You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, it's Marielle.
I know it's not technically summer yet, but once June hits, it feels like it is.
And we start doing all the summer things going to the pool sipping Italian ices, holding our noses when we walk past garbage cans, because that stuff smells way worse when it's hot.
Now at Life Kit, we are always giving you tips on how to stay healthy, and we realized summer presents some unique opportunities on that front.
It's an easier time to get enough sunlight to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, maybe even to exercise outdoors if it's not unbearably hot.
It's also a risky time.
We're outside.
We're jumping into bodies of water.
We're baking under the hot sun.
We are lighting fires and cooking over them.
If we're gonna do these things, we ought to do them right.
Take grilling, for example.
Generally speaking, you don't necessarily want anything above your grill.
It might not be the best setup to place your grill on a balcony where there is someone else's balcony above yours.
And you generally don't want to place your grill along your house siding because it gets really hot.
This is Jess Larson. founder of a food blog called Plays Well With Butter.
Love that name.
A few other precautions she mentions.
It's always a good idea to have a fire extinguisher on hand and just the knowledge that air feeds flames and, when in doubt, close the lid and let the fire die out on its own.
On this episode of Life Kit, we're going to give you the scoop on how to stay healthy and safe this summer.
And grilling is just the start.
We'll talk about healthy summer cooking and swimming and extreme heat and bugs and more.
Question.
Do you know how to swim?
Like, for real?
No.
If you're not sure, take away one.
Summer is a good moment to test your swimming skills and maybe take a swimming class.
That could save your life.
And swimming is also just a great way to get exercise when it's hot outside.
The Red Cross has a list of five basic skills that you need at a minimum to save yourself in the water.
The first is you should be comfortable with submerging your whole body, including your head, under the water.
The second is you should be able to return to the surface and float or tread water for one minute.
Cullen Jones is a former Olympic swimmer and it's his mission now to make sure people know how to swim.
One of the biggest things about treading water and also floating is taking in a deep breath.
When you take in that deep breath, your lungs at that point essentially become a buoy.
The third skill is if you're in a pool, you should be able to turn around in a full circle and find an exit.
And the fourth is you should be able to swim 25 yards to that exit without stopping.
So the pool that you're thinking of in your head, that's probably a 25-yard pool.
Lastly, you should be able to get out of the water without using a ladder.
Colin says you can think elbow, elbow, tummy, knee, knee.
Elbow, elbow.
So you're putting both of your elbows up on the surface, lifting yourself up to your stomach, so you're halfway out.
And then you're trying to bring your knee up one knee up and then the other knee up, and then you should be able to stand up at that point.
If you don't have these skills or you're not a confident swimmer, take a swim class.
It's never too late to start.
You can go to usaswimming.org forward slash make a splash to find a class near you.
And if you have kids in your life, there's even more to consider here, because drowning is the number one cause of death for children ages one to four in the United States.
The American Association of Pediatrics recommends swim classes for kids and says you can start when they're as young as one year old.
Beyond that, takeaway two if your kids are near a body of water, whether that's the pool, a lake, the ocean, designate an adult water watcher, someone who knows it's their job to watch the water and the kids in it.
Shazik Sunoda is the founder and executive director of the drowning prevention nonprofit.
No More Under.
Often these tragedies happen because someone thinks someone else is watching.
Someone thinks that someone else has an eye on the kids or on the pool.
And so we're really being focused on watching the water.
I often say that the amount of time it takes to read and answer a text message is the amount of time it takes a child to drown.
She says water watchers should be sober and alert and have their phone nearby in case they need to call 911.
I don't wanna be a killjoy and say, hey, don't go drinking at pool parties.
I just think that it's really important that you have someone who is a responsible adult there.
Just like you have a designated driver You should definitely have a designated person.
And if there are other adults around, switch off every 15 or 20 minutes so no one loses focus.
All right, next up, takeaway three.
Take advantage of the sunlight, but be safe.
We humans need the sun.
Getting some sun exposure every day helps us sleep better.
It can improve our mood and lower our stress levels, lower our blood pressure, increase our metabolism and more.
It also allows our bodies to create vitamin D, a substance we need to support our bones, our muscles and our immune system.
So make sure you're getting outside for at least 15 minutes a day, ideally at a time when it's cooler like the morning.
Also though, don't overdo it.
If you're going to be outside for hours, definitely cover your skin and wear sunscreen so you don't burn and make sure you stay hydrated and cool.
So, hydration.
Look, you know you're supposed to do this, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Drink lots of water.
That helps your body make the sweat that it needs to cool you down.
And if it's really hot out, skip the beer or the cocktail.
It's just going to dehydrate you and increase your risk of heat exhaustion.
Here's Paul Schramm from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We recommend avoiding alcohol during extreme temperatures.
People should be drinking water, sports drinks, or clear juices to help stay hydrated.
