Summer has begun, for most of us the most beautiful season: water fun, outdoor action, beach feeling and eating ice cream! But unfortunately sometimes also sunburn, heat stroke and mosquito bites. These facts about summer health and safety help you to avoid the 13 most common mistakes in summer.
1. Drink Water Is Really Important For my Summer Health and Safety?!?
No question, in high heat you should drink a lot. That’s as sure as the amen in the church, right? But did you know that you can also drink too much? The body can only excrete a certain amount of water through sweat and urine. If you drink significantly more than 3 liters of fluid per day, you risk diluting your blood considerably. This reduces the salt concentration in the blood, and this can have bad consequences: from muscle weakness, disorientation, epileptic seizures to heart failure or even fatal brain edema.
Nevertheless, the problem with most people is that they drink too little, rather than too much. As a guideline for adults, depending on body weight and circumstances, 1.5- 2.5 l of water is considered optimal.
Caution: This information applies only to water! Other drink contain partly much less water or also substances that dehydrate, for example, caffeine or alcohol.
2. Ice-Cold Cocktails and Cool Beer – Just the Thing in the Heat?
Drinking in summer is not only a question of quantity, but also of drink choice! Sure: an iced mojito or a deliciously cool beer, are a delightful treat in summer. You should alcohol but not overdo it, and above all take enough other liquid to you, otherwise the fun soon has a hole. Because alcohol gets into your head much faster in the summer heat. Before you know it, the circulation makes you a dash through the beautiful summer day.
Furthermore, it is wrong to think that ice cold drinks help best against heat! In fact, the opposite is true, as incredible as it may sound. In fact, cold drinks tend to crank up the flow of sweat. This is because the body brings the cold liquid to body temperature to utilize it and that costs him energy – that’s why he heats up. So if you want to take the work off your own body and thus escape overheating, it’s best to stick to blue warm drinks, just those at body temperature..
Tip: Wait and drink tea! This is also the reason why so much lukewarm tea is drunk in many hot countries like Morocco or Turkey. This is wonderfully suited to ensure perfect summer health and safety and supply the body with liquid and also tastes good.
3. Sunburn in the Shade?

A sunburn not only hurts like hell, it also destroys massive amounts of skin cells. Every sunburn increases the skin cancer risk, so it’s nothing to joke about. Nevertheless, many people are downright negligent about it. Among young men, it is sometimes even considered unmanly to smear oneself with sunscreen. Honestly: if cancer-red spots, peeling skin scraps or skin cancer, are the prerequisite for the masculinity seal, I can do without it well..
Unfortunately, the myth also persists that as long as you are only in the shade, or the sky is overcast, you also do not need to put on sunscreen, because then you can not get sunburn anyway. Wrong! Sunburn is not caused by the visible light, but by the ultraviolet. Hence the name UV rays. And they reach the skin even in the shade, because they are reflected by anderso and they also penetrate layers of clouds..
Although in the shade one is exposed to UV radiation estimated only 50% as much as in the blazing sun, nevertheless one should always put on cream, even on hot days or if one spends the whole day outside in summer.
Tip: Always cream yourself already circa half an hour before you expose yourself to the sun with sunscreen. So it absorbs better, and you are well protected against sunburn from the start. Also, do not forget places like behind the ears or in the back of the knees..
4. After All, a Sunburn Makes for a Good Tan?
Complete nonsense! This is also a myth that still persists. While it is true that the skin that reforms after a sunburn is usually tanner. However, an equally intense tan can be achieved without sunburn and skin destruction..
One of my buddies from school days has long belonged to the conviction offenders of the wantonly induced sunburn. During summer vacations, he spent hours playing beach volleyball topless or engaging in other summer activities. Without ever putting on cream, of course.
Every year he had a decent sunburn at some point, but after that healed, he was properly tanned. So, apart from the completely unnecessary pain and long-term health damage, his method seemed to work!
But then came a centenary summer: it was blisteringly hot and my buddy was far from the only one walking around with a sunburn, though most probably hadn’t put it on. Anyway, this time his sunburn was so bad that his skin peeled off his body like old wallpaper. Several layers of skin were burned and peeled off at once. At the end of this summer, said buddy then really looked like peeled from the egg: white.
Tip for gentle tanning: The lighter your skin is, the higher the sun protection factor of your sunscreen should be. Do not expose yourself too long to the blazing sun – even in the shade you get a tan, which takes a little longer, but you do not destroy your skin!.
5. Tear Open the Windows in the Heat for a Good Summer Health and Safety?

