Dr Colm Henry

speaker

65 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 11 Jul

Dr Colm Henry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Brendan O'Connor · Minding Yourself In The Heat with Dr Colm Henry · 11 Jul 2026 podcast

And those rays can penetrate through clouds and they can penetrate UVA lights.

UVA rays can penetrate through car windows.

So we know the harm it does acutely in terms of sunburn.

And so the advice we're giving to people is for adults to use at least a sun protecting factor of 30 for children, at least 50.

And we know, of course, the cumulative long-term harm in terms of its link with both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, which are increasing rapidly in this country, predicted to rise between 70% and 100% in the next 20 years.

Well, we've gone through prevention in any condition, Brandon.

Prevention always easier than cure.

So we've gone through what people have to do to prevent this is to avoid the direct sunlight, to drink, to stay cool, wear appropriate clothes and all those different, and wear the appropriate sunscreen regularly.

For those who develop heat related illness, there's a whole spectrum and the lighter end of the spectrum is dizziness, headache, feeling of sickness, excessive sweating, muscle cramps and weak.

And a small number of cases, particularly for vulnerable people that I've mentioned already, this can evolve to what we call heat stroke.

And that's where the core temperatures over at or over 40 degrees centigrade increase.

And for these people, they will present with confusion, a change in behaviour, loss of consciousness, even seizures.

And this is a very serious condition which warrant is a medical emergency.

Well, there's two areas of this, Brendan.

First is self-care, so to prevent it happening to yourself, but also as a community, first be aware of vulnerable people who are living alone, particularly older people.

who, as I said earlier, either don't have the access to prevent this happening or aren't able to act upon those reflexes, those warning signs that tell them they're getting too hot and they're getting dehydrated.

So I'd ask everybody to keep an eye out for those vulnerable people in all our neighbourhoods.

But for those people who do develop heat-related illnesses, remove people to the shade, cool them down.

Remove any clothes that are necessary.

Use damp, cold cloths to get the temperature down.

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