According to Guthrie County Health Services Director Jotham Arber, besides heat exhaustion and heat stroke, there’s another form of heat illness.

Arber explains that when people think about heat related illnesses in the summer, they may discount one, however if it were winter it might be at the top of their mind. He advises that thermal shock can occur just as easily in the heat of summer as the cold of winter, and tells Raccoon Valley Radio that residents need to be just as cautious about it as the other heat related illnesses.

“We want to be very careful when we go from cool temperatures to hot temperatures, because we can have, we talked a little about heat exhaustion and heat stroke and those things apply here too.”

Arber mentions that thermal shock occurs when people go from one temperature to the other extreme, an example being going from a cool air conditioned building out into the sweltering heat of a day that the temperature is in the 100’s. He adds that thermal shock usually doesn’t occur after one trip out, but can take multiple trips out into the heat or cold and back into the more comfortable temperature.