36 degrees and it gets even hotter! When this song line of 2raumwohnung comes close to the truth, absolute monkey heat prevails and your own apartment is felt to a hellish mixture of greenhouse, sauna and oven, only one thing helps: tear all the windows wide open! Or?!?
To ventilate is basically a good idea, because fresh oxygen you need. But in the long run, open windows are counterproductive in high summer heat. That’s because it can get as hot as 30 °C indoors in the summer, but not hotter. Unless the temperature outside is even hotter and all the windows are open. Then you let the heat in namely..
So if you are in the apartment in sweltering heat, do not forget to ventilate, but do not leave the windows open too long.
Tip: Draw the curtains or lower the blinds when it gets too hot. So the sun can not heat up the room so..
6. Air Conditioner or Fan?
This brings me to one of the very great questions of faith of (over)life in the summer. Almost as central to our lives as other great questions of human history such as to be or not to be?, sea or mountains?, tea or coffee? becomes in the summer the question of the adequate device for room cooling: air conditioner or fan??.
To put it straight: I take the side of the fan in this epic dispute! Reason: Air conditioners are not only more expensive and consume more electricity, they can make you sick!!!
To be fair, it is first necessary to name the most important difference in the way air conditioners and fans work: Air conditioners cause an actual cooling of the room in which they are used, while fans only circulate the air. But this does not make it colder. Everything only hot wind therefore?
No, because if you stand in the wind direction of a fan, your own body is very well cooled. It’s just that the room temperature doesn’t drop. And in very hot weather, the cooling effect of fans no longer works so well.
Air conditioners, on the other hand, really lower the room temperature, but cost much more, consume more electricity and are a risk to health in the long run.
Why air conditioners can make you sick – a relly important summer health and safety fact
An air conditioner distributes the air in the room evenly, but thereby also everything that is in this air, for example, cigarette smoke, house dust or viruses and bacteria. Under certain circumstances, disease pathogens can so only through the air conditioner into the lungs..
Who comes in sweaty clothes in an air-conditioned room, can also easily get a cold. Due to the sweat and the low room temperature, the organism is briefly hypothermic.
The consequence: The blood flow to the mucous membranes of the throat and nose decreases. Thus, the mucous membranes can no longer fight off bacteria and viruses, so that an infection threatens..
7. Sleep in Rooms as Cold as Possible
But at least for sleeping, you should lower the room temperature. Or sleep without a comforter. Because only in cold bedrooms can slumber well. So the legend. But that’s wrong!
When it is too very cold or when the air conditioning is set too high, there is a danger that the mucous membranes dry out and therefore become more susceptible to infections. At too high temperatures, however, one can actually sleep very badly. Therefore, as so often in life, the middle ground is best: between 16 and 18 degrees is, according to doctors, the perfect temperature to sleep..
8. Eating Garlic Keeps Mosquitoes Away

Unfortunately, no! Eating garlic will at best keep your potential summer fling away. Even though I love to eat the spicy bulb – I don’t rely on it as a mosquito repellent. How it came to the myth that eating garlic or onion helps against the biting little beasts? Maybe because they suck blood like vampires. In any case, this supposed home remedy against mosquitoes has unfortunately proven ineffective in scientific tests..
Instead, I fall back on the classic among mosquito sprays: Autan*!
Tip: If you but times a mosquito has bitten, the effect of their poison can be well neutralized with some home remedies shortly after the bite: with vinegar, lemon or a hot metal spoon (about 45 ° C), because you press on the bite. But beware of burns!
9. Keep Wet Swimsuits on After Swimming
The sun will dry your clothes in a short time if it sizzles down with full force. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. At least not quickly and that is unfortunately not good at all! Because in wet swimwear bacteria thrive wonderfully, and especially in women there is a risk of bladder infection..
This is rather unlikely in men, but they are also not immune to colds.
10. There is Nothing Better for a Good Summer Health and Safety – Jump Into Cold Water When It’s Hot?

When you feel like a sausage on the grill, a dip in the water provides instant relief. And the colder the water, the better: that’s what I always thought!
But unfortunately the shock can already take off your shoes. Often, especially in natural waters such as bathing lakes, only the water surface is warm, but the temperatures deeper are several degrees colder. The water thus extracts heat from the body, you start to freeze and the muscles ache. The consequences: There may be cramps and circulatory problems..
To prevent this from happening, you should always cool down before bathing. Only in this way can the body get used to the temperature change, without putting too much strain on the circulation.
11. Go swimming with a full stomach
You can only go back into the water in a good hour, you just ate an ice cream. With such sentences my mother made my childhood difficult. What has my consumption of ice cream, fries or hot dog then please to do with whether I go swimming now or not?.
My mother was not entirely wrong, but also not quite right. In fact, food sets the digestion process in motion, and this makes blood flow into the stomach. Therefore, the muscles get comparatively less blood flow and the risk of cramps increases. By the way, not only during swimming, but during any kind of physical activity! But when swimming cramps are maximum unfavorable, especially if you swim alone..
Despite this: with a scoop of ice cream my mother could have quietly turn a blind eye. Because real danger of cramps exists only after a larger meal, when the stomach is really full, not after a small snack..
Tip: Avoid heavy, hearty meals on a bathing day and rather eat more often small snacks such as salads, sandwiches or fruit. And if then an ice cream is there, it can not hurt!.
12. Sports Is Murder for Summer Health and Safety

Sports are basically pretty great! No, really now! Sporting leisure activities are fun, keep you fit, keep you healthy, make you beautiful, ensure the release of happy hormones, etc. And summer, along with spring, is of course the ideal season for any kind of outdoor activity.
But don’t overdo it. Especially on hot summer days it often happens that you overestimate yourself physically and completely exhaust yourself. Because in the sun and heat you can very quickly overheat, which can lead to dizziness, nausea and headaches, in the worst case to a heat stroke.
So rather approach more relaxed and not necessarily jogging in the greatest midday heat. Also the afternoon is in the summer for Outdoor sport rather not to recommend, because between 14:00 and 17:00 o’clock the ozone load is highest outside. Ideal times for sports in summer, on the other hand, are the cool morning and the balmy evening.
13. Bad Weather = Bad Mood?

Rain, gray skies and cool outside temperatures – is this perhaps how you imagine summer? Certainly not! And yet everyone knows these days, when the summer just does not want to keep what you promised him.
But you should not let this spoil your mood under any circumstances. That would be your biggest mistake of the summer! Rather take the lines of the Wise Guys to heart: It’s summer, whether you sweat or freeze, summer is what happens in your head!.
Even when it’s pouring down, there are quite a few ways to spend your free time: from board game night, cooking nights with friends or getting creative together. In the idea finder there is plenty of inspiration!
At Greatime you will find quite a few more undertakings with friends and general leisure tips for diverse activities with friends, the partner or with the family.
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Image source cover: by Noodles and Beef at CC BY 2.0
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