As our planet warms and heat waves become more common, we wondered how that heat affects our bodies. In today’s episode, the Possibly team explains how heat impacts two key organs: your kidneys and your intestines.
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
As we get closer to summer, people are expecting some more heat waves. In fact, 2024 was officially the warmest year on Earth ever recorded. And with warmer temperatures on average, we get a lot more extreme heat. But how does all this heat affect our bodies?
We had Hamid Torabzadeh and Meg Talikoff from our Possibly Team look into this question.
Hamid Torabzadeh: Hi, Megan!
Meg Talikoff: Hello!
Megan Hall: So, what do all of these heat waves do to our bodies? Can we handle these high temperatures?
Hamid Torabzadeh: Good question. It’s a real concern.
Meg Talikoff: Heat affects our bodies in a lot of ways, but for this episode, we’re going to talk about our organs. Starting with our kidneys.
Hamid Torabzadeh: That’s the organ that filters our blood.
Megan Hall: Why would hot weather bother our kidneys?
Hamid Torabzadeh: Here’s the issue – our bodies work to keep our internal temperature regulated at around 98° Fahrenheit.
Meg Talikoff: We do this mostly by sweating.
Ankur Shah: And as you sweat out that water, you have decreased urinary flow, you make less urine.
Hamid Torabzadeh: That’s Dr. Ankur Shah, from The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He says all of this sweating can make you dehydrated.
Megan Hall: Why would that make you dehydrated?
Hamid Torabzadeh: Basically, when you sweat, you’re using the fluids that usually keep you hydrated. If you don’t drink more water, your whole body gets thirsty, and confused.
Ankur Shah: As you get dehydrated, your body does not know: is dehydration something that the kidney was part of the problem or the solution?
Hamid Torabzadeh: That’s because kidneys play a role in how much water we keep or get rid of.
Ankur Shah: And so one of your body’s mechanisms, is it shuts down its kidneys.
Meg Talikoff: And that can get serious. When seniors end up in the hospital during a heat wave, the top two reasons are dehydration and kidney failure.
Megan Hall: I had no idea! Does hot weather do anything else to our kidneys?
Meg Talikoff: Yeah, Ankur says there are long term consequences too.
Ankur Shah: The hotter the environment, the more you will sweat, the more you will sweat, the less urinary flow, the more you’re going to have kidney stones.
Megan Hall: Ouch. I hear those are really painful.
Hamid Torabzadeh: They are!
Megan Hall: Do you have another organ for me that’s affected by hotter temperatures?
Meg Talikoff: Yes! Scientists think hotter temperatures also change the microorganisms inside our guts.
Hamid Torabzadeh: Saurabh Chatterjee, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine, has seen this happen in his experiments on mice.
Saurabh Chatterjee: So when these mice were exposed to heat stress for 15 days at a certain point of time in the day, 3 to 6 pm, three hours every day, they had an altered gut microbiome.
Megan Hall: What’s a gut microbiome?
Hamid Torabzadeh: It’s a whole world inside of your intestines, made up of around a thousand types of bacteria, plus parasites, fungi, and viruses.
Meg Talikoff: They work together to communicate with the rest of your body, and they help with everything from digesting food to keeping you from getting sick.
Hamid Torabzadeh: So when that delicate system changes, it can cause problems for your whole body.
Megan Hall: That sounds bad. What can we do about this?
Meg Talikoff: In the short term – prepare. Make our cities cooler by planting more trees, and providing spaces where people can get clean drinking water and stay out of the heat.
Hamid Torabzadeh: Hospitals also need to plan for increases in heat related health problems.
Meg Talikoff: But long term, the only real solution is cutting down on fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gases which are making these temperatures rise faster and faster.
Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Hamid and Meg!
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at “askpossibly”
Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and The Public’s Radio.
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