How to have a safe, healthy summer

"You're talking about boys and men. Where's your policy agenda? You're good on podcasts,

“but we've actually done a bunch of stuff for boys and men. Sorry, what have you done?"”

Ideas about the next era of manhood. That's on the Ted radio hour podcast, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to life kit from NPR. Hey, it's Mario. I know it's not technically summary yet, but once June hits, it feels like it is. And we start doing all the summer things. Going to the pool, stepping Italian icees, holding our noses when we walk past garbage cans,

because that stuff smells way worse when it's hot. Now, at life kit, we are always giving

new tips on how to stay healthy and we realized summer presents some unique opportunities on that front. It's an easier time to get enough sunlight to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, maybe even to exercise outdoors if it's not unbearably hot. It's also a risky time. We're outside. We're jumping into bodies of water. We're baking under the hot sun. We are lighting fires and cooking over them. If we're going to do these things, we

ought to do them right. Take grilling, for example. Generally speaking, you don't necessarily want anything above your grill. It might not be the best setup to place your grill on a balcony where there is someone else's balcony above yours. And you generally don't want to place your grill along your house sighting because it gets really hot. This is Jess Larson. She's the founder of a food blog called Place Well with Butter. Love that name. A few other precautions she mentions.

It's always a good idea to have a fire extinguisher on hand and just the knowledge that

airfeed flames and when and out, close the lid and let the fire die out on its own. On this episode of LifeKit, we're going to give you this scoop on how to stay healthy and safe this summer. And grilling is just the start. We'll talk about healthy summer cooking and swimming, and extreme heat, and bugs, and more. Hundreds of thousands of people came to the US as small children as the only home they've ever

known. And although they weren't citizens, many got special protections to keep living and working here. Now, though, they find themselves in legal limbo as the Trump administration tightens the screws on immigrants. Listen to MPR's course which podcast and the MPR app or wherever you get your podcast. Question. Do you know how to swim? Like for real? If you're not sure, take away one. Summer is a good moment to test your swimming skills and maybe take a swimming class. That could

save your life. And swimming is also just a great way to get exercise when it's hot outside. The red cross has a list of five basic skills that you need at a minimum to save yourself in the

“water. The first is you should be comfortable with submerging your whole body, including your head”

under the water. The second is you should be able to return to the surface and float or tread water for one minute. Colin Jones is a former Olympic swimmer and it's his mission now to make sure people know how to swim. One of the biggest things about, you know, treading water and also floating is taking in a deep breath. When you take in that deep breath, your lungs at that point essentially become a boolee. The third skill is if you're in a pool, you should be able to turn around in a full

circle and find an exit. And the fourth is you should be able to swim 25 yards to that exit without stopping. So the pool that you're thinking of in your head, that's probably a 25 yard pool. Lastly, you should be able to get out of the water without using a ladder. Colin says you can think elbow, elbow, tummy, knee, knee. elbow, elbow. So you're putting your both of your elbows up on the surface, lifting yourself up to your stomach. So you're halfway out and then you're trying to bring

“your knee up, one knee up and then the other knee up and then you should be able to stand up at that point.”

If you don't have these skills or you're not a confidence swimmer, take a swim class.

It's never too late to start. You can go to USASwimming.org/MakeAsplash to find a class near you.

And if you have kids in your life, there's even more to consider here because drowning is the number one cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in the United States. The American Association of Pediatrics recommends swim classes for kids and says you can start when they're as young as one year old. Beyond that, takeaway too, if your kids are near a body of water, whether that's the pool, a lake, the ocean, doesn't need an adult water watcher. Someone who knows it's their job to

watch the water and the kids in it. Shazik Senoda is the founder and executive director of the drowning prevention nonprofit no more under. Often these tragedies happen because someone thinks someone else is watching. Someone thinks that someone else has an eye on the kids or on the pool

to read and answer a text message is the amount of time it takes a child to drown. She says water

watchers should be sober and alert and have their phone nearby in case they need to call 911. I don't want to be a killjoy and say hey don't go drinking at pool parties. I just think that it's really important that you have someone who is a responsible adult there. Just like you

“have a designated driver, you should definitely have a designated person. And if there are other”

adults around, switch off every 15 or 20 minutes so no one loses focus. All right next up take away three take advantage of the sunlight but be safe. We humans need the sun. Getting some sun exposure every day helps to sleep better. It can improve our mood and lower our stress levels, lower our blood pressure, increase our metabolism and more. It also allows our bodies to create vitamin D,

a substance we need to support our bones, our muscles and our immune system. So make sure you're

getting outside for at least 15 minutes a day. Ideally at a time when it's cooler like the morning. Also though, don't overdo it. If you're going to be outside for hours, definitely cover your skin and wear sunscreen so you don't burn and make sure you stay hydrated and cool. So hydration. Look, you know you're supposed to do this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Drink lots of water. That helps your body make the sweat that it needs to cool you down. And if it's really hot out,

skip the beer or the cocktail. It's just going to dehydrate you and increase your risk of heat exhaustion. Here's Paul Shram from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We recommend avoiding alcohol during extreme temperatures. People should be drinking water, sports drinks or

