How To Prepare for a Heat Wave

, ,

With the rising temperatures across Canada, government agencies have been sending out warnings to citizens about the risk of extreme heat.

This heat has largely affected the areas of Southern Ontario, Quebec and the East Coast.  With 15 deaths in Quebec already this summer, now more than ever is a good time to know how to prepare yourself against the extreme heat.

Most Canadians think that extreme heat can only affect the elderly, but often it can affect people who are suffering from illnesses, and those with heart conditions. We’ve created a list of criteria to follow that you can use to prepare yourself and your loved ones for the heat of the summer.

How to prepare for the extreme heat

Preparing for a heat wave

  • Find areas or ways to keep cool in your home when it’s hot out. This can be as simple as setting up your home with air conditioning or fans.
  • Plan out your day, and know about places that are cool. Most public buildings, malls, and offices offer air conditioning during the day.
  • Discuss heat safety precautions with members of your household. Have a plan for wherever you spend time – home, work and school – and prepare for the possibility of power outages.
  • Make sure to have a plan for your pets as well as your family and make sure that their needs are met. Depending on how shaggy your pets are, they can get pretty hot on summer days.
  • Get trained in first aid, so that you’re able to recognize and respond to emergencies in the heat. The Mikey Young at Heart app is a great tool on the basics of first aid, and how to use an AED, but if you want a full accreditation we recommend reaching out to your local municipality or St.John’s ambulance.

During a Heat Wave

  • Drink plenty of cool fluids. It’s important to keep drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day as you want to remain hydrated throughout.
  • If you can, aim to avoid being outside at the hotter portions of the day. If you can’t, make sure to take regular breaks in a shaded area.
  • Know the humidex rating – it combines the temperature and humidity to indicate how hot the weather feels to the average person.
  • Dress for the heat and for your activity level. Wear light, loose clothing to let air circulate and heat escape.
  • Always wear a hat and apply sunscreen before going outside.
  • Slow down your activities as it gets hotter. Don’t work, exercise, or play outside for an extended period of time. Take frequent breaks if you must work outdoors to let your body cool off.
  • Avoid caffeine and alcohol because they can cause dehydration, which stops your body from controlling its temperature properly.

Symptoms to look out for:

  • Dizziness or fainting
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Rapid breathing and heartbeat
  • Extreme thirst
  • Decreased urination with unusually dark yellow urine
  • Changes of behaviour in children

Things that you can do to help others

  • Bring extra supplies with you that you can give away to friends or to someone in need, like a bottle of water. This is extremely helpful when you’re planning to go out for a day at the park or another public area.
  • Check in on neighbours, family members, and friends who you know don’t have air conditioning, are older, or have illnesses. Bring them a care package of water, and spend time with them to make sure that they’re alright.
  • Share on social media or other online platforms the location of cooldown centres, or water stations in your area.

For this list, we referenced an advisory from the Red Cross. If you need more advice on heat waves or an understanding of how to respond to different emergencies, we recommend using their site as it has many great resources. 

 

Heart Healthy Summer Meals

,

With the summer season upon us, it means that many Canadians will be taking full advantage of the outdoors. Summer allows us to enjoy activities that we wouldn’t normally have the ability to do the rest of the year as the environment is often too cold.

For these reasons, Canadians tend to gravitate towards BBQing and eating outdoors as primary summer activities.

The change in climate doesn’t always provide you with the best benefits though, as foods that you reserve for summer can also bring a lot of risk to your diet. Many of us are prone to gravitating towards less healthy choices that might be higher in fat, such as burgers and hot dogs.

With it being the Canada Day long weekend, we wanted to provide alternatives to the normal summertime food fare, so we reached out to our registered dietitian, Marsha Rosen, to share some of her favourite summertime heart-healthy meals.

Heart Healthy Meals

Tilapia and Vegetables

Grilled Corn Salsa

Piri Piri Chicken

Bulgur Wheat Salad

Peachy Chicken Salad

Summer Fruit Smoothie Ice Pops

Vanilla Lemon Berry Parfaits

Tart Apple Buttermilk Cake

 

Recipes From Our Resident Expert, Marsha Rosen, RD
Here are some heart-healthy recipes provided by Marsha Rosen, RD (Registered Dietitian). Marsha is Mike Salem’s sister and in addition to offering private nutrition counselling, Marsha provides group lectures, seminars and cooking demonstrations.

