Michelle Rupp: Hello and welcome into this week’s edition of AFMC TV. We’re glad you’re joining us. It is the dog days of summer and some of you may still be hanging tough to your New Year’s resolutions of exercise. So how do you exercise when all you really want to do is just be inside with the air conditioning? Well, joining me now, to answer that question is Dr. JJ Mayo. Hi Dr. JJ. How are you?
JJ Mayo PhD: Great, Michelle, I’m glad to be here. Excited to talk about one of my favorite topics. Exercise.
MR: Mine too. So, what are some of the smart ways that we can exercise in heat?
JM: Okay, so let’s just be honest, the most important thing. I think this is kind of a commonsense thing is you just want to avoid the hottest part of the day and there’s nothing wrong with actually you mentioned it going inside to get your exercise in because you know, it can really be dangerous if you’re out there during the hottest part of the day. Especially when that heat index gets up to, you know, 100 plus as it is right now. So, you know, if you are going to continue to exercise or start begin exercise, definitely want to do it early in the morning or late in the evening, that’s the best choice. You know, like this morning I got up with my wife and we got a six-mile run in but we did it early in the morning and we, you know, another smart thing to talk about is if you are going to exercise, maybe you’re walking or biking is plan your route so that you have some water stops. We ran by our local park and so we were able to get a couple of drinks there and if we’re really going longer than say an hour, we’ll take some fluid with us because that’s one of the biggest things is in the heat obviously is to stay hydrated. So those are some, some ways to be smart about it. You know, if worst case scenario, you can always go inside and find a treadmill and a bike. But for those of us who love the outdoors and we want to get it in, you just got to be prepared for the heat because there’s no way around it. Just avoid the hottest part of the day though.
MR: So, when we are outside exercising what are some clothing options? Because we do have to wear clothes regardless of how early and or how dark it is when we are outside exercising what what’s a good rule of thumb for clothing?
JM: Yeah, that’s, I should have mentioned that as one of the smart ways to exercise. You always want to think about your clothing, and it starts with everything from top to bottom. You know, if you want, you want to avoid that son, you can wear a hat if you want and the sunglasses to avoid the bright rays of the sun. The shirts that you want to wear, and the shorts should be technical. They, you know, they have material now that’s moisture wicking. And so, what it does is it wicks that moisture to the surface of your material and it’s able to evaporate easier. So, you definitely want to do that. You want to stay away from cotton at all costs. You know, that’s one of the common things out here, especially with people like, oh, I got a blister. I’m like, what, what kind of socks are you wearing? And they’re wearing cotton socks and that just doesn’t work. There’s some really great, you know, any local running store you can go to and get some really great exercise gear that a week away, that moisture, you’ll forget the blisters and you keep yourself cooler as well.
MR: It makes all the difference. You know, you touched on it just a few minutes ago about if you’re going to be exercising, for about an hour or a little longer to make sure that there’s water or electrolytes available? What about, what do you need to do the night before and then what do you need to make sure you have in your car for immediately after? As far as rehydrating and replenishing.
JM: Yeah. So, you know, just some things because what you want to do that one of the first things I would say if you’re asking me, you know, what do you want to do the day before checking the forecast, check the forecast to see what the temperature is going to be because that really determines what kind of clothes you might wear. And then if you do, if you are going over that hour then yeah, you definitely want to take some fluid with you, but checking the weather would be one of the first things to see, okay, when is it really going to start to heat up during the day and maybe you can get away with exercising a little later than you normally would if the weather is going to be cooler. But you know right now it’s kind of hard to find a cool day for sure.
MR: And when you’re out, when you’re out exercising, we want to make sure that our, we strictly doing water. Are we doing Gatorade, are we doing, water with some type of electrolyte tablet or just good old-fashioned salt in our water at this time of year?
MR: Yeah, so you know, the night before, you don’t necessarily have to just overdo your fluid consumption if you know, you’re going to get up and exercise over the next day. But you do want to think about it and then before you go out on your workout, then you want to have a couple of cups of water. If you’re going longer then yeah, you could start to add in that sports drink and then take the sports drink with you on that workout. But that’s the biggest thing is the heat is to stay hydrated. The calories are pretty much the same that you would consume before any other workout. But the hydration you definitely want to stay on top of that because Just as an example a week ago I went out and ran and did like a six-mile run and I lost a kilogram of weight, I lost two pounds an hour run so it can definitely catch up with you.
MR: And what can we do post exercise to just ensure that we are replenishing properly.
JM: Yeah, usually what you say is for every pound you lose, you’re going to take in about 2-3 cups of fluid. So, if you know you weigh yourself before and you weigh yourself after and you lost £2 during that exercise session then you would go and you would drink 4-6 glasses of water. You don’t have to do all at once. But in the next several hours and then if you want to go ahead and just have a regular meal most of the time our meals have salt and electrolytes in them and so that’s not usually a big thing unless you’re really going really long, okay then you definitely want to get some immediately after.
MR: Sure. And then my last question would be what do we do if we are out exercising whether we are bike riding, running, walking, even if we’ve got a home gym may be set up in our garage even and we get into trouble, we start feeling dizzy, we find particularly if we’re away from home it’s a little bit of a struggle and we start kind of panicking, thinking how am I going to get back home? What are some things we need to keep in mind if we find ourselves in trouble?
JM: Yeah, safety is always an issue when you’re exercise, especially out in the heat. One of the things we always do, and I know but you know this is for a bike ride, like when we go for a bike ride we’ll call somebody and say hey look, you know we’re going out for a bike ride, we’ll let you know when we get back. So that’s one of the things I always like on some of the exercise sessions like the bike ride, we would take a phone with us so people can track us, we have this app where family can track us so they know exactly where we are and having that phone is helpful a lot of times like on a run, most people won’t take a phone but walking, they might and some other activities, so just again learning people to let you know let them know that hey if I’m not back in a couple of hours, you know you need to be thinking about me but then also when you’re talking about safety, you know, it’s just about being aware and so if you start to get lightheaded, you start to feel nauseous. You just need to slow down a lot of times in the heat. Really, all you need to do is just slow down, take it a little easy. Maybe you need to sit down for a little bit, find a shade tree because we all know that when you get under that in the shade is like 10 degrees cooler than it is out in the heat of the sun. So those are some things I would say is to alert people where you’re going to be. And then if you do start feeling bad, even at home, just slow down. You know, sit down and rest for a second, take it easy. And then you could, like you said, you could get, if you’re at home, you could get like a towel or or if you’re out somewhere you maybe could pour some water over your wrist or back of your head, start to cool you down a little bit.
MR: All right. Dr. JJ, great advice as always, thank you.
JM: Thanks Michelle.
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