Textbooks divide heat stroke into three categories: heat cramps, heat exhaustion and pyrexia. Among them, heat cramps are the lightest, people may feel just cramps, heat stroke is the heaviest, resuscitation is slightly untimely, it may leave a lifelong disability or even death, that is, the so-called heat death. So how do people die from heat? This also has to start from the basic structural units of the human body. People, like other living things, are composed of the basic unit of cells. Most human cells can only survive and function properly at about 37 degrees. Occasionally there are a few inflammatory cells that require higher body temperatures to activate and perform their tasks, but those tasks are essentially go-no-go suicide attacks and are not part of what we will discuss. The most sensitive to temperature are the nerve cells, and the brain is the home base of nerve cells. When high temperatures persist above 42 degrees, a large number of nerve cells begin to die. The cells of the cerebellum are the most sensitive, so after a severe heat stroke there is a high probability of uncoordinated movements and slurred speech. The death of a large number of nerve cells will also result in brain hemorrhage, cerebral edema, and increased intracranial pressure, and these lesions in the brain alone can kill a person. Prior to death, a person will fall into a coma, which in turn is a state that must precede almost all deaths. The longer the coma lasts, the less hope there is that it will be revived. When the body temperature rises, the heart automatically receives instructions to work faster: the heart beats faster, the heart rate increases, and the blood flow is promoted in order to accelerate heat dissipation. However, the direct damage to the heart cells caused by high temperature is similar to a major myocardial infarction, where a large number of myocardial cells die to make the heart fail. With less heart as the engine, the heat dissipation mechanism has no power, and the body temperature cannot drop even more. If the temperature cannot be cooled down and measures taken soon, it will fall into a vicious circle. Until the heart stops beating. The lungs, the heart’s close neighbor and intimate partner, are not immune to heat stroke. Although people suffocate when the carbon dioxide concentration is too high, a certain level of carbon dioxide in the blood ensures that the red blood cells can release the oxygen they carry when they reach the right place. If the carbon dioxide concentration is too low, the red blood cells are loaded but not unloaded, and the body’s cells are still deprived of oxygen. The damage does not stop there, dehydration, heart failure and hyperkalemia caused by muscle lysis can induce acute renal failure; hypoxia, reduced visceral perfusion is gastrointestinal mucosa ischemia, the formation of ulcers, gastrointestinal bleeding, hot vomiting blood is not an exaggeration; more serious because of capillary dilation, damage to the vascular endothelium, low perfusion induced diffuse intravascular coagulation, medically referred to as DIC, which is a state that makes Doctors are creeped out by this state. This is a small thrombus, not a large thrombus generated in the heart and brain vessels, which can be opened with thrombolytic drugs and interventions, but DIC can not. Not only can’t, thrombolysis will further aggravate the condition of DIC, because a large number of small clots deplete the blood clotting factors, a large number of small clots formed at the same time the body parts will also occur extensive bleeding. Severe heat stroke has almost no chance of survival if DIC occurs. It all starts with heat, and the body’s thermoregulatory mechanisms cannot withstand or are even destroyed, leading to the above disaster. So the treatment of heatstroke is most important on one principle: cooling. Shade, water, water bubbles, cold water enemas, saline infusion, and even the blood is released to cool back down, all to cool down as soon as possible. Of course TCM believers will fiercely criticize these treatments and will educate people with metaphors like pouring cold water over a boiling pot. The so-called holistic view of TCM’s palliative approach to heatstroke prevention can only take a chance with mild heatstroke victims. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke patients have nothing to do with TCM, and will only add to the chaos.