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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
On June 11th, the globe's biggest sporting event comes to North America, the FIFA World Cup. The Super Bowl, you might say, averages something over 100 million live viewers, but the World Cup final, I think like five times that much. The favorites, the underdogs, and the Americanization of the world's game. Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app.
You're listening to LifeKits. From NPR.
Chapter 2: What unique health opportunities does summer present?
Now, at Life Kit, we are always giving you 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 siding because it gets really hot. This is Jess Larson. She's the founder of a food blog called Plays 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 air feeds flames.
And when in doubt, close the lid and let the fire die out on its own. On this episode of Life Kit, we're going to give you the 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.
This week on NPR's Newsmakers, former First Lady Jill Biden. She reveals Joe Biden's 2024 debate performance was so alarming, doctors checked him after he got off the stage.
I was terrified. I thought, oh my God, what's happening? Is this a stroke? What is this?
Inside, the dramatic month that followed, leading to one of the biggest decisions of Biden's presidency, to walk away. This week on Newsmakers, you can listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
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Chapter 3: How can you safely position your grill for summer cooking?
Getting some sun exposure every day helps us 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 Schramm 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 Salas 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 stovetop 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 could make an arugula salad with goat cheese, fresh blueberries, and walnuts. That brings me to takeaway four. Summer is a great time to eat more whole foods.
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Chapter 4: What swimming skills should you test this 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, throw your clothes in 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 Eisen, a research biologist at the CDC.
People are often surprised by how small these critters are. So if you can picture an everything bagel, an adult is about the size of a sesame seed, so the 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 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 Lyme 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 consults. Try to figure out, like, what kind of tick is it? What life stage is it in?
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