If you have great air conditioning and aren’t afraid to spend the money to keep it constantly running, good for you. This article is for everyone else. The temperatures are now in the 90’s in LA, and it is getting difficult to stay cool. To compound this matter further, many of the cool-air escapes we’re all used to using in varying degrees this time of year are no longer available. Public libraries, cafes, swimming pools, malls, movie theaters, churches, and restaurants are understandably closed and we are pretty much stuck with our homes. We need to make do with the heat right where we are. One way many of my fellow Angelenos tend to cope with this time of year is to eat a good deal of ice cream and other frozen treats. It works for cooling a body down, but isn’t great for keeping that body healthy. Fortunately, there are some great alternatives to ice cream. Bananas freeze nicely and while I enjoy them as they are that way, they also blend really well. Smoothies are both wonderfully nutritious and wonderfully cold. They’re also incredibly versatile, accepting a wide range of ingredients to allow you to mix it up. The best way to stay cool, though, is to drink lots of water. Keep a pitcher in the fridge and refill it often. Eight cups a day is a good start, but not sufficient for most people. To calculate how much water your body needs, take your weight in pounds and divide it by two. That’s how many ounces you need each day as a minimum before factoring in lots of exercise or the crushing heat. There are a lot of great apps out there to help you calculate and track this, but if counting isn’t for you, here are some questions to ask yourself: Am I thirsty? Is my urine yellow or darker? Do I feel unreasonably hungry for the time of day? Did I just exercise? Am I sweating? Did I just sing or speak for more than half an hour straight? Are my lips chapped? Did I just wake up? If the answers to any of these questions is “yes,” get yourself some water. As you slowly build up your body’s hydration levels, you will notice a number of pleasant side effects, from fewer headaches to clearer skin. While there is no silver bullet cure to all of life’s troubles, water is probably the closest thing to one that exists in nature. That said, if you suddenly increase your water intake a good deal, you may want to throw a little more salt in your food to compensate. The reasons for this are too complicated for me to explain well, but I know experientially that this is important—especially if you sweat a good deal and have a tendency towards very low blood pressure. If you do not enjoy water, but want to stay hydrated, there are a lot of things that can be done to water to make it more interesting. If you want to get fancy, you can cut up cucumbers or various kinds of fruit to flavor it up, but I have a simpler way of doing it. I use herbal teas. Herbal teas like chamomile, mint, lemon ginger, or various fruit teas do a great job of jazzing up plain water without detracting from its hydrating usefulness. Icing them or leaving them in the refrigerator also makes them cool and refreshing. Of course, the ordinary way of making tea just makes your kitchen hotter than it needs to be. While boiling water makes the most potent tea, recently I’ve been enjoying the new hobby of making sun tea. Sun tea is made by putting your water and tea bag in a glass container in the sun and waiting for it to do the work. I have a great windowsill for this where the greenhouse effect really works well, but you can use any outdoor area the sun hits or even just the hottest part of your house. The heat’s got to be good for something, right? Caffeinated tea and coffee are not without their merits, but need to be enjoyed very moderately. Some green tea or iced coffee can be very refreshing, but too much of it will mess with you in other ways. Generally, it’s a good idea not to drink anything with caffeine in it after 2 pm (or noon if you’re especially sensitive to its effects) and to avoid dependency. The good thing about both coffee and tea in their purest forms is that they are calorie-free, and you can control how much fat and sugar you add to them. Do not resort to soda for your hydration, though. Sodas are a great dessert once in a while and can be refreshing when used sparingly. However, consuming them regularly is a great way to ingest way too much sugar (most often in the form of corn syrup, which is worse than real sugar), take the enamel off your teeth (some of the dark brown sodas, especially Coca-Cola), and ingest more caffeine than your body is designed to handle comfortably. Beyond that, a great way to keep your domicile cool is to be smart about when and how you cook. Take care of your heat-intensive tasks first thing in the morning, before things have a chance to heat up. Make large batches, so that you can just pop meal-sized portions into the microwave in the hotter parts of the day. Explore the wonderful worlds of salads, sandwiches, and other no-heat foods. The less you have to use your oven and gas range this time of year, the better. Don’t forget to ventilate your home properly during the precious cool hours of the morning. You need that fresh air, even if you turn on air conditioning later in the day. A good soak in cool water can also work wonders for the heat-exhausted soul. Just sticking your feet into a tub of cool water can make a huge difference. If you still need to turn on air conditioning after all of this, there’s no shame in that, either. It’s important to start with the natural means of cooling down because our bodies need them. However, our bodies also reasonably expect not to be baked in their skins, either. A combination of the above will be more effective than any one method on its own. Stay cool!
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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