
Weather affects sweating too. It's tougher to keep cool in humid conditions because it's harder for sweat to evaporate and for the body to throw off extra heat. Even more serious than heat exhaustion, heat stroke is a medical emergency and can affect the central nervous system and cause organ damage.