“clear juices to help stay hydrated. Now if you're outside and you need to cool down quickly,”

try putting an ice pack or a wet towel on the back of your neck under your armpits or on your

groin because some of the body's major blood vessels are closer to the skin in those areas. Dr. Renee Salis is an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and she has some tips for when you're indoors. For instance, keep your curtains closed. Try to keep your house as cool as possible by covering windows to keep the sun out. Not using your oven or things that will actually heat up the inside of your house. Opening up the house when it's cool like in the morning and using

fans to try to bring that cool air in. You can do the same thing at night. Open the windows to let the heat out from the day. By the way, she mentioned ovens. If you're giving yours a rest on a hot day, salads and green bowls are a great alternative. Anything you can throw together with minimal cooking. I like to make quinoa on the stove top and then toss in garbanzo beans, raw cherry tomatoes, fresh dill, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, raisins, and sometimes pickled carrots. It's really

good. Or you can make an arugula salad with goat cheese, fresh blueberries and walnuts. That brings me to takeaway for. Summer is a great time to eat more whole foods. We know that ultra-process foods are bad for our health. Here's an PR health course bonnet Maria Gadoi. There is a lot of research linking over consumption of ultra-process foods to poor health outcomes. So they see an increased risk of things like tattoo diabetes, obesity, hypertension,

dying from cardiovascular disease. In fact, there's research showing that eating too much ultra-process foods increases your risk of dying prematurely from all causes. And the evidence is pretty strong and consistent for all of those risks. We also know that fruits and vegetables are packed with nutrients, which is why nutrition experts tell you to eat the rainbow. Why are we supposed to eat such colorful food? Why are blueberries so good for us? Well, in that pigment,

there are phytonutrients compounds like carotenoids and flavonoids and anthocyanids. Those are all big words for compounds that actually really can protect us. This is Allison Aubrey,

“also a health course bonnet and PR. I remember the very first time that this made sense to me. I was”

on a reporting assignment at UC Davis. I was visiting a scientist who was leading a study to evaluate the levels of antioxidants and other compounds in tomatoes. And we were squatted down in this field and he was showing me this tomato and he described how it was packed with these compounds, like flavonoids and antioxidants. And I kind of looked at him like, what's going on here? He said, look, the more a plant has to struggle to defend itself from the sun, from the rain, you know,

from extreme temperatures, the more it develops these kind of defensive compounds, which in turn can help protect us too. These are the things that can help Steve off chronic disease and keep his healthy, which is why we're told to eat daily servings of fruits and vegetables. The good news is in the summer, you have the cornacopia in front of you. Take your pick, plant blackberries, sweet ripe peaches, juicy heirloom tomatoes, find out what fruits and vegetables are in season during

lunches is sourdough bread toasted with butter on top, a chunky slice of in season heirloom tomato

“and sea salt and honey on top of that. All right, we'll have more life-kid summer health tips”

after the break. This week on Sources and Methods, President Trump says he told Benjamin Netanyahu you're effing crazy. If President running out of patience with Israel, when I do think Trump and the White House need Netanyahu, they need Israel to have a lasting deal with Iran. We unpacked the week's biggest national security news on Sources and Methods. Listen on the NPR app wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, it is time to talk about the things that

creep and crawl. I wanted to say bugs, but we have learned that ticks are not technically classified as bugs. They're arachnids, along with their friends, spiders, and scorpions. It's estimated

that about 31 million people in the U.S. get bitten by a tick every year. Summer is peak season for this,

and unfortunately ticks can spread diseases like lime. Take away five, take tick bite prevention seriously. If you're spending time outdoors in the summer, especially in an area where ticks are

“common, like the Northeast, cover your skin as much as possible. For instance, if you're going on”

a hike or working in the yard, you could wear long sleeves and long pants and tuck your pants into your socks. I know it's hard to do that when it's hot, which is one reason I don't hike in the summer, but you can choose fabrics that are more breathable. And then spray your clothes in your skin with an EPA recommended repellent. The CDC recommends that you use a bug spray with the chemical per method on your clothes, but not on your skin, on your skin you want to use deep.

If you are hiking, stay on the trail and out of the tall grass, and when you get home, do a tick check right away. And be our health correspondent Pink Wang walked me through this last summer. She says generally speaking, the longer a tick is latched onto your body, the more likely it is to spread disease. Coming in from the outside, it might be helpful to like a through your close and the dryer because putting them on high heat for 10 minutes will kill any ticks that are kind

