Great Heat Season: 9 Essential Foods to Cool Down
Introduction: The Great Heat is the hottest time of the year. While taking measures to prevent heatstroke, it's also important to prepare to reduce internal heat. So, which foods can effectively cool you down? The editor is about to recommend 9 such foods for you.
Tea: Experienced health professionals often advise people to drink tea to replenish potassium. Potassium is an important trace element in the human body that maintains the normal function of nerves and muscles, as well as the proper movement of the heart muscle. If you lack potassium, you will feel tired and lethargic, and your ability to tolerate heat will decrease. Severe potassium deficiency can lead to arrhythmia and general muscle weakness. Tea contains a relatively high amount of potassium, accounting for about 1.5% of its weight. Potassium is easily lost through sweat, so properly brewed tea should be the beverage of choice in the summer.
Watermelon: It not only clears heat, detoxifies, relieves restlessness, and quenches thirst, but also promotes urination and aids digestion. Therefore, people should definitely eat some watermelon. Watermelon juice is also rich in nutrients the body needs, such as sucrose, glucose, fructose, citrulline, propionic acid, alanine, glutamic acid, arginine, phosphoric acid, malic acid, salts, and carotene, vitamin C, etc.
Cucumber: The "Ben Cao Qiu Zhen" (A True Account of Materia Medica) mentions that cucumber has a "sweet and cold nature, and taking it can clear heat and promote urination." Therefore, it is beneficial to eat more cucumbers during the hot summer. Cucumber has a water content of 96% to 98%, the highest among vegetables. The fiber it contains is very tender, which has a certain effect on promoting the excretion of spoiled food in the intestines and lowering cholesterol.
Winter Melon: It has excellent effects of clearing heat and relieving summer heat. Eating more winter melon in the summer can quench thirst, relieve summer heat, and promote urination. Because it promotes urination and contains very little sodium, it is an excellent remedy for reducing swelling in cases of chronic nephritis edema, malnutrition edema, and edema during pregnancy. It contains multiple vitamins and essential trace elements for the human body, which can help regulate the body's metabolic balance.
Luffa: It has the effect of clearing heat and relieving summer heat. Medical books throughout history and the "Compendium of Materia Medica" both state that luffa can "clear heat and benefit the intestines." Eating some luffa soup in the summer can relieve summer heat and reduce fever. When making the soup, the cooking time should not be too long, and it's best to maintain the fresh green color of the luffa. Boiling the luffa skin and luffa flowers together to make a tea also has the effect of preventing heatstroke and reducing fever.
Mung Bean: After work or labor, drinking a bowl of mung bean soup will leave you feeling refreshed, with all vexation and thirst gone, summer heat completely dissipated, and your spirits lifted. This is because mung bean has the effects of clearing heat, relieving summer heat, quenching thirst, and promoting urination.
Bitter Melon: Some people consider watermelon a treasure for summer heat relief, but theoretically, the most appetizing, refreshing, and heat-clearing melon is actually bitter melon. There has been a long-standing folk saying in China that "bitter flavor can clear heat" and "bitter flavor can strengthen the stomach." Traditional Chinese medicine believes that bitter melon is bitter in taste and cold in nature, and can clear heat and purge fire. The slightly bitter taste of bitter melon stimulates the secretion of saliva and gastric juice after consumption, greatly increasing appetite and clearing heat to prevent summer heat. Therefore, eating bitter melon in the summer is very appropriate. Using fresh bitter melon to make juice or a decoction is an excellent adjuvant dietary therapy for liver fire with red eyes, stomach heat with vexation and thirst, stomach pain, and damp-heat dysentery. A cool tea made from bitter melon is refreshing and relieves summer heat after drinking.
Vinegar: In the summer, people drink more water, which correspondingly reduces stomach acid, leading to a loss of appetite. A moderate amount of vinegar can increase the concentration of stomach acid, promote saliva secretion, whet the appetite, and aid digestion. If some vinegar is added during cooking, it can increase and concentrate stomach acid, thereby increasing appetite. Summer is also the season for the prevalence of intestinal infectious diseases, and eating vinegar can also enhance the bactericidal effect of the gastrointestinal tract. Moreover, adding a few drops of vinegar during cooking can reduce the loss of vitamin C in vegetables and is beneficial for the absorption of iron from food.
Eggplant: The "Compendium of Materia Medica" states, "Eggplant is sweet in taste, cold in nature, and non-toxic. It treats chills and fevers, damage to the five organs, and epidemic diseases. Eating eggplant can invigorate blood to relieve pain, stop dysentery, promote urination, reduce swelling, and relax the bowels." The "Yi Lin Zuan Yao" (Essentials from the Forest of Medicine) describes eggplant as "relaxing the middle jiao, invigorating blood, and stopping diarrhea." Modern medical research has shown that the rich vitamin P in eggplant can enhance the adhesion between cells, prevent the rupture and bleeding of capillaries, and promote wound healing. Therefore, regularly eating eggplant can prevent and treat cerebral hemorrhage, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, and other diseases, and also has a certain therapeutic effect on chronic gastritis.