The physician and New Yorker contributor Dhruv Khullar undergoes an experiment to test his body’s limits in high temperatures.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 >> I'm excited for the day, excited to see how training in a heat chamber differs
00:21 from regular training at the gym.
00:23 Yeah, I'm curious to see how my body responds to it.
00:29 >> This past July was the hottest month in human history, as far as we know.
00:33 No matter who you are, heat is gonna be a greater part of our lives.
00:37 And so I think understanding the physiology of what heat does to us and
00:42 what humidity does to us is increasingly important.
00:45 >> Any other questions?
00:47 >> Questioning that egg sandwich I had this morning.
00:48 >> [LAUGH]
00:49 >> So this is called a VO2 max test.
00:54 And the basic idea is to run as fast as you can to
00:57 understand your cardiovascular fitness.
00:59 >> Three, two, one.
01:02 >> Keep going, keep going.
01:03 >> Nice.
01:03 >> Each of your intermax is about 53 milliliters per kilogram of your weight
01:12 per minute, you're in the 95th percentile for your age.
01:17 >> I'll take that, I'll take that.
01:20 [MUSIC]
01:30 >> This is one of the labs that actually is able to simulate direct sunlight.
01:35 So it's not just the ambient temperature, it's not just the humidity, but
01:39 it's also mimicking what it's like to be out in the sun.
01:41 [MUSIC]
01:46 I'm gonna be walking basically on this treadmill for
01:49 the next two hours in 104 degree heat with 40% humidity.
01:53 They're gonna be tracking all sorts of different metrics to try to understand my
01:57 tolerance to extreme heat.
01:58 [MUSIC]
02:05 It reminds me of being in a New York City subway underground during
02:09 the month of July.
02:11 [MUSIC]
02:20 I have maybe a slight headache, I just feel extremely puffy everywhere.
02:25 You'd have to cut my finger off to get my wedding ring off right now.
02:28 [MUSIC]
02:32 I've given up on the subway, I just somehow ended up inside a sauna.
02:36 [MUSIC]
02:39 A lot of your ability to regulate your heat has to do with where the blood
02:44 goes in your body.
02:46 And so when it gets really hot, your blood goes to the periphery, to your skin, so
02:50 that you can excrete that heat usually in the form of evaporation from sweating.
02:55 The issue is when you're working outside, when you're moving like I am,
02:59 your skeletal muscles also need blood to keep moving.
03:03 And so there starts to become this kind of competition between cooling your body,
03:07 between feeding your skeletal muscles and feeding your internal organs,
03:12 including your brain.
03:13 And so that's where things get a little dicey if you've been out in the heat for
03:16 a long time and you're having trouble regulating your temperature.
03:19 [MUSIC]
03:29 >> You are done, so we can go ahead and stop.
03:33 So if you wanna go ahead and hold on to the treadmill and press stop.
03:36 [MUSIC]
03:38 All right, great.
03:39 And I'm gonna go ahead and unhook you here.
03:42 If you want a final sip of water, go ahead and take it.
03:44 [MUSIC]
03:50 And I'm gonna use a little bit just to- >> It'd be nice if we had something else.
03:54 >> A little bit more.
03:55 >> A little bit more.
03:58 >> And then remember where I pour, you do it okay?
04:00 Where I pour, you're gonna go ahead and rub with your hand,
04:03 kinda like you're scrubbing a shower, okay?
04:05 So the first thing we're gonna do is your hair, so go ahead and start just-
04:08 >> [INAUDIBLE]
04:10 >> We took two gallons of distilled
04:12 water and we went through every body part.
04:14 And the idea is we wanted to get all of the electrolytes, the sodium,
04:18 magnesium, the chloride, everything off his skin and into the water.
04:21 And that's why we have all this clothes in here as well.
04:24 So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and mix everything up.
04:28 I'm gonna wring out the clothes so we can get the water and
04:30 the sweat out of the clothes.
04:32 So that we can go ahead and put that into our analyzer.
04:35 [MUSIC]
04:38 In total, he sweat about a little over one liter over the course of the two hours.
04:45 So about 2.2 pounds.
04:47 [MUSIC]
04:49 >> I can't think very clearly.
04:51 >> Yeah.
04:52 >> So I just finished up 90 minutes of activity in kind of an extreme
04:56 heat chamber.
04:57 One of the things that you really feel palpably is how it affects the body.
05:01 I mean, some of the things are obvious.
05:03 When you're looking at your heart rate, your core body temperature.
05:06 But some of them are more subtle.
05:08 I felt a headache.
05:10 I felt like I wasn't thinking as clearly.
05:11 I wasn't able to pay attention to things.
05:13 So all these things, after just two hours of being inside the heat chamber,
05:17 really give a view into what it's like and
05:19 what it's going to be like to be living in a hotter world.
05:22 [MUSIC]