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Hollywood Science
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So, what our ambulance crew needs to do is to drink lots of water. Water makes up 50% to 60% of our body weight and about 80% of muscle weight. Water replaces the 2 to 3% lost due to sweating, and also helps the body cope with the heat by maintaining a constant temperature.

Sweating during exercise does make the body lose water and electrolytes, but the effects are not significant when the exercise lasts for less than 4 hours. The body reacts to the heat by releasing less salt as we sweat.

So if our crew can get the ambulance up the slope in under four hours, they should be fine.

Other nasty complications from exercising in the desert could be heat exhaustion, which results in dizziness, vomiting, racing pulse and breathing. A more serious syndrome is heat stroke, which affects the actual temperature control in the body. So our ambulance crew had better keep their hats on!

Hollywood Science rating 8 out of 10

Need help on your maths? Try Open Mathematics, while Human Biology will give a closer look at the whole breathing and sweating body.



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