Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee advised athletes to acclimatize to hot weather with a technique called heat training.
Natacha Pisarenko/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Natacha Pisarenko/AP
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee advised athletes to acclimatize to hot weather with a technique called heat training.
Natacha Pisarenko/AP
Over the next week, forecasts project extreme heat across much of the South, Midwest and parts of the West. So, this episode, health correspondent Pien Huang helps us take heat training cues from Olympians, many of whom spent weeks preparing for a sweltering Paris Olympics, by training in the heat to get their bodies used to hot, humid weather.
But heat training is not just for competitive athletes. It’s recommended for people in the military and those who work outdoors in hot weather — and it could even be useful for generally healthy members of the public.
Plus, we get into some important caveats about who is best positioned to heat train — and why doing so doesn’t minimize the problems of a warming climate.
Check out more of Pien’s reporting on heat training.
Questions or ideas you want us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We’d love to hear from you!
Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Pien and Hannah checked the facts. The engineer was Kwesi Lee.