Interest in the health consequences of climate change (global warming, heatwaves) has increased in the neurological community. This review addresses the impact of elevated ambient temperatures and heatwaves on patients with neurological and mental health disorders, including multiple sclerosis, synucleinopathies, dementia, epilepsies, mental health, and stroke. Patients with such conditions are highly vulnerable during heatwaves because of functional disorders affecting sleep, thermoregulation, autonomic system reactivity, mood, and cognitive ability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocietal concern about climate change and global warming has grown worldwide along with the concomitant awareness that health will be impacted deeply. Among living beings, humans have quite large capacities for adaptation to varied temperature conditions. Despite their tropical origin, they live under all Earth climates, such as polar, temperate, altitude, arid, and tropical climates, using a wide range of behavioral and physiological adaptive responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe World Meteorological Organization considers a heatwave as "a period of statistically unusual hot weather persisting for a number of days and nights". Accompanying the ongoing global climate change, sharp heatwave bouts occur worldwide, growing in frequency and intensity, and beginning earlier in the season. Heatwaves exacerbate the risk of heat-related illnesses, hence human morbidity and mortality, particularly in vulnerable elderly and children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAviat Space Environ Med
June 2003
An understanding of the consequences of sustained operations involving prolonged sleep deprivation is important to the military. Losses in cognitive performance of the order of 30% after one night and 60% after two nights of sleep loss have been shown to occur in several studies. Napping strategies have been proposed as one coping strategy for these performance decrements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Previous studies have revealed that modafinil elevates resting core temperature during periods of sustained wakefulness. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of modafinil on core temperature during rest and exercise throughout 40 h of sustained wakefulness in a warm environment.
Methods: Ten males performed a drug session (three 100 mg doses per day) and a placebo session that involved a control day, 40 h of sustained wakefulness, and a recovery sleep.