Heat Meds
See the evidence and every disagreement
How it works
Three steps, about a minute. Nothing to install.
- Add your medicinesType each name from the bottle, brand or generic, or paste a whole list.
- Add your ZIP (optional)See this week's heat risk from the National Weather Service.
- Get a one-page plan for your pharmacistPrint it for the fridge or the pharmacy counter.
Check my medicines
Type the names on your bottles, or paste a whole list. Brand names, doses, and misspellings are fine.
Who it is for, and why it matters
Older adults and the people who look after them
It is meant for the kitchen table with the pill bottles out, or for the pharmacy counter. It is not a substitute for your pharmacist or doctor, and it never tells anyone to stop a medicine.
The CDC asked doctors to plan for this
In 2025 the CDC asked clinicians to go over heat risks from medicines with their patients: which classes dull thirst, reduce sweating, or lower blood pressure in heat, which combinations add up, and which medicines spoil in a hot car. Patients had no tool to do this themselves.
How this is different
Each of these tools does part of the job. None of them puts your own medicines and your own week of heat on one page.
- The CDC's heat and medications guidanceA detailed table written for doctors and nurses. It is not tied to your medicines or to the forecast where you live.
- The National Weather Service HeatRisk forecast and the CDC HeatRisk DashboardHeat risk for your place, day by day. Nothing about the medicines you take.
- Pill reminder appsHelp you take doses on time. No heat information.
- Heat MedsYour medicines and your week of heat together, every warning quoted from the CDC with the date it was checked, an honest list of what the CDC does not cover, and one page you can hand to your pharmacist.
When we looked in September 2026, we could not find a free public tool that joins a personal medicine list to a local heat forecast.
What you get
- Seven days of heat risk for your ZIP, each day with a color and a word.
- One card per medicine that matters in heat: why, what to watch for, and one question for your pharmacist, in the CDC's exact words.
- The CDC's combination warning when it applies, and storage notes for medicines that spoil in heat.
- An honest list of the medicines you entered that the CDC guidance does not list.
- A short summary and three next steps, with a box to tick for each question.
- A printable page for the fridge or the pharmacist.
How well does it work?
The 300 most-prescribed US medicines were run through this exact code and compared with UK and Canadian guidance. Every disagreement is published.
References
- CDC, Heat and Medications: Guidance for Clinicians (page dated Sept. 18, 2025). The source of every medicine card, combination warning, and storage note.
- National Weather Service, Heat Cramps, Exhaustion, Stroke. The warning signs, which the NWS attributes to the CDC.
- National Weather Service HeatRisk (experimental), including the Day 1 archive used for the past heat wave replay.
- National Library of Medicine RxNorm and RxClass. Medicine names, ingredients, and drug classes.
- U.S. Census Bureau ZCTA Gazetteer. ZIP code locations, bundled in this site.
- AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, Prescribed Medicines file. The source of the 300-medicine test list.
- UK Health Security Agency and Health Canada heat and medicines guidance, used as answer keys on the Evidence page; France's ANSM list, shown for context only. Exact documents are linked on the Evidence page.
- Atkinson Hyperlegible Next typeface, SIL Open Font License 1.1.
This product uses publicly available data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services; NLM is not responsible for the product and does not endorse or recommend this or any other product.