Chinese medicine, the product of an agrarian society, adheres to the rhythms of nature, advocating changes to lifestyle and the diet and adjusting treatment to harmonize with the seasons. Especially here in Arizona, where temperatures will soar into the blazing triple digits during the summer months, optimal wellness can be improved by following some simple guidelines. Below we offer you some tips to ensure that you feel your best and maintain your health during the dry, hot days preceding the monsoons.

Smart Cooling

In Southern Arizona, either AC or a swamp cooler is an essential for life during the hot summer months. Nevertheless, the Chinese have long considered wind to be a primary source of disease, and, in our 23 years in practice, many of our patients have reported malaise or pain after prolonged exposure to drafts of cold, refrigerated air. We recommend you avoid positioning yourself directly in the path of frigid, moving air and suggest that you set your thermostat to the highest temperature that still provides comfort. By minimizing the temperature extremes, you will acclimate better to the differences between indoor and outdoor temperatures.

The Thermal Nature of Food

Many ancient cultures recognized the thermal nature of foodstuffs. Put another way, some foods stoke metabolism, warming us up in cold weather, while others depress physiological activity and cool us down. Based on the Chinese classification of foods (and herbs) as cold, cool, neutral, warm, and hot, you can select the right foods for your constitution and the seasonal weather.

Books like Bob Flaws’ Tao of Healthy Eating offer lists of foodstuffs with their thermal nature, but an alternative to memorizing or looking up the properties of every food to try to eat our foods in season, as Mother Nature often gives you exactly what you need. For example, watermelon and eggplant, classic summertime crops, are naturally cold and cool, respectively. Another cold summer veggie is Chinese bitter melon. Very bitter in flavor, this strange looking produce can usually be found in Asian grocery stores, and, if prepared properly, becomes mildly bitter and delicious.

COOLING SUMMER FOODS AND DRINKS

• Mint tea and chrysanthemum tea—Both of these herbal teas clear heat, especially from the head and face.

• Mung bean sprouts—Bean sprouts are a famous cooling food which can be used raw or cooked in the summertime.

• Tofu—Tofu helps cool down the body and can be eaten raw (the Japanese eat it raw with spring onions, ginger, and soy sauce) or used in cooked dishes.

Head for the Hills

The oppressive summer heat of the Sonoran desert not only takes a toil on many of us physically, it can also be psychologically difficult to get through the long summer season in Arizona. Mentally, you may benefit from a change of scenery, whether it be a long vacation to a different part of the country or world or a day trip into the mountains. In Japan, it is even popular during the summer to visit aquariums or haunted houses at amusement parks with the idea that the sight of cool water or the icy chill of fear, respectively, will offer psychological respite from the hot temperatures of the season.

Warm Tea on a Hot Day?

Most of us are accustomed to drinking ice-cold drinks. While lightly chilled beverages can be refreshing, drinking room temperature or even warm drinks is a strategy to avoid temperature extremes and supports good digestion and circulation. And it is always smart to avoid eating any physically cold food so quickly that it actually gives you a headache or “brain freeze”.

Tea, specifically traditional varieties from the camellia sinensis plant, is actually a diaphoretic herb that encourages sweating. Sweating is an innate physiological mechanism to lower body temperature which can help cool you off. As counterintuitive as it may sound at first, we encourage you to enjoy a cup of warm tea on a hot day and see if it does not make you, in fact, feel cooler (if maybe slightly sweaty).

Instead of just dialing the thermostat down to a low setting, consider some of these innovative ways of staying cool. You might find that these suggestions are not only healthier (and cheaper) than relying solely on AC, but that they also keep you more comfortable than the refrigerated air alone. And may nature bless Southern Arizona with a year of early and productive monsoon rains!