We have entered the first wave of high temperatures of the summer. The map of Spain is tinted maroon, the colour that warns us that things are getting hairy, and in the newsrooms we are once again asking ourselves how to measure the heat.
The Ministry of Health says that what works best to wake people up are short and repeated messages – “protect yourself”, “drink water”, “do not do sports during the central hours of the day” – but the increasingly harsh weather conditions in Spain are already putting us in another scenario: that of a public health crisis. Big words.
Coinciding with this first heat wave – which, by the way, specialists always warn is the most dangerous because we are not used to high temperatures – I spoke with the person in charge of Health and Climate Change at the Ministry. The interview is long, but it is worthwhile to understand what we are facing and what tools we have. Those that depend on us and those that do not.
The head of Health and Climate Change at the Ministry of Health, Héctor Tejero.
I got these four things clear:
It’s not there, it’s here and it’s dangerous. “We’re talking about something that’s not just about polar bears and all that, it’s about affecting your own health. Heat is killing about 3,000 people a year and it’s going to get worse.”
At this point, risk management is necessary. “Exposure to extreme heat will increase, but adaptation may also increase. So, more people will not necessarily die because it is hotter. In fact, in Spain we have seen the opposite: it is hotter than 20 years ago and fewer people are dying because houses are better adapted, because we have air conditioning and because people are assimilating the culture of heat.”
Whatever you think, protect yourself. “There will be people who don’t believe in climate change or who aren’t completely convinced, but we don’t want it to be taken as something ideological. The important thing, whether you believe in climate change or not, is that you take care of yourself. We don’t want you to die from the heat, whatever you think.”
I leave you the complete conversation in this link.
While you were doing other things…
Bike lane on Aragó Street in Barcelona, inaugurated last December.
- Cycling is cool: it doesn’t pollute and it’s good for your health. A study of more than 80,000 people in Scotland associates cycling to work with a reduction of half the risk of mortality.
- The Health Ministry has begun to finance an injection that replaces chemotherapy to treat some types of cancer.
- What happens when you are discharged from hospital and have nowhere to go or no one to care for you? The Ombudsman wants to investigate.
This is what your brain looks like under the influence of drugs
Some mushrooms of the genus ‘Psilocybe’, known as hallucinogenic or ‘magic’ mushrooms, from which psilocybin is extracted
After overcoming years of stigma and prohibition, hallucinogenic mushrooms are beginning to make their way into the world of medicine through various Clinical trials to treat mental illnesswith promising effects. A team of researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, led by specialist Joshua Siegelconducted a randomized study with seven healthy volunteers between 18 and 45 years of age.
The results have been published in the magazine Nature and my colleague Antonio Martínez Ron tells you about them in detail in this article.
That’s all for today. Take care of yourself and have a great week. We’ll see each other in the same place and at the same time next Saturday.
Health!
Source: www.eldiario.es
