Herbal Strategies for Summer Heat

It’s hot today, and it’s going to get even hotter. This is an herbal strategy for summer heat.

The thing about heat is that it accumulates. In Ayurveda, we talk about how heat rises in the body just like it does in a house.

“Heat rises in the body just like in a house.”

If it’s hot out and you’re starting to get irritated, agitated, your eyes are burning; maybe you have a dry mouth or a headache—think about it in terms of heat rising in the body. Those are some of the symptoms that can manifest when it’s hot, so you always want to be tempering or finding a balance with the elements.

Dehydration affects the nerves and can elevate anxiety, restlessness and irritation. Dehydration also increases your body’s use adrenal hormones, which are hot hormones that make you even hotter… whew! Time to hydrate!

Here’s a simple hack that’s been well-received in my household that I’ve been doing for a long time. I also would love to hear; how do you deal with summer’s heat in your house?

Do You Have a Hydration Station?

Being healthy is a series of small habits that add up. When you try to set up health habits for your household, they fall into two categories. What your family will do and what they won’t do.

I’ve had a clinical herbal practice for over 20 years, and am always looking for simple hacks that support making good lifestyle choices easier. Setting up a hydration station is one of the things that I figured out early on that falls into the ‘will do’ category for creating household habits.

How Do Most People Hydrate?

Where do most people hydrate? I’ll tell you. It’s when we’re eating. Most people—so many people—work and work, or play, and then rehydrate while they are eating.

Nope, you don’t want to do that. Ayurveda teaches us to drink ½ cup of room temperature or warm fluid—not ice water—with our meals. When you take a lot of fluids or drink ice water with your meals, it dampens the digestive juices and inhibits stomach function which means your body is going to have to spend a lot of extra energy trying to extract the nutrition from that meal.

You want to think of your stomach like a pot of soup on the stove. You’re putting in food, and your stomach’s job is to ripen and rotten the food and get it all ready so that your nutrition can be absorbed further on down the digestive tract.

If you have a pot of soup on the stove and you keep pouring water in it, what happens? It never cooks, right? Compare this to drinking a bunch of fluids while you’re eating.

So, what you want to do is hydrate IN BETWEEN meals.

Okay, so we’re talking about a hydration station, setting up a nice place where people can get something to drink in between meals. Take a look at the video and see what our summer hydration station looks like!

I usually put out a nice place mat with some glasses, and that’s it. It’s waiting for you when you get home. You walk in and see these herbs, fruit, colors and you think, “I want that.”

You want to set up some kind of hydration station that your family gets used to seeing when they get home, so it becomes a habit. Again, health is about all the little habits that add up.

Your Summer Hydration Station

Mint is cooling. A lot of times when it’s hot out, we get overheated, our brain doesn’t function as well. Mint increases your brain power.

Rose petals are cooling. Rose petals are also nervine. They’re calming for the nervous system. One of the things that happens in summer time when the heat rises to the head, we can get irritated. Your rose petals are really good for that. They’re cooling and can help with irritation caused from over-heating.

Lavender is full on in the garden right now. Lavender is also calming. Summer time is great to drink nervine herbs, herbs that are calming, because of the agitation caused from overheating.

Cucumber is very cooling. It’s moistening. It’s full of minerals and electrolytes. You want the electrolytes. I hear clients say, “I drink a ton of water, but I just pee it all out,” it’s because you don’t have enough electrolytes to hold the water in your body.

There are a few more tips in the video, so scroll up and check it out.

Ready to set up your hydration station?

I’m interested in knowing what you do to stay hydrated. How are you teaching your family to stay hydrated?