Now, if you're outside and you need to cool down quickly, try putting an ice pack or a wet towel on the back of your neck, under your armpits or on your groin, because some of the body's major blood vessels are closer to the skin in those areas.
Dr Renee Salas is an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and she has some tips for when you're indoors.
For instance, keep your curtains closed.
Try to keep your house as cool as possible by covering windows to keep the sun out, not using your oven or things that will actually heat up the inside of your house.
Opening up the house when it's cool, like in the morning, and using fans to try to bring that cool air in.
You can do the same thing at night.
Open the windows to let the heat out from the day.
By the way, she mentioned ovens.
If you're giving yours a rest on a hot day, salads and green bowls are a great alternative.
Anything you can throw together with minimal cooking.
I like to make quinoa on the stovetop and then toss in garbanzo beans, raw cherry tomatoes, fresh dill olive oil vinegar, salt pepper raisins and sometimes pickled carrots.
It's really good.
Or you can make an arugula salad with goat cheese, fresh blueberries, and walnuts.
That brings me to takeaway four.
Summer is a great time to eat more whole foods.
We know that ultra-processed foods are bad for our health.
Here's NPR health correspondent Maria Godoy.
There is a lot of research linking overconsumption of ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes.
So they see an increased risk of things like type 2 diabetes obesity hypertension, dying from cardiovascular disease.
In fact, there's research showing that eating too much ultra processed foods increases your risk of dying prematurely from all causes.
And the evidence is pretty strong and consistent for all of those risks.
We also know that fruits and vegetables are packed with nutrients, which is why nutrition experts tell you to eat the rainbow.
Why are we supposed to eat such colorful food?
Why are blueberries so good for us?
Well, in that pigment there are phytonutrients, compounds like carotenoids and flavonoids and anthocyanins.
Those are all big words for compounds that actually really can protect us.
This is Alison Aubrey, also a health correspondent at NPR.
I remember the very first time that this made sense to me.
I was on a reporting assignment at UC Davis.
I was visiting a scientist who was leading a study to evaluate the levels of antioxidants and other compounds in tomatoes.
And we were squatted down in this field and he was showing me this tomato and he described how it was processed, packed with these compounds like flavonoids and antioxidants.
And I kind of looked at him like, what's going on here?
He said look, the more a plant has to struggle to defend itself from the sun, from the rain, you know, from extreme temperatures, the more it develops these kind of defensive compounds which, in turn, can help protect us too.
These are the things that can help stave off chronic disease and keep us healthy, which is why we're told to eat daily servings of fruits and vegetables.
The good news is, in the summer, you have the cornucopia in front of you.
Take your pick.
Plump blackberries, sweet ripe peaches, juicy heirloom tomatoes.
Find out what fruits and vegetables are in season during each part of the summer and celebrate them.
Another one of my favorite easily assembled summer lunches is sourdough bread toasted with butter, on top a chunky slice of in-season heirloom tomato and sea salt and honey on top of that.
All right, we'll have more Life Kit summer health tips after the break.
Okay, it is time to talk about the things that creep and crawl.
I wanted to say bugs, but we have learned that ticks are not technically classified as bugs.
They're arachnids, along with their friends spiders and scorpions.
It's estimated that about 31 million people in the U.S. get bitten by a tick every year.
Summer is peak season for this, and unfortunately, ticks can spread diseases like Lyme.
Takeaway five, take tick bite prevention seriously.
If you're spending time outdoors in the summer, especially in an area where ticks are common like the Northeast, cover your skin as much as possible.
For instance, if you're going on a hike or working in the yard, you could wear long sleeves and long pants and tuck your pants into your socks.
I know it's hard to do that when it's hot, which is one reason I don't hike in the summer but you can choose fabrics that are more breathable.
And then spray your clothes and your skin with an EPA recommended repellent.
The CDC recommends that you use a bug spray with the chemical permethrin on your clothes, but not on your skin.
On your skin, you want to use DEET.
If you are hiking, stay on the trail and out of the tall grass.
And when you get home, do a tick check right away.
NPR health correspondent Ping Huang walked me through this last summer.
She says generally speaking, the longer a tick is latched onto your body, the more likely it is to spread disease.
Coming in from the outside.
It might be helpful to, like a throw your clothes in the dryer, because putting them on high heat for 10 minutes will kill any ticks that are kind of still crawling around on them.
And then you want to jump in the shower, which will wash any ticks off you and also give you a chance to check all those places on your body that might have been covered with clothes that now you can check for ticks.
And if you've never seen a tick, here's what you're looking for.
By the way, this is Becky Eisen, a research biologist at the CDC.
People are often surprised by how small these critters are.
So if you can picture an everything bagel, an adult is about the size of a sesame seed.
So the little white seeds on there and then the...
The nymphs are about the size of a poppy seed, so those tiny little black seeds.
So they're often difficult to find, particularly those really small nymphs, which probably helps to explain why so many human infections are associated with nymphal bites.
