About this episode

This episode explores human responses to unprecedented heatwaves, focusing on the role of fluids and sweating in health.

In light of the many unprecedented heatwaves striking the northern hemisphere in this year of a super El Niño summer, this episode of The Pebble in the Cosmic Pond is dedicated to summer-heat, and to the human physical, cultural, culinary, and medical responses to it. Using Sabine’s continued experiences in Vietnam as our starting point, we consider heat as a factor both internal and external, physiological and pathological, macrocosmic and microcosmic, and we look at the therapeutic role of fluids, and water in particular. Here are some questions we address: How do we know whether sweating is too little, just right and healthy, or too much? What are the key diagnostic signs for a differential diagnosis? When and how do we stop or prevent, or conversely initiate and promote sweating? What are the benefits and dangers, possibilities and limitations, of the most common popular practice of replenishing fluids and cooling the body by drinking cold water? What can we use instead of water to replace fluids lost through sweating? To consider just two traditional Vietnamese options, what is the different physiological effect of consuming cold sweet and sour fruit drinks versus light…

People in this episode

Host: Sabine Wilms PhD

Topics covered

• heatwaves
• human responses
• therapeutic fluids
• sweating
• traditional Vietnamese options

Keywords

• heatwaves
• sweating
• Vietnam
• therapeutic fluids
• traditional medicine

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Gin and Tonic

Books & works: The Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

Places: Vietnam

More episodes of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

• Hot-Cold Calibration for the Apex of Summer · June 15, 2026 · 50 min

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