Introduction: Summer weather is hot and humid, and if preventive measures are not taken, heatstroke can easily occur, posing a threat to health. In terms of diet, it is particularly important to choose foods with the effects of clearing heat, promoting urination, and reducing edema to help prevent heatstroke and lower body temperature.
Mung Beans
In traditional Chinese medicine, mung beans are considered sweet and cold in nature, with effects of clearing the heart and promoting urination, relieving summer heat and quenching thirst, and clearing heat and detoxifying. They are often used to treat summer heat-induced vexation and thirst, excessive heat in the heart and stomach, as well as carbuncles and erysipelas. Mung bean soup is the most common folk remedy for relieving summer heat and detoxification. After adding water to a pot and bringing it to a boil, put in the mung beans, cover the pot, turn off the heat after three minutes; this is when the heat-clearing and detoxifying effects are the strongest. However, because mung beans are cold in nature, people with a weak spleen and stomach who are prone to diarrhea should not consume them in large quantities.
Lotus Leaf
Lotus leaf is bitter in taste and neutral in nature, with a delicate and refreshing aroma. It is good at clearing summer heat pathogen to resolve turbidity. In summer, using fresh lotus leaves to wrap japonica rice for steamed rice, or steeping fresh lotus leaves to make tea, both have excellent effects of clearing summer heat and promoting urination.
Watermelon
Watermelon is sweet and cold in nature, with effects of relieving summer heat, eliminating vexation, quenching thirst, and promoting urination. It is an excellent summer heat-relieving food, suitable for people suffering from summer heat-induced vexation and thirst, difficult urination, or alcohol-related conditions. Watermelon should not be refrigerated for more than two hours to prevent damage to the spleen and stomach while still helping to prevent heatstroke and lower body temperature.
Shrimp and Minced Meat Stuffed Bitter Melon
Tea
Green tea or scented tea is most suitable for drinking in summer, as it can clear the mind and promote urination, relieve heat and eliminate vexation, quench thirst and relieve summer heat. It has been proven that the heat-relieving and cooling effect of hot tea is significantly better than that of various cold drinks. Drinking green tea after heavy sweating can also help the body replenish the lost potassium element and improve heat tolerance. It is best to brew and drink green tea fresh.
Lotus Seed Core
The heart is most vulnerable in hot weather. The scorching heat can easily irritate and damage the heart. Although lotus seed core tastes bitter, it can clear heart fire and also lower blood pressure, making it suitable for people with weak constitutions, palpitations, and insomnia with many dreams. You can take 2 grams of lotus seed core, brew it with boiling water, and drink it as tea before bedtime.
Chrysanthemum
The fragrant and pleasant chrysanthemum petals contain 17 amino acids and are rich in vitamins and various trace elements. Chrysanthemum can be brewed as tea; paired with goji berries, it nourishes the liver and kidneys; added with mulberry leaves, it treats colds.
Cucumber
Cucumber is refreshing, heat-clearing, and heat-relieving, and it can also increase appetite. Eating it raw in summer quenches thirst, and cucumber and egg soup is also suitable. Cucurbitacin C contained in cucumber can improve human immune function and has anti-tumor effects; alanine, arginine, and glutamine in cucumber have certain auxiliary therapeutic effects on liver patients; the cellulose in cucumber can also promote the excretion of corrupt substances in the human intestine. Cucumber is cool in nature, so people with weak spleen and stomach, abdominal pain and diarrhea, or lung cold and cough should eat less of it.
Cucumber should not be heated at high temperatures; it is best eaten raw cold-dressed.
Suoyi Cucumber (Straw-wrapped Cucumber)
Honey
According to the "Compendium of Materia Medica," honey has effects such as "clearing heat, detoxifying, and moistening dryness." After getting up in the morning, drinking a large glass of warm honey water helps to resolve summer heat.
Kelp
Kelp helps to eliminate accumulated heat in the body and can also deal with physical exhaustion caused by excessive sweating. Summer is a high-incidence season for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Kelp has the auxiliary effect of lowering blood pressure and reducing blood viscosity, which is greatly beneficial to patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Kelp can be blanched and then cold-dressed, or quickly stir-fried or used to make soup.
Cabbage
Cabbage is neutral in nature and sweet in taste, with effects of clearing heat, nourishing the stomach, and detoxifying. It is especially suitable for people with weak spleen and stomach or those who are weak after an illness, and it can also prevent and treat constipation.
Duck
Duck is a waterfowl, and its nature is cold and cool. According to the traditional Chinese medicine principle of "treating heat with cold," in the hot summer, if there is heat in the body, it is easy to get "internal heat," manifested as low-grade fever, weakness, poor appetite, or edema. Clear stewing the duck, eating the meat and drinking the soup, has both "clearing" and "nourishing" effects.
Fragrant Five-Flavor Duck
Grandma's meat dumplings
Weenie rice in the field
Spicy hands tore chickens