Sweating is an unavoidable fact of life when it’s summertime or when you are just naturally running hot. But you can’t fix the problem by standing in front of an open refrigerator door all day. You may be surprised to learn that some foods and drinks can help you hold the sweats at bay. Reach inside the fridge for foods that have the right stuff to aid your digestion, calm your nerves and keep you hydrated. Keep reading for hints on what to eat and what to avoid so that soaring temperatures will have a lesser chance of breaking you out into a sweat.
Cut Dairy from Your Diet
Giving up ice cream is tough during the dog days of summer, but the trade-off can be worth it. You may be among the 65% of the entire human population who have a problem digesting dairy. Eating food that your body has a hard time processing forces your immune system to work harder to protect you from food intolerances. Your sympathetic nervous system recognizes the effort as stress and kicks in with mechanisms to help out. One of these protective mechanisms is sweat. See if identifying foods that give you digestive problems and cutting them from your diet will reduce your sweating.
Go Easy on Spicy Foods
Jalapeño peppers from the garden and sriracha hot sauce on your al fresco dinner table are summertime delicacies that can trigger profuse sweating. Hot peppers trick the brain into trying to cool off the body. There’s a little chemical compound in peppers called capsaicin, which binds to pain receptors on your nerves. Those receptors send a warning signal to the brain, and you end up drenched in sweat after enjoying delicious culinary firecrackers.
Reach for Water-Dense Foods
Opt for foods that are loaded with water to ease digestion and stress. Fruits and veggies that have a high-water content will give you digestive power and reduce sweat. Get some of these into your daily diet: watermelon, grapes, cauliflower, eggplant, red cabbage, bell peppers, spinach and broccoli.
Monitor Your Coffee Intake
The caffeine in coffee and tea revs up your nervous system and prompts your body to produce sweat to regulate your internal temperature. Everyone’s threshold for coffee is different. You may be knocking back four cups before lunch with no side effects while your cubicle neighbor is a nervous sweating wreck after just one. Finding the right balance calls for experimenting to see how much coffee you can tolerate. Skipping the local coffee shop and brewing your own will help you control your caffeine intake, and eating food with your morning cup of Joe can slow your body’s caffeine absorption rate and reduce your coffee sweats.
Drink Tomato Juice
One glass of tomato juice (also known as the non-alcoholic Bloody Mary) can help neutralize acids in the body and reduce the amount of sweat you produce.
Sip Green Tea or Sage Tea
Take the edge off with some green tea. The calming effects of green tea will soothe your nervous system and keep sweat away. Sage tea isn’t just for reducing the hot flashes of menopause. Sage tea is loaded with magnesium, tannic acid, and vitamin B and can lower the activity of sweat glands.
Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate
Drinking plain old water cools you down so that your body won’t work so hard to lower your internal temperature by sweating. Keep a water bottle at your desk or with you on the go so you can easily sip throughout the day.