If you have a nutrition question for our dietitian, you can email Marsha here…

Do you have a heart-healthy recipe that you would like to share? Send your recipes to info@mikeynetwork.com

 

Walk of Life: Mikey Families and Organizations

, , ,

Every year the Mikey Network helps to organize a team for the Walk Of Life. The annual event which you can do as a walk or a run is a wonderful way to spend your Saturday. There are tons of fun events that you can do with your family and all of the money that is raised by the Mikey Network’s team goes towards educational programs that advocate for heart health or placements of defibrillators to families or organizations.

As we lead up to the walk, we want to let those that have supported us see where their donations have gone. This week we’re talking about The Mikey’s Kids program and our donations to various organizations.

Mikey’s Kids Program

As a parent, your child’s safety is always a top of mind concern. You want to make sure that they’re always safe and looked after. As we’ve discovered with many families that we’ve dealt with, having a child with a heart condition can certainly be unnerving as it can feel like you’re helpless to protect them.

Can there be anything more terrifying than seeing a child collapse suddenly and stop breathing? And can you imagine the frustration of feeling helpless in such an emergency?

We wanted to help with this, and to give families peace of mind so that they’re not fearful of an emergency because of their child’s heart condition.

Families whose children are at high risk of SCA are provided with a MIKEY, a portable automated external defibrillator (AED), to carry with them at all times so their kids are protected at home, school or play.

Families that are in need of a MIKEY defibrillator reach out to our organization to apply. They’re then given to families, along with a set of instructions on how to use it and maintain the AED. The defibrillators that we provide would not be possible without the donations that are raised at the Walk of Life.

Organizations

The Mikey Network understands that a sudden cardiac arrest can happen anywhere, and for this reason, we want to make sure that they’re as readily available to the public as fire alarms and fire extinguishers are.

To accomplish this, The Mikey Network works with organizations in the community that are in need of a defibrillator. Their needs will vary from helping to save lives with a MIKEY defibrillator; to housing large-scale events with many attendees, such as a sports facility.

This past weekend we provided two new MIKEY’s to the Canadian Ski Patrol’s motorcycle division, which will help them to save lives in emergency situations. This division has been very successful,  saving two lives in 2016 with their MIKEY’s. Pictured below are Marion Karol, VP of Operations for Canadian Ski Patrol, and members of their team.

if you’re an organization that is interested in applying for a MIKEY, you can apply here. 

 

How To Prepare For an Emergency

,

The Canadian and provincial governments have announced that the week of May 6 to the 12th is Emergency Preparedness Week. The annual event encourages Canadians to take concrete actions to be better prepared to protect themselves and their families during emergencies.

This is so important to prepare for, as you’ll never know when an emergency will strike; as well as what kind of emergency it will be. Where do you start though? How much water will you need? Is it alright to use candles inside during a power outage? These are just a few questions that most will experience when they begin to assemble an emergency kit.

We’ve taken the liberty of highlighting some of the key pieces and items that you will need to have during an emergency of any kind.

Develop a plan

Before you begin gathering items for your kit, it’s important to create a well thought out plan in case of an emergency. We encourage you to develop plans for specific emergencies as each will vary with what is needed and how to act, but here are some key pieces that should be apart of every emergency plan.

  1. Contact information –  Whether it’s a family member, a friend, or emergency numbers; it’s important to have someone to contact in case of an emergency. We recommend having a contact list of emergency numbers, and more than one way to reach out to them. There will be times when a walkie-talkie is needed vs. using text messaging or social media.
  2. Evacuation plan – In case you are asked to evacuate your home, or even your area, select two safe locations you could go to. One should be nearby, such as a local library or community centre. The other one should be farther away, outside your neighbourhood, in case the emergency affects a large area.
  3. General Safety – Depending on the emergency you should know the procedures of how to act and address the emergency at hand. As an example, if you’re trying to perform a utility shut off procedure, every adult in your family, as well as older children, should also know how to turn off main utilities—water, electricity, gas.

