The recent heatwave has been unbearable, with netizens joking: "My life depends on the AC," "The only thing between me and grilled meat is a pinch of cumin," and "Watch your step when you go out—it's hot enough to burn you."In such sweltering conditions, heatstroke prevention is crucial. Beyond essential protective measures, dietary choices matter too. Incorporate foods that clear heat, quench thirst, and ward off heatstroke—like mung beans and bitter melon—into your regular meals.
8 Foods to Prevent Heatstroke in Summer
Mung Beans
Mung beans are sweet and cooling, clearing heat from the heart, promoting urination, relieving summer heat, quenching thirst, and detoxifying. They are one of the best foods for summer heat prevention. You can simmer mung bean soup for regular consumption.
Watermelon
Dubbed the "King of Summer," watermelon is refreshingly sweet and juicy, quenching thirst while preventing heat exhaustion. Its flesh clears heat, relieves summer heat, promotes urination, and alleviates alcohol toxicity. The rind, known in traditional Chinese medicine as "watermelon green peel," clears heat, relieves summer heat, reduces fire and irritability, and lowers blood pressure.
Bitter Melon
Bitter melon, with its bitter taste and cold nature, clears heat, detoxifies, and improves vision. It is used for heatstroke-induced fever, toothache, diarrhea, dysentery, and bloody stools.
Bitter Lettuce
Bitter lettuce, with a bitter taste and neutral nature, is non-toxic. It enters the liver and lung meridians, clearing heat and detoxifying. It also helps prevent cancer, promotes bile secretion and liver health, and combats gastric ulcers.
Cucumber
Cucumber has a sweet and bitter taste, is cool in nature, non-toxic, and enters the spleen, stomach, and large intestine meridians. It clears heat, promotes urination, and detoxifies. It treats thirst, sore throat, and swelling. Regular consumption in summer effectively prevents heatstroke.
Winter Melon
Winter melon is sweet and cold in nature, with effects of clearing heat, promoting diuresis, and reducing swelling. Its flesh and pulp have diuretic, heat-clearing, phlegm-resolving, and thirst-quenching properties, also treating edema, phlegm-induced wheezing, summer heat, and hemorrhoids. Consuming winter melon soup with its skin helps reduce swelling, promote urination, clear heat, and relieve summer heat.
Duck Meat
In traditional Chinese medicine, ducks primarily consume aquatic foods, giving their meat a sweet and cold nature. It enters the lung, stomach, and kidney meridians, offering nourishing, stomach-tonifying, kidney-strengthening, heat-clearing, edema-reducing, and heat-diarrhea-stopping effects. For summer heat prevention, simmer duck with winter melon for a soup that provides gentle nourishment while combating summer heat.
Kelp
Consuming kelp in summer helps clear heat and prevent heatstroke. It is commonly used in soups like kelp and mung bean soup or pork rib and kelp soup. Additionally, kelp is rich in fiber, which efficiently clears waste and toxins from the intestines, effectively preventing rectal cancer and constipation.
Below are three recommended recipes for heatstroke prevention and cooling. Feel free to try them out.
Recommended Recipes for Heatstroke Prevention and Cooling
Honey-Glazed Bitter Melon
【Ingredients】1 bitter melon, 20ml honey, 30g sugar, salt to taste, goji berries to taste
[Method]
1. Prepare ingredients. Rinse goji berries and soak in water.
2. Remove seeds from bitter melon, wash thoroughly, and slice.
3. In a small bowl, combine sugar and honey. Add cool boiled water and stir until sugar dissolves.
4.Bring water to a boil in a pot, add a pinch of salt, blanch the bitter melon slices, then cool and set aside.
5. Drain the bitter melon, place it in the prepared marinade, refrigerate for 1 hour. Sprinkle with goji berries before serving.
Coix Seed, Winter Melon, and Pork Rib Soup
【Ingredients】80g Job's tears, 400g winter melon, 400g pork ribs, 1 small piece of old ginger, 3-4 scallions, 3 large bowls of water, about 5g salt, 3g white pepper powder
【Method】
1. Prepare ingredients:Wash and slice the ginger. Trim the scallions and tie them into bundles. Wash the winter melon, remove seeds, and cut into large chunks. Sort the barley and soak in water for about 2 hours.
2. Rinse the pork ribs. Soak in cold water for about 1 hour to remove blood, then blanch in cold water with ginger slices. Rinse thoroughly and set aside.
3.Add sufficient water to a clay pot. Place the rinsed pork ribs, soaked Job's tears, ginger slices, and scallion knots inside. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to low heat and simmer for 1 hour.
4. After 1 hour, add the winter melon and continue simmering on low heat for about 30 minutes.
5. About 15 minutes before turning off the heat, season with an appropriate amount of salt and white pepper powder. Once time is up, turn off the heat and serve.
>Mung Bean and Pumpkin Soup
【Ingredients】Mung beans, pumpkin, salt (as needed)
【Method】
1. Rinse mung beans in water. While still damp, add a pinch of salt (about 3g) and mix well. Let sit for a few minutes, then rinse thoroughly.
2. Peel pumpkin, remove seeds, wash thoroughly, and cut into 2cm cubes.
3.Add 500ml water to a pot. Bring to a boil, then add mung beans and boil for 2 minutes. Pour in a splash of cold water, bring to a boil again, add pumpkin, and cover the pot.
4. Simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes until mung beans split open. Season with a pinch of salt to taste.
If you accidentally suffer from heatstroke, what dietary restrictions should you follow?
Dietary Restrictions After Heatstroke
Avoid excessive water intake.Those suffering from heatstroke should drink small amounts frequently, limiting each intake to no more than 300 milliliters. Avoid excessive, rapid drinking. Large amounts of water can dilute stomach acid, impairing digestion, and trigger excessive sweating. This leads to significant loss of body fluids and salts, potentially causing heat cramps in severe cases.
Avoid excessive consumption of raw, cold fruits and vegetables. Most heatstroke victims have weakened spleen and stomach function. Consuming large amounts of raw, cold fruits, vegetables, or cold-natured foods damages the yang energy of the spleen and stomach. This impairs digestive motility, leading to internal accumulation of cold and dampness. Severe cases may develop diarrhea and abdominal pain.After heatstroke, residual summer heat persists. Though weakness may be present, pure tonic supplements are inappropriate. Believing urgent tonification is needed due to weakness is a grave mistake. Premature tonification may hinder summer heat dissipation or cause it to resurge after gradual decline, resulting in greater harm than benefit.
Start your summer heat prevention with dietary choices!