5 cool tips to beat the summer heat

Shameem Akthar, yogacharya trained with the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, gives you five tips on food and health to help tou keep cool this summer.

We all think eating cold food and drinking cool stuff will protect us from summer's scorching heat. Actually, the foods that fight inflammation -- inner burn that comes when the body reacts to external and internal stress -- are better options. Similarly, not exercising is not the option, but doing the right stuff may help the body continue its health spiral.

1. Red beet is best

A recent research put beet root as a better health supportive food stuff, than even cranberry for its anti-oxidant content that helps prevent damage by free radicals.

The research concluded that a shot of beet root juice gave runners more boost than cranberry. That is because beets contain anthocyanins which are the perfect anti-oxidants to fight inner inflammation.

They contain great vitamin Bs which further help healing. You can boil them, have them as add-ons for salads, or juice them. Or heat them up for soups.

Shameem Akthar, yogacharya trained with the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, takes you through five yoga practices that will help you keep your cool this summer.

For more of Shameem's yoga writings visit http://jaisivananda.blogspot.com. Shameem's second book Yoga in the workplace, with photographs by ace photographer Fawzan Husain, is now available at online shops and bookshops across the country. It is also available as e-book, with Kindle, Amazon.

2. Vitamin E fights sun burn

Vitamin E helps the body preserve the good fats, prevents their damage by external stressors. This inner damage is what dries the skin.

Vitamin E helps the skin retain its suppleness and integrity. The best and nowadays easily available source for vitamin E is olives: as oil, or pickled and as a dominant ingredient to dips.

3. Pomegranate protects

Nowadays this fruit is a top-ranking super food. It also contains the free radical fighter anthocyanins, which helps fight inner inflammation.

Ellagic acid in pomegranate fights sun damage or stops sun spots and photo aging and UV radiation. They have more inflammation fighting property than other super foods that cost twice as much.

4. Sleep dark

Because of the higher sunlight quotient during summer, most people feel that they have not slept well at all.

Artificial lighting, street lights, natural brightness of the season, lights from electronic gadgets around the house, early morning sunrise can all increase the entry of light into your eyes even when they are shut. This affects the pineal gland in your brain which takes cues from the light from outside to give you melatonin or sleep hormones.

When the signals are messed up due to the external factors we mentioned above your sleep will be affected. Even though you have slept, you may wake up feeling lethargic, fatigued and irritable.

Try to darken your room so you can keep the sunlight off till your alarm goes off! Cut off inner lighting as much as possible. This will help you wake up fresher, cooler!

5. Lighter bed clothes

Your body temperature shifts during the night: it starts off feeling cold.

Middle of the night, the body heat goes up, which is when you may push off the sheets, feel hot, wake up and feel disturbed by all this.

Then towards morning, the body heat falls once more. So while buying night clothes for summer, wear thinner clothes than normal so that you are not disturbed by the middle-of-the-night heat quotient.

Sleep heavy in light clothes!