Emergency Items

Water

Depending on the number of people that you will need to plan for, you will need to have at least four litres of water per person per day for drinking, food preparation, personal hygiene and dishwashing. As an example, if you have three family members, you should have at least 12 litres of water a day for a three-day emergency.

If you have a pet, the rule of thumb is to store 30 millilitres of water per kilogram of the animal’s weight per day. An average cat or small dog would require at least 1/5 of a litre (or half a cup) of water per day.

Food 

Any food that you plan on storing for an emergency should be non-perishable and easy to prepare (canned fruits, beans, dried fruits and vegetables, etc.). Depending on the emergency, you should have enough food for each person in your family for at least three days. IMPORTANT: Make sure to have essential tools on hand to make the food, like a can opener.

First Aid Kit

If you’re choosing a First Aid Kit it’s usually a good rule of thumb to find a large one with a bunch of items for various emergencies; you’ll never know what to expect.

Medication

If you or someone in your family is allergic to something or needs a medication with them at all times like asthma, you should plan to have that on hand, just in case.

Radio

Having a radio on-hand is essential if all other forms of communication have been shut down. Try to find a hand-cranked radio, so that you’re not reliant on batteries unless absolutely necessary.

We hope that you found this to be insightful for your kit. If you’re in need of more ideas or a guide to follow, check out the Government of Ontario’s emergency preparedness plan. 

Easing Back Into Working Out

, ,

Exercising regularly is an important part of retaining a heart-healthy lifestyle. Performing physical activity helps you to live longer and allows your body to run and perform better in the long-term. It’s advised that everyone should be performing 150 minutes of exercise a week to maintain a heart-healthy lifestyle.

Uncertainty is what often faces those who are looking to get back into a regular work out routine though. How and where do you start when you haven’t worked out in months? Or even years? Alternatively, returning to a regular workout routine after a physical injury or a medical condition can be that much harder as you need to compensate for that new ailment.

Although beginning again can be a daunting task, it’s recommended that doing some activity is far better than doing nothing at all, as there is almost no disease that doesn’t benefit from exercise in some way.

Seek out a physician before you begin

Although we encourage you to exercise, we strongly recommend that before you do anything; you contact your physician to see what they recommend. This is recommended if you haven’t exercised in a year or so, or you’re recovering from an injury or health-related ailment. If you have simply taken off some time between seasons, you’re less likely to need to see your doctor.

For those that do see their doctor, they’ll be able to understand your level of recovery and fitness level better than anyone else, and will be able to provide you with a detailed plan to begin exercising again.

Here are some questions that you should ask when you go to meet your doctor:

  • How much exercise can I do?
  • How often can I exercise?
  • What types of exercises should I do?
  • What activities should I avoid?
  • Should I hire a personal trainer to exercise with me?

After you have met with your doctor, they may recommend that you should go through a rehabilitation program to teach you how to safely become more active.

If you have recently suffered a heart attack or a cardiac arrest you can find a cardiac rehab program in any province at cardiachealth.ca.

General workout tips

  • Focus on doing aerobic exercises when you begin working out again, rather than more complex movements like isometric exercises (pushups). Aerobic exercises are easier to perform and will help to make your heart stronger, while isometric could strain your muscles. Popular aerobic exercises include running, walking, and swimming.
  • Try to organize your exercises with friends, family, or by joining a group at a local gym. Going with another person (or group), even if you both haven’t been as active, can be a great motivator to keep exercise as a regular part of your routine. Additionally, many workout facilities have personal trainers that can help you to create your own workout program for free, the YMCA is one of note.
  • Make sure that you stay hydrated. It is important to drink water even before you feel thirsty, especially on hot days.
  • Go at your own pace. For many people returning back to a regular workout routine, it’s normal to feel some self-consciousness. Just make sure to do what feels comfortable to you and to keep progressing.

If you have some workout tips, please let us know in our comments or message us on Facebook or Twitter.