Becky is specifically talking about deer ticks, which are ticks that can carry Lyme disease.
Lone star ticks, which can carry other diseases, are often a little bit bigger.
And dog ticks, also potential disease carriers, can be much bigger than that.
A couple of other things to help you identify ticks.
They don't have wings.
And the nymphs and adults that are the most likely to bite you each have eight legs.
Now, if you do find a tick on your body, Peng says don't throw it out right away.
As eager as you might be to get rid of it.
Because there's some information that it would help you to collect in order to sort of understand, like what your risk is.
So.
You can try to take a really clear picture of it.
You can submit that to some experts to get some consult.
Try to figure out like what kind of tick is it?
What life stage is it in?
And that information will help you and also, like a doctor, if you actually do seek some medical care, figure out what your risks are.
You can submit a photo to the University of Rhode Island's Tick Encounter website.
And they also have field guides with photos you can use as a reference.
Some symptoms of Lyme disease to look out for and definitely tell your doctor about.
Aches and pains, fever, a rash, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes, among other things.
Okay, last up.
Mosquitoes, the buzzy flying creatures that sneak into my apartment during the summer and torment me all night, whizzing by my ear, mocking me with their high-pitched songs.
When you're outside, your best defense against mosquito bites is a bug repellent.
That includes the chemical DEET.
Here's Sammy Ramsey, a professor of entomology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
If you think for a moment about what it is that DEET is doing for you.
It provides hours and hours of consistent relief by confusing the capacity of the mosquitoes to smell you.
And if they can't smell you, they can't locate you as a host.
It basically camouflages your chemical scent so that you do not actually smell like a human being or a host for them.
By the way, the CDC also says these EPA-registered insect repellents have been proven to be effective against mosquitoes.
Picardin, IR3535, and oil of lemon eucalyptus.
So that's our takeaway six.
Use bug spray with one of these ingredients to handle mosquitoes outside.
And when you do use bug spray, make sure you do it right.
Sammy says a lot of people don't.
I've seen people just kind of spritz it like cologne, like a little bit here, a little bit there, rub it together.
That's not gonna help you.
You want to make a sweeping motion each time you spray it, so that the chemical is actually landing in very well distributed amounts across your skin, instead of piling up in one area.
Now the American Academy of Pediatrics says anyone under two might have skin different from that of an adult or even an older child.
So apply DEET sparingly to them.
But for most of us, experts say DEET is effective and safe when you use it correctly.
A few other best practices when it comes to bug sprays.
Apply it in open areas, not in enclosed spaces.
And if you're putting it on your face, don't spray it directly.
Spray it into your hands, then rub it on your skin and wash off your bug spray with soap and water when you get back inside.
Now, if it's the middle of the night and there's a mosquito in your room, you might have to go on a mosquito hunt, which is usually what I do.
But if you're super tired you can try turning on a fan or the AC to keep the mosquito away from you.
And if you do get bitten by a mosquito, don't scratch.
You don't want to risk infection.
Instead apply some ice or some hydrocortisone cream or aloe, and maybe cover the bite with a bandage to make scratching harder.
All right, time for a recap.
Takeaway one, summer is a good moment to test your swimming skills and maybe take a class.
That could save your life.
Also, swimming is just a great way to get exercise when it's hot outside.
Takeaway two if your kids are near a body of water, whether that's a pool, a lake, the ocean, designate an adult water watcher, someone who knows it's their job to watch the water and the kids in it.
Take advantage of the sunlight, but be safe.
We humans do need the sun, but you don't want to overdo it, right?
So if you're going to be outside for hours, cover your skin, wear sunscreen so you don't burn, and make sure you stay hydrated.
One tip is to put ice or a cold wet towel on the back of your neck, under your armpit or on your groin to cool down faster.
Takeaway four, summer is a great time to eat more whole foods.
Find out what fruits and vegetables are in season during each part of the summer and celebrate them.
My all-time favorite is a juicy ripe peach.
Takeaway five, take tick bite prevention seriously.
If you're spending time outdoors in the summer, especially in an area where ticks are common like the Northeast, cover your skin as much as possible.
When you get home, throw your clothes in the dryer to kill any ticks and take a shower.
And if you do get bitten, don't throw the tick out right away.
Take a picture and look for resources to help you identify what kind of tick it is.
Finally, takeaway six.
To prevent mosquito bites, use bug spray with ingredients like DEET Picardin, IR3535 or oil of lemon eucalyptus.
And when you do use bug spray, make sure you do it right.
Don't just spritz it here and there like perfume.
Use a sweeping motion all over your exposed skin.
Okay, that's our show.
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Download the NPR app and let's keep talking.
This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider.
Our digital editor is Malika Gharib, and our visuals editor is CJ Rikulan.
Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer.
Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas.
Engineering support comes from Jimmy Keeley.
Fact-checking by Andrea Lopez Cruzado.
I'm Mariel Segarra.
Thanks for listening.
