7 Tips for Healthy Living All Summer Long

The summer season is the perfect time to get outside and enjoy yourself:

Whether it’s sport, travel, or social events, there’s nothing better than glorious summer weather to get you in the mood to have some fun.

We’ve come up with seven summer tips for healthy living, which will enable you to stay active all day long.

1. Eat Lots of Fresh Fruits

Fruits are the perfect healthy food for the summer months. They’re tasty, refreshing, and nutritious, offering a whole host of vitamins and minerals.

Most fruits contain heaps of antioxidants, which reduce free radical damage in our bodies. Free radical damage is widely linked with tissue damage and many age-related illnesses, so reducing the build-up of excess free radicals is vital to maintaining a sense of vibrant, youthful health. Fruits offer the perfect combatant to free radical damage, by providing a natural delivery system for antioxidants.

The perfect summer fruits for antioxidant delivery are berries. Consuming a daily cup of fresh berries provides all the antioxidants you need to maintain your youthful vigor while staying active. Any berries will offer these benefits – strawberries, blackberries, blueberries – whichever you find the tastiest.

As an added benefit, fruits also contain fluids and electrolytes, which support you in staying well-hydrated during periods of increased heat and sun exposure. They also contain lots of fiber, keeping your digestive system running smoothly and reducing bloating, enabling you to look and feel your best when potentially wearing less.

2. Protect Your Eyes

We’re often so keen to get outside when the sun comes out that we forget to do the essentials for health maintenance. Protecting our eyes is often a key habit that gets overlooked.

It’s easy to forget that the sun is actually a star and is beaming down intense solar radiation towards the Earth’s surface, much of which is able to reach our eyes on a clear day. Our eyes haven’t evolved for constant exposure to this solar radiation and can wear out or become damaged over time. It’s vital to take the necessary precautions to protect them.

Excessive exposure can lead to issues that range in severity from the development of wrinkles around the eyes to severe cataracts, where the lens of an eye becomes clouded.

To prevent such optical issues, it’s essential to protect your eyes when spending long periods in the sun. Wearing eyewear that blocks harmful solar rays is the best way to achieve this protection. Proper protective sunglasses should block at least 99% of both UV-A and UV-B rays from reaching the eyes.

3. Maintain a Positive Mindset

This is a top tip for healthy living and optimal wellbeing in general, so it should come as no surprise that it’s also important during the summer months.

Developing a positive mindset is the key to achieving the mental strength and resilience required to get you through difficult times. There may be times in the summer when you have certain responsibilities that prevent you from making the most out of the weather and spending time with your loved ones, but with a positive mindset, you’ll be able to see the bigger picture with an optimistic, cheerful perspective.

This mindset also allows you to enjoy the positive times even more, as you’re more trained in the practices of gratitude and appreciation. You’re more likely to sit back and truly appreciate those beautiful moments spent outdoors with your loved ones, rather than simply worrying about going back to work or at what point the weather’s going to turn.

4. Keep Your Alcohol Consumption in Check

Again, another habit that’s great for your health all year round. However, this one can become much more challenging in the summer months.

With a wide increase in parties, barbecues, and general outdoor get-togethers, it can be so easy to overindulge in alcohol when you’re having a great time. However, overconsumption of alcohol is terrible for your health. Not only will you feel much worse for a few days after, thus decreasing your chances of exercising or enjoying yourself on those follow-on days, but it can also cause serious damage in the long term.

5. Stay Hydrated

Your body can lose vast amounts of water in the summer, sometimes without you even realizing it until it’s too late.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re socializing, exercising, or traveling, increased temperatures will lead to your body sweating a whole lot more than usual. This can lead to dehydration and heatstroke, with symptoms ranging from headaches and nausea to fainting and difficulty breathing.

By drinking lots of water throughout the day, you can prevent the onset of dehydration and keep your body working at its best.

6. Treat Yourself to a DIY Spa Day

Sometimes the summer months can be taxing on our bodies. Constant outdoor activities and exposure to intense heat, salt or chlorinated water, and creams of all types can lead to our skin and tissues needing a little R&R.

Treating yourself to a DIY spa day can be the perfect antidote, giving you time to look after your body and recuperate from all the outdoor fun. You can even have a few friends round for a DIY group session or treat yourself alone one night if you need peace and quiet.

DIY spa day activity options are endless, from pedicures, manicures, and facials, to making your own homemade body scrubs.

7. Don’t Skimp on Sleep

With the sun setting so late and rising so early, it can be a challenge to catch the usual amount of z’s. The desire to stay up later than normal is triggered or worsened by the feeling that it’s still daytime, and the early morning sun can make you want to get up and get busy way before you normally would.

However, getting enough sleep is absolutely critical to maintaining your mood, energy, and vitality, throughout the day. Without it, your hormones start to become imbalanced, which affects nearly all of your bodily functions, from your capacity to handle stress to your ability to manage blood sugar levels and hunger.

Getting enough sleep is essential for having the energy, vitality, and overall health to get the very most out of your summer.

Conclusion

There are some key considerations that must be taken into account to ensure that you’re maintaining and optimizing your health:

It’s so easy to get carried away with exercising, socializing, or simply catching some rays that you skip the essential health precautions.

However, doing so will cause you to feel worse and likely miss out in the long run. So always do things in moderation.

Also Read:
7 Tips for a Healthy Marriage: The Little Things That Bring Closeness

Liyana Perry is a writer at spa-hotels.ie, she has a passion for writing about natural health and spirituality.