Summer is now upon us and maintaining summer health is important. How can you live through the hot summer months amid the epidemic that is still going strong? Avoiding crowded places is important. You also need to enhance your immunity. Eating in accord with nature is the rule to follow. Nevertheless, the hot weather can easily make your body succumb to illness. Knowing how to adjust your diet, work, and rest is particularly crucial.
10 tips for summer health
1. The best seasoning for summer health: Vinegar
During hot weather, people often have less of an appetite. Vinegar is one of the easiest ways to stimulate it. For example, you can mix vinegar with vegetables or cooked meat, or use it to pickle cucumbers and beans for appetizers, which can stimulate saliva secretion to whet the appetite. Moreover, vinegar is warm in food energy. It neutralizes the coldness of vegetables such as cucumber and eggplant to make the dishes more easily absorbed by the body. In addition, intestinal infectious diseases occur more frequently in summer. Vinegar’s antibacterial properties have a preventive effect on such diseases.
2. The best vegetables for summer health: Bitter vegetables
The summer heat increases metabolism making it relatively easier to produce “heat toxicity” in the body that manifests as fever, thirst, red urine, dry stools, and so on. Bitter vegetables can help relieve the heat and detoxify the body.
Common bitter vegetables such as bitter melon, sowthistle, and stem lettuce can be mixed cold or stir-fried. These bitter vegetables are rich in amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. They have the functions to cool off and relieve restlessness, and are refreshing and antipyretic.
Bear in mind that chili or garlic can be added when cooking bitter vegetables to prevent consuming excessive amounts of food that has a cold nature.
3. The best soup for summer health: Tomato soup
Tomatoes are rich in Vitamin C, which aids in digestion, increases appetite, and boosts immunity. The lycopene in tomatoes also has the effect of delaying cell aging and preventing cancer. Cooked or heated tomatoes make them more easily absorbed and utilized by the body.
Drinking a bowl of tomato soup in hot weather can both quench your thirst and whet your appetite.
4. The best meat for summer health: Duck
There is a folk saying that “duck is better than tonic in summer.” From the principle of “cold for heat” in traditional Chinese medicine, duck meat is more suitable for consumption in the hot and dry summer months. The Compendium of Materia Medica records that duck meat “is a great tonic for an innate weak constitution, and is most effective in clearing heat,” which makes it suitable for people who have heat toxicity in their bodies as well as those who are prone to heat.
Duck meat is high in protein and low in fat. It is rich in Vitamin E and trace elements. Experts state that dishes like duck porridge and stewed duck have a very good tonic effect.
5. The best drink for summer health: Hot tea
When it comes to quenching thirst, most people will think of cold drinks and iced drinks. Although cold drinks can quench the heat at that moment, the cold can easily harm the spleen and stomach. It is better to make a cup of hot tea to fight against the heat. It can promote sweat secretion to help the body dissipate heat and lower your body temperature. There was a saying in China that “hot tea is the best way to relieve the heat.”
6. The best nutrient for summer health: Vitamin E
Studies by German scientists have shown that people in the summer will encounter three major dangers, namely, damage brought by the sun, strong oxidation from ozone, and high temperatures. Vitamin E can minimize the damage in all three areas.
Foods rich in Vitamin E include sesame seeds, walnuts, lean meat, dairy, eggs, and yellow and green vegetables. They should be consumed in the summer appropriately.
7. The best exercise for summer health: Swimming
Swimming not only strengthens and sculpts the body, but it also cools the summer heat. It is the first choice of summer sports. Compared with land sports, swimming can also help you avoid excessive sweating, which makes it a very suitable exercise in hot weather.
8. The best color to wear for summer health: Red
Most people think that light-colored clothes, compared to dark-colored clothes, are cooler and provide more UV protection. In fact, bright-colored clothes have the best UV protection. Some studies have shown that red visible light waves are the longest and can absorb a lot of UV rays and protect surfaces from their damage.
9. The best cooling device for summer health: Fan
The use of air conditioning, whether at home or in the office, is increasingly common today. However, staying in an air-conditioned environment for a long time can weaken the body’s function of thermo-regulation. Therefore, it is best to turn off the air conditioner in the evening or at night. Pick up a fan and use the oldest and most primitive method to relieve the heat to allow the body’s self-regulatory function to recover.
10. The best preventative measure for summer health: Proper sleep
Of course, summer nights are relatively cooler than the daytime and as a result, nighttime activities increase accordingly. Eating late-night meals, staying up late visiting friends, or going out for a night on the town can keep you on the move through the night. The next day, you end up feeling drowsy during the day. In the long run, this can cause a lot of harm to your body.
During summer, the days are longer than the nights. Sleeping at a later hour is understandable, but getting the same amount of sleep is essential.
The writer of this story is not a medical professional, and the information that is in this story has been collected from reliable sources — and every precaution has been taken to ensure its accuracy. The information provided is for general information purposes only, and should not be substituted for professional health care.
Translated by Audrey
