p. 6 | Summer Comfort and Health by Frederick M. Rossiter

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 28, 1910

Summer Comfort and Health

By Frederick M. Rossiter

FREDERICK M. ROSSITER, M. D.

One of the first essentials to keeping cool physically is to be calm. A calm, tranquil mind equalizes the physiological forces of the body, and evenly distributes the blood. It is surprising how wonderfully uncomfortable a little anger on a hot day will make one feel.

There is a rush of blood to the head, and one physiologically becomes “hot under the collar,” which makes it easy to say hot things. Anger, worry, excitement, are all incompatible with a hot day. “Let your sweetness of disposition be known unto all men” is a beautiful motto to practise when sweltering in a hot department store or listening to a health controversy.

Avoid Physical Exertion

If you would be cool, avoid hurry. Avoid rushing for the train, the street-car, or the cab.

Violent exercise on a hot day is exceedingly dangerous. Eighty per cent of the heat of the body is produced in the muscles, hence immoderate exercise may cause the temperature to rise several degrees.

The fact that such a large portion of body heat is produced in the muscles is a physiological reason why great physical exertion should be avoided during the heat of the day. The best and most natural time for physical outdoor work on a hot day is during the early morning hours and in the evening.

The Food Question

In order to be cool it is highly important that particular attention be given to the diet, inasmuch as eighty per cent of the energy of food is converted into heat. The oxidation and burning of food gives rise to heat. In cold weather there is an immense radiation of heat from the seventeen square feet of skin of the average individual, hence the importance of abundance of food material of heat-producing quality. But in summer, with the surrounding temperature approaching that of the body, less fuel is required, and the food should be of a quality intended not so much for heat in maintaining the vital fires as to produce energy. The quality of the food should be regulated from day to day according to the temperature indications. In a recognition of this principle lies to a large extent the secret of being comfortable on hot days.

The man who sits down to breakfast on a hot morning and eats freely of ham and eggs, fried potatoes, and perchance, griddle-cakes, and washes all down with one or more cups of strong coffee, alternating with ice-water, is not beginning the day with the prospect of being cool. Long before the noon hour he is a veritable conflagration. With electric fans operating all around him, he is neither cool, comfortable, nor amiable. Such a breakfast produces an insatiable thirst, that is not assuaged by ice-water, beer, or iced teas. These even seem to be converted into combustible materials, and intensify the heat.

A flesh diet is incompatible with a hot day. Flesh foods are not only heat-producing, but the poisonous wastes retained in their tissues are exciting and irritating to heart and nerve-centers. Meat, especially when highly seasoned, creates an intense thirst, and the excessive drinking of any fluid is not the means of keeping cool.

Diet Should Be Light

When the day is hot, the diet should be light. Fruits, cereals, and nuts, the latter eaten sparingly, constitute by far the best diet for hot weather. The fact that fruits are so abundant during the hot season is an indication that they were intended to form a part of man's diet during the dog-day period. The popular notion that fruits are unwholesome during hot weather is absolutely unscientific, and due to false ideas. Over-ripe fruit should not be eaten at any time, and fruit that is picked green for the early market is unfit for food. Only the sun in the process of ripening fruit can bring out its flavor and quality. If care is exercised in selecting ripe fruit, always remembering that fruit is perishable, and if it is properly combined with other foods, there is no occasion for its causing the least digestive disturbance.

The Juicy Fruits

Strawberries are the first of the fresh fruits to appear in the market and to greet the eye at the table. There is a saying, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry than the strawberry, but he never did.” An English writer has said, “The strawberry is an unalloyed and unimpaired mouthful of deliciousness; it has neither rind nor stem to mar the perfect pleasure of the palate, and it is so healthful that you can eat it till you are tired.” An ideal hot-weather breakfast would be a dish of

strawberries, a dish of one of the numerous cereal foods, together with toast or bread and butter.

The acid of the strawberry and the acid of other fruits are cooling and refrigerant, and have a most wholesome action upon all the eliminative organs. Unless the taste is seriously perverted, there is, during the hot weather, a natural craving of the system for the acids and mineral salts of fruits.

A light breakfast on a hot day, as suggested above, gives one a wonderfully comfortable feeling, unknown to the gastronomic epicure, who for a time makes a sepulcher of his stomach.

Following the strawberry in the early summer we have a rapid succession of the most delicious and delicately flavored fruits of sufficient variety to satisfy the most fastidious taste. In fever, when the body is being consumed by vital fires, there is a natural craving for acid, juicy fruits, and in most cases nothing is better. The same principle applies to the sultry days of summer.

Dangers in Drinks

It is a delusion and a snare to think that drinking ice-water, iced tea, and other cold drinks will cool the body when it is ninety or more in the shade. It is far better to drink moderately cool water in small quantities and frequently than to deluge the body with a quart or more within a few minutes. Drink moderately, and only of cool water, fruit juice without sugar, or oatmeal water, and a hot day can be shorn of its discomfort. Children especially should not be given iced drinks in hot weather.

The free use of beer and other alcoholic drinks on a hot day, with the idea of keeping cool, has brought unexpected disaster to thousands. These drinks relax the blood-vessels of the head, causing a large amount of blood to remain in the brain, hence increase the susceptibility to sunstroke and heat exhaustion. To keep the feet warm and the head cool is a physical maxim applicable to all seasons of the year.

If you awaken in the morning unrefreshed after a night of tossing and sweltering in a hot room, take a cold bath of some sort.

For fatigue, and as an aid to keeping cool on a hot night, take a warm bath, a tepid sponge bath, or, if that is not convenient, even a cold sponge.

North Yakima, Wash.