I don’t live in a hot place, but I am learning to cope with higher temperatures, and these are a few tips:
- Wear garments in cool fabrics, like Linen
Linen is one of the better types of garment to keep cool during summer. For a sunny day, long linen pants and a long-sleeved linen shirt will help you beat the heat in the sun. I find that linen helps with the issue of perspiration, as it does not retain moisture in the same way that cotton and some synthetics do. It’s also a pretty decent choice from an environmental perspective.
- Use fans to reduce perceived temperature
Wind helps keep body temperature low by aiding in the effectiveness of perspiration, i.e. sweat evaporating and reducing body temperature. This will only be effective if your indoor humidity is not too high, see later tips on that topic.
- Keep the sun away from the building
If you can shade the building you are in, it will heat up less. Awnings can be useful in this regard.
- Create a draft when the outside temperature is lower than the inside
This relies on the layout of your building being appropriate, but try to keep windows open at times when it’s possible. Bug nets can be useful to keep things open without getting unwanted guests.
- Keep things closed when the outdoor temperature is higher than indoors
You’ll want to try to maintain the amount of cool air as much as possible. Manage the climate actively, best as you can.
- Turn off things that generate heat
This relies on things like you not working from home and having to keep a computer on, but even under those circumstances, you can still try to switch from high energy devices to lower energy devices (stationary computers vs laptops, TVs vs phones). Higher electricity consumption is generally going to mean higher heat generation.
- Drink lots of water
You’ll need it to maintain good hydration, which keeps perspiration working, which is fundamentally what’s going to keep you cool when temperatures are hotter than what keeps you optimally cool.
- Go for a swim
If you have access to even mildly cool water, this can help refresh you when you’re feeling the heat. It’s also fun.
- Buy an AC
At the end of the day, perceived temperature can be a pretty hard factor to manage. When you’ve exhausted the rest of the list, you may need to get an AC, which will both cool the air and reduce humidity, which in turn decreases perceived temperature and generally increases comfort. If you can get one installed, that’s ideal, but if your country is anything like mine, you might be stuck with a portable one, which is unfortunately pretty inefficient. Try to get a good seal on the outdoor-part of the AC unit to help it work as efficiently as possible.
It’s cheap (well, can be), healthy (the risk of murderous drivers notwithstanding), and extremely fun. I’ve moved from mostly moving around by public transportation to biking everywhere, and I’ve never gotten so much free exercise. As a bonus, I get so much time to listen to podcasts as well.
Brewing coffee can be very fun and rewarding.
Not the bro-kind. Lots of great entertaining and educational material out there, I listen to north of 50 hours a month.
Growing your own food is a really rewarding activity, give it a try if you can.
I don’t have good access to a gym where I live, so calisthenics has been the option for keeping my body relatively fit. Getting into flexibility more recently has been a really good addition.