5 Offbeat Tricks for Cooling Down In High Heat

Posted July 27, 2023 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

It’s already been a summer of record-breaking heat around the world, and the season isn’t even half over yet.

When temperatures soar above seasonal norms, it leaves all of us scrambling for new ways to beat the heat. Read on for a brief run-down of how temperature sensation works and what steps you can take to feel cooler this summer.

Maintaining a core body temperature between 97° and 100°F (36.1° and 37.8°C) is essential to human health. The ideal body temperature within that range varies slightly from person to person and changes throughout the day, measuring about 0.9°F (0.5°C) lower in the early morning than in the late afternoon. A stable core temperature allows the body to sustain homeostasis, a state of physiological balance where all of its systems can function properly.

To help us maintain our core temperature, we have temperature-sensitive nerve fibers called thermoreceptors throughout our bodies, including in our skin, muscles, and internal organs. The thermoreceptors in our skin are the first line of defense that lets us know when we need to take action to keep from overheating.

The thermoreceptors in your skin don’t give you an objective reading of the temperature of your surroundings, the way a thermometer does. Instead, they let you know whether your skin is warming up or cooling down, and their activity levels off when skin temperature becomes steady again. That’s why water feels colder when you first jump in than it does after a few minutes of swimming, once the temperature of your skin has stabilized.

Our bodies have two natural ways of cooling us down when the temperature rises: vasodilation and perspiration.

Vasodilation is when blood vessels widen, allowing more blood to flow through them. When we’re hot, blood vessels near the surface of the skin dilate, sending more blood to the outer shell of the body where it can lose some heat as long as the external temperature is lower than the body’s core temperature.

This chilled blood is then circulated back in to the center of the body, where it absorbs heat and cools the core. This is essentially the same way refrigerators and car engine cooling systems work: liquid coolant flows through the system, soaking up heat as it goes, and is then circulated out again to be cooled by the surrounding air.

If body temperature continues to rise, we start to sweat. It’s the evaporation of sweat that cools us off. Transforming a liquid into a vapour uses heat energy, and, when sweat evaporates, some of this energy is drawn from the surrounding skin, lowering its temperature.

Most people know the basics for staying healthy when the mercury rises: drink lots of fluids, wear breathable clothes, and limit exertion until you acclimatize. But we can also harness the body’s own methods for regulating its temperature using some less common tricks.