Me too! It is horrible here in Missouri. I would like to hunker down on my cool leather couch under the ceiling fan and in the air conditioning...but I have young kids. I've been so reactive the past few days and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why. Finally I realized it's from being out with the kids at baseball games and playing in the backyard. Our movie theaters give discounts during heat warnings but there are no good movies we haven't already seen. I think we'll go bowling tomorrow or --gasp-- chuck e cheese (oh how I despise that germ-infested place).

Just saw the forecast and heat is supposed to let up after the weekend. Thank goodness!

Kristi

We managed to get away to the mountains for a few days...highs in the 70s felt as normal as I have felt in months...

The heat here is horrible! I have the AC on full blast with 2 ceiling fans and 3 room fans and it isnt enough. I always hate August, its the worst month of the year for me,. I am NOT looking forward to it  

I cant wait for fall and winter!! the coolness means I can sleep without tossing and turning and I can go outside and do more cooking (hard to cook right now, it reflects off the stove and makes me feel ill).

lets hear it for wintertime!!

I must appologize, but I'm NOT READY to give up my winter yet, gang!!   We had a very hot summer here in Brazil and out winter has been warm and I'm just not ready to give it up, so you'll have to hold on tight yet a bit more, please.


Now, heat survival tips from Lisa!!

Brazil is a tropical country.  Our heat is for at least 6 - 9 months and our "winter" never goes below about 55 degrees at night when a "cold front" LOL comes through.  The moment the sun comes back out it's back up to the mid 80s once again, so in truth, I live with year round issues with the heat!!

So, I've developed certain tricks to dealing with the heat.  My house does NOT have air conditioning and only my bedroom has it, so I've had to learn how to keep may house cool as well!!!

So, if you don't have AC, keeping your house cool is of the ESSENCE!!   The trick are the BREEZES!!!   I close my house up on any day, summer or winter, that the temperatures seem to be rising so by 8:30 at the latest I've got every single window in my house closed up tight for the real culpret to heating up your home is the hot air from outside.  I keep my windows tightly closed until I can tell that the outside air is as warm as the inside air and that I'm better off opening up the windows and taking advantage of the breezes to help cool off the inside once again.  Until I open up my home I have FANS constantly blowing on me.  I have a small table fan that I've wired with an extra long cord so that I can move it about anywhere in the room and go from room to room with it!!  IT'S A LIFE SAVER!!   I use it on me while I'm cooking!   Yes, it slows down the cooking especially since I cook with gas, but it's either me or the food and since my gang doesn't stop eating...!!!  a

During the day with the heat, when it's worst, I will take a t-shirt, wet it and wring it out and wear it over my underclothes!  I'm at home and so I'm not going to worry about the appearance too much.  It's a matter of SURVIVAL!!  Yes, it get's tiresome feeling "wet" all the time, but it keeps me cool and I don't get feeling SICK all the time!  So, to exchange the wet feeling for the sick feeling is a minor sacrifice I think!!

Also, be smart about cooking!!!  COOK ONLY DURING THE EVENING!!   Do not light the stove or any other heating element during the day hours - it heats up your house and kitchen and if you don't have AC, this is working against everything you do to keep your house cool.  So, if you can roast a chicken or some beef the night before to serve the next day, do so.  If you can't eat left overs, then cook the meat for your family meal for the evening, but make sure there's left overs for them for the next day and then cook only what will get you through the day for your lunch meal.  Cool salads are IDEAL at this time!  It's a matter of changing your schedule to adapt yourself to doing as little as possible during the hottest part of the day.

Also, back to the wet t-shirt.  I have found that by putting a wet t-shirt over my bathing suit and sitting in a law chair in the shade on my back porch reading a book is a great way to escape the heat and to rest.  The breezes in the afternoon are usually better and by keeping the t-shirt wet enough, you can get outside without creating too much degranulation.

Once the temperatures begin to cool down, about 5PM, OPEN UP YOUR HOUSE COMPLETELY AND KEEP IT OPEN AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!!   The key to keeping your home comfortable when you don't have central airconditiong is that of Taking Advantage of the Breezes and the Cool Evening Air.  This way, if you can keep the windows open all night, putting a fan into the window if necessary to pull the cool air inside, this is ideal and will help make the summer more bearable.

If you have AC, and it's still too hot, put on the wet t-shirt and take your portable table fan to constantly be on you the entire time!!  It's survival mode, gang!!

Now, as to going outside - DON'T!  

I can't get any more instructive than that!!  Don't plan doctors consults during the day unless YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!!   DO NOT leave your house after 9AM and stay inside until 5PM!!   Don't go anywhere!!   Do so only if it's really well planned out so that you have no hot cars to have to get into and wait for the AC to kick in!!  I've been triggered just in waiting for the AC to kick in!!  It's not worth the risk of just going to hang out at the mall for a while!!  Be SMART!!!  If you need to get out of the house, then PLAN it out and go after 5PM but don't go before if you can avoid it, for it's not good.

