ALS and hot weather...

[Matty Blast]

Hi folks.

My brother has ALS and is living with my mom, who has no air conditioning in her house (not even a window unit). The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for the next two days because temps will be in the upper 90s, with heat indexes pushing 110.

My mom adamantly refuses to install any A/C in the house. My question is, how does having ALS affect the body's ability to deal with extreme heat?

[Al]

Depending on how the breathing capacity is in the individual it can have a great effect on the breathing. I use a Bipap at night because of poor chest muscles and the heat and humidity do make it harder to breathe. Fortunately we have air in the house and the van.
Would it be possible to bring your brother over to your house for a few days to give him a bit of a rest. You could always tell your mom it is to give her a rest from looking after him in the heat. By the way you must be in the US with that kind of heat going on. Welcome to our forum. AL.

[lunarruna]

My husband feels like the ALS has made it harder to regulate his body temp very well, and he gets extremely stressed when he gets hot or cold...even though he doesnt have breathing problems yet, he just overall gets really uncomfortable and his muscle spasticity gets worse. He also sweat a lot and before we got our air conditioning (in June!) he ended up with a rash (yeast infection) on his buttocks from sweating and sitting immobile so much.
Gosh I hope there is something you can do, ALS is so uncomfortable anyway, its a shame to suffer more.
Good Luck, Beth

[MarciaA]

Matty Blast,

I hope your brother was able to escape the heat! We had the same heat advisories here for the last three or four days. Now the heat has broken, but we are now in flood watches. What part of the US are you in?

Marcia