“of still crawling around on them, and then you want to jump in the shower, which will wash any”

ticks off you, and also give you a chance to check all those places on your body that might have

been covered with clothes that now you can check for ticks. And if you've never seen a tick,

here's what you're looking for. By the way, this is Becky Isen, a research biologist at the CDC. People are often surprised by how small these critters are, so if you can picture in everything bagel, and adults is about the size of a sesame seed, so it's a little white seeds on there, and then the nymphs are about the size of a poppy seed, so those tiny little black seeds. So they're often difficult to find, particularly those really small nymphs, which is

probably helps to explain why so many human infections are associated with nymphal bites. Becky is specifically talking about deer ticks, which are ticks that can carry limed disease, lone star ticks, which can carry other diseases, are often a little bit bigger, and dog ticks also potential disease carriers can be much bigger than that. A couple of other things to help you identify ticks, they don't have wings, and the nymphs and adults that are the most likely to bite

you, each have eight legs. Now, if you do find a tick on your body, pink says, don't throw it out right away, as eager as you might be to get rid of it. Because there's some information that it would help you to collect in order to sort of understand what your risk is, so you can try to take a really clear picture of it, you can submit that to some experts to get some consult, try to figure out like what kind of tick is it, what life stages that in, and that information will help you,

and also like a doctor if you actually do see some medical care, figure out what your risks are. You can submit a photo to the University of Rhode Island's tick encounter website, and they also have field guides with photos you can use as a reference. Some symptoms of Lyme disease to look out for, and definitely tell your doctor about, aches and pains, fever, a rash, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes among other things. Okay, last up, mosquitoes,

the buzzy flying creatures that sneak into my apartment during the summer, and torment me all night, whizzing by my ear, mocking me with their high-pitched song. When you're outside, your best defense against mosquito bites is a bug repellent that includes the chemical deed. Here's Sammy Ramsey, a professor of Entomology at the University of Colorado Boulder. If you think for a moment about what it is that deed is doing for you, it provides hours and hours

of consistent relief by confusing the capacity of the mosquitoes to smell you. And if they can't

smell you, they can't locate you as a host. It basically camouflages your chemical scent,

so that you do not actually smell like a human being or a host for them. By the way, the CDC also

Picardin, IR3535, and oil of lemon eucalyptus. So, that's our takeaway six. Use bugs spray with

“one of these ingredients to handle mosquitoes outside. And when you do use bugs spray, make sure”

you do it, right? Sammy says a lot of people don't. I've seen people just kind of spritz it like clone, like a little bit here, a little bit there, rub it together, that's not going to help you. You want to make a sweeping motion each time you spray it so that the chemical is actually landing in very well-distributed amounts across your skin instead of piling up in one area. Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics says anyone under two might have skin different from

that of an adult or even an older child, so apply deep sparingly to them. But for most of us,

experts say deep is effective and safe when you use it correctly. A few other best practices

when it comes to bugs sprays, apply it in open areas, not in enclosed spaces. And if you're putting

“it on your face, don't spray it directly. Spray it into your hands, then rub it on your skin.”

And wash off your bugs spray with soap and water when you get back inside. Now, if it's the middle of the night and there's a mosquito in your room, you might have to go in a mosquito hunt, which is usually what I do. But if you're super tired, you can try turning on a fan or the AC to keep the mosquito away from you. And if you do get bitten by a mosquito, don't scratch. You don't want to risk infection. Instead, apply some ice or some hydrocortison cream or

aloe, and maybe cover the bite with a bandage to make scratching harder. All right, time for a recap. Take away one. Summer is a good moment to test your swimming skills and maybe take a class. That could save your life. Also, swimming is just a great way to get exercise when it's hot outside. Take away two. If your kids are near a body of water, whether that's a pool, a lake, the ocean, designated an adult water watcher. Someone who knows it's their job

to watch the water and the kids in it. Take away three. Take advantage of the sunlight. But be safe. We humans do need the sun, but you don't want to overdo it, right? So if you're going to be outside for hours, cover your skin, wear sunscreen so you don't burn and make sure you stay hydrated. One tip is to put ice or cold wet towel on the back of your neck, under your armpit, or on your groin to cool down faster. Take away four. Summer is a great time to eat more whole foods.

Find out what fruits and vegetables are in season during each part of the summer and celebrate them. My all-time favorite is a juicy ripe peach. Take away five. Take tick bite prevention seriously. If you're spending time outdoors in the summer, especially in an area where ticks are common, like the northeast. Cover your skin as much as possible. When you get home, throw your clothes in the dryer to kill any ticks and take a shower. And if you do get bitten, don't throw the tick out right

away. Take a picture and look for resources to help you identify what kind of tick it is. Finally,

take away six. To prevent mosquito bites, use bugs spray with ingredients like deep, peccardin, IR 3535, or oil of lemon you collectus. And when you do use bugs spray, make sure you do it right. Don't just spritz it, you're in there, like perfume. Use a sweeping

“motion all over your exposed skin. Okay, that's our show. Do you love life kit? Then you need to hang out”

with us on the NPR app. It's the best way to catch every episode. And if you turn on notifications, we'll let you know the second and new conversation drops. Download the NPR app and let's keep talking. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Claremarish Nighter. Our digital editor is Mallika Greb and our visuals editor is CJ Rikulon. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzales is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle,

Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Jimmy Keely. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Grusado. I'm Mary Elsa Garra. Thanks for listening. On NPR's wildcard podcast, Maya Hawke says childhood with her mom, Uma Thurman, was witch adjacent. It's not you know, toil and trouble, but so witchiness. Like a kind of witchy love of nature and a love of herbal remedies and something that could potentially get you

burned at the stake. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR wildcard.