It’s no secret temperatures are heating up this week.

And while New Yorkers need to look out for those in vulnerable populations, it’s also important to be mindful of how the hot weather can impact the health of children.

What You Need To Know

  • While heat doesn’t necessarily cause epilepsy, Rachel Yattaw, health educator and advocacy coordinator for the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York, said it can increase the frequency in which someone who has epilepsy has seizures

  • Lila Snyder said she gets about 10 to 20 seizures per day. How she handles them varies based on the situation.

  • Although the heat can impact everyone differently, health experts said the best things kids can do on these scorching days is wear light weight and light-colored clothing, hydrate and use sunscreen

It can be good for kids to play outside and get fresh air, but doctors said they need to be careful when it comes to extreme temperatures. 

“We see mostly kids who are playing sports, who overexert themselves, not drinking enough, and they come in with varying degrees of heat-related illnesses,” said Dr. Robert Best, pediatric emergency medicine attending physician at MidHudson Regional Hospital.  

But kids don’t always realize that it has to do with the heat.

“They'll be out of breath, or things are taking longer, or just the heat beating on them. They're going to be exhausted. They're going to be overheated. But we're going to see a lot more kids coming down to the health office because of it,” said Morgan Gilardo, a registered nurse at Roy C. Ketcham High School.

However, 13-year-old Lila Snyder knows when the hot weather is impacting her. She’s been dealing with epilepsy since she was 4.

“She's explained it before, like she feels like she's kind of having almost like an out-of-body experience. Sometimes, she can't really hear what's going on, or understand what's going on, and she can't answer us. Then she kind of comes back to and has to figure out, like, what just happened and what is going on around her,” Danielle Snyder, Lila Snyder’s mother, said.

“I used to play Foursquare with my friends, but it became really hard because I had a seizure,” Lila Snyder said.  

While heat doesn’t necessarily cause epilepsy, Rachel Yattaw, health educator and advocacy coordinator for the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York, said it can increase the frequency in which someone who has epilepsy has seizures.

“Dehydration is something that could be a trigger for some people to have epilepsy. But it could also just be that increase in body temperature. So heat stroke, or high fevers. So, anything to do with body fever or body temperature could provoke a seizure. So, it really could be a lot of different reasons,” Yattaw said.

Lila Snyder said she gets about 10 to 20 seizures per day. How she handles them varies based on the situation.

“I’ll have to find like a shady area or something sometimes,” Lila Snyder said.

Although the heat can impact everyone differently, health experts said the best things kids can do on these scorching days is wear lightweight and light-colored clothing, hydrate and use sunscreen.

“Try not to be out for extended periods of time. And, just in terms of like being out in the playground, just making sure that the kids don't get burned and don't get hurt,” Best said.