Heat is a known trigger for mast cells.  When we take our antihistamines they will only wipe up the mess that the MCs create when they degranulate.  Nothing that we can take will stop the degranulation and there is no way to keep heat from triggering MCs.  Extremes in heat are known MC degranulators PERIOD!!   So nothing you can do will keep them quiet.  The ONLY way to keep out of trouble on a hot day is to AVOID THE HEAT period!!   You've got to look at the heat as though you were allergic to peanuts and the heat was a peanut!!  It's going to trigger you each and every single time - period!  It's a certainty.  You can take the mast cell stabilizer and this may help to reduce your sensitivity to the heat by calming down you mast cells, which is why we take these meds, however, you are still going to do some triggering.  There is no way to 100% keep our MCs from degranulating - we need them to protect us and so they are going to trigger with the heat - it's their job.  We just do an overdose of triggering and this causes us problems which is why we take singulair and the other antihistamines because they block the effect of the leukotreines and histamines.  They don't stop the release of these hormones, the MCs are going to release it all anyway, but they block these hormones from affecting us so badly which is why we feel better in taking them.  But you need to see that when you've got such intense heat like this, it's potentially deadly to us!!  The amount of degranulating can indeed put you into anaphylaxis and so you must do everything you can to AVOID it!!!  

I know of a patient here in Brazil whose family was told by Dr. Escribano to move.  They lived up in the Amazon River Basin where the heat is a literal sauna every single day of the year.  The child was in constant degranulation and she suffers from the bullious kind of masto!!  He told these parents that they had no choice and that they MUST move for their daughter's benefit!!  They did!! To the southern states in Brazil where the heat is less than what I have to deal with!!  

We do what we must, even if it means staying prisoners within our homes for most of the day.  

When the heat gets too much and everything you are doing isn't helping too much, you must compensate for the degranulation by adding a 3rd dose of antihistamines during the day.  If you take your meds at 6AM or so, then don't go more than about 6 hours without another dose, so add the 2nd dose in at about noon and then your normal evening dose at 6pm.  

I find that a 6:30 - 12:30pm and 5:30 pm schedule during the summer suits me really well.  I don't have to add but one extra allegra at the 12:30 dosage and this gets me through the day pretty well.  So, if this is what keeps you out of trouble, do it!!   If you find that even this isn't doing it, and you're right on the edge, add another dose!!  It's better than going into anaphylaxis.  You should also check with your doctors to tell them about this need and have them oversee how they can adapt your meds for summer heat and then you can back down off of these higher doses as fall comes around.


I hope this helps!!   I REALLY AM SORRY for how awful I know you all feel!!    Be patient, your winter is coming again!  Yet, I think you all need to remember how miserable you all were with so very much snow this past year.  It may help to get through the hottest days.


Keep cool everybody!

Here, here! I second that thanks to you Lisa. I was so near passing out daily until you suggested the higher doses of H1 & H2 blockers with the added Allegra mid day. 'R' is right! We are experiencing TERRIBLE heat this year. Every day has been OVER 100 F with the heat index where I live! Counting the days until approx end of Sept before it will start crawling back down in temps. Thank you for all the advice and wisdom.
Kim

Lisa's tips are all great ones, so I strongly suggest that people try to emulate some of the things she does! I am smack in the middle of the Midwestern heat, but doing fine most of the time. The key is staying indoors! If you don't have to leave home and your air conditioning, don't do it! I like hanging at home, so this doesn't bother me.

Leep your shades, curtains, blinds closed all day. We just don't even open ours now, and that helps a lot as well. My house is having a hard time keeping up with the heat. Although I have thermostats in every room, they are all reading 78 degrees and I have them set at 70. The upstairs of our house is a sauna and my kids have been sleeping on the couches on the first floor for over a week! We just can't get the upstairs cooled enough to be able to stay up there. It is reading 89 degrees up there! Our house is rather large and has a lot of 2 story ceilings from the first floor up, so that is screwing up  the cooling ability for sure! Yet as long as I stay indoors, it is fine. My kids just play around the house, as they know that we make adjustments in our options of things to do so that I can stay well.

Good tips there everyone.

Here's another thing to think about, especially now:

That illusive triggering effect from going from the hot outside to the cool inside, and vice versa.

Now that is a tricky animal for sure.

So, here's what I've done.  I turn my inside temp up slightly about have an hour or so before I go out.  I leave that way during the day, and then turn it down again about half an hour after I come back.  That way, the transition from cold to hot and vice versa is not so abrupt.  That seems to work for me.  I save money on my electric bill too.

At night, you will sleep better too if it is a little cooler and you are under a soft blanky!