Children face a much greater risk of dehydration and heat-related illness because their body surface area is much greater when compared to their weight.
Early signs of dehydration include fatigue, thirst, dry lips and tongue, lack of energy, and feeling overheated.
But if kids wait to drink until they feel thirsty, they're already dehydrated. Thirst doesn't really kick in until a child has lost 2 per cent of the body weight as sweat.
Studies show that dehydration is cumulative. If a child is 2 per cent dehydrated one day and another 2 per cent on the next day the total amount of dehydration is 4 per cent.
Parents should therefore ensure that the children drink cool water early and often. Children should be sent to play or practice sports well hydrated. Even during play care should be taken to ensure that the children take regular breaks to drink some fluid or the other even if they were not thirsty
Paediatrician Yallamanchili Sandhya, who runs a busy out-patient clinic here, said that several of the children being brought to her clinic were showing signs of dehydration.
“The heat affects the children in different ways. This summer, many parents are complaining that their children are not eating. The heat is makes them anorexic. Infants and even older children reject solid food. These children should be given liquids like coconut water, fruit juice, ragi malt and butter milk. In the fruit juices water melon, sweet lime and regular lemon juice are preferable,” she said.
Parents should be more careful with children who have already had an episode of dehydration.
Other factors that put children at greater risk include obesity, recent illness, especially if the child suffered vomiting and diarrhoea and the use of antihistamines (anti-allergy medication).
Paediatric intensive care specialist and director of Andhra Hospitals P.V. Rama Rao said that the sign of severe dehydration in infants was a sunken fontanels (the soft spots on top of the baby’s head), sunken eyes, shrivelled and dry skin that lacked elasticity and does not bounce back when pinched.
For babies should be put in the intensive care unit and re-hydrated immediately through intravenous drip.
