How to Keep Your Cool in Hot Weather

These top five items will stop you from sweating the small stuff this summer

These top five items will stop you from sweating the small stuff this summer

It only takes a couple of degrees to turn B.C.’s mild climate into something unbearably hot. Luckily, there are plenty of options to keep you cool this summer. We all know to drink more water, stay out of the sun from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.and even to eat more chilis (hot foods make you sweat causing your body’s heat to convert sweat into vapour, cooling it along the way).

For the committed, there are even more ways to make this summer your most comfortable yet. From the inexpensive to the luxury, from the unfussy to the high-tech, here are five tried-and-true ways to beat the summer heat.

 

1. Pod Pro Mattress Cover by Eight Sleep, starting $2,095

Eight SleepEight SleepThis is a mattress cover that contains tiny channels of water that can be set to either cool during the summer or warm in the winter. There are dual-side settings available, so each partner can independently set to their own preferences (or you can set the system to a single user).

Water is an incredible heat conductor and just having that thin layer of H2O makes a massive difference. Even at the neutral setting (“0”), you can feel your body heat being absorbed by the water, inherently cooling you even before turning the device on. Surprisingly, you really don’t feel the tubes or any kind of bumpiness once the pad is on your mattress. However, it does add a degree of firmness, so if you have a soft mattress, it’ll feel medium-soft; if you have a medium mattress, it’ll feel firm-medium, etc.

Paired with an app so you can control its many functions on your phone, the mattress pad has a range of 21 temperature settings: -1 to -10 for cooling, 1-10 for warming and 0 for neutral. The app identifies four individual stages of sleep settings, which you can use the  temperature dial to set for your ideal night’s sleep.

For example, stage 1 (bed time) can be set to -1 so the bed is crisp and cool as you nod off. Stage 2 (deep sleep) can be -7 as the body naturally prefers to be cooler in deep sleep. Stage 3 (REM sleep) can be -3 as you transition. Stage 4 (wakeup) can be +2 so that you wake up feeling cozy and warm. All of these can be customized and you’ll inevitably be spending the first week or two fine-tuning as your body adjusts to this device.

The mattress pad also uses an operating system that provides sleep-health metrics, such as heart rate variability, sleeping heart rate, and gives you an overall sleep fitness score. The OS can also learn your preferred sleeping temperature and will automatically change to keep you in deep sleep, adjusting for changes in both your body and your environment. The pump sits next to your bed (15”x15”x7”) and is virtually silent. If your windows are open, you probably won’t hear it at all.

For anyone too hot to sleep due to a foam mattress, or your environment, or having a furnace for a partner, the game-changing nature of this device cannot be overstated.
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2. Citronella + Geranium Candle by Soja & Co, $44

Soja&CoSoja&CoWhen it’s too hot to stay inside, grab this candle on your way to enjoy some mosquito-free time outside. Citronella and geranium both have bug-repelling properties and while combining them doesn’t necessarily make them twice as good at keeping bugs away, the resulting scent makes for a much nicer, more complex fragrance for you. In fact, this 100 percent soy candle has a fragrance profile that reads like a perfume: top notes of dill and sparkling citrus; middle notes of geranium; and base notes of rose.

These types of scents work at repelling insects like mosquitoes by masking (human) scents that attract them. So if there’s a breeze, try to be downwind of the candle. If the mosquito can’t smell you, it can’t bite you. And these fragrances (part of the lemongrass family) have been shown to be particularly confusing for mosquitoes. These candles are all handmade in Montreal and have a burning time of 85 hours.
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3. Classic Percale Sheet Set by Brooklinen, starting at $139

BrooklinenBrooklinenIt’s not always about thread count—especially in the summer when you want crisp, light sheets. Higher thread count means more threads per square inch, which also means more weight. What’s more important is knowing that the sheets are made with long-staple threads. These produce high-quality fabrics that are glass-smooth, cool to the touch, and less prone to pilling. 

During the summer, these cotton percale sheets are your ideal bedding: breathable through the worst of the heat waves, looking and feeling pristine wash after wash, and practically floating over your body for cool respite.
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4. Polar Tropic Pillow by Sleep Country, starting $229

Sleep CountrySleep CountryIf you’re the type of person who needs to constantly flip your pillow throughout the night to find the cool side, try one that’s engineered specifically to eliminate (sleeping) hot heads. This dual-sided pillow has one side that remains at room temperature and the other designed to keep you cooler in warmer months. The pillow cover itself has two different fabrics, with the smoother, cooler fabric matched to overlay a gel appliqué on the foam pillow. Together, along with ventilated sides to promote air circulation, this pillow keeps your head noticeably cooler as you sleep.

This pillow, like all memory-foam products, does off-gas when it’s new. Off-gassing odours pose no known serious health risks, according to the Sleep Foundation. The off-gassing for this pillow, however, does last longer than other pillows of similar construction, so just know if you’re sensitive to these odours, you’ll want to leave your pillow in an open space for a week or two before sleeping on it. You can expedite this process by taking the pillow out of the pillow case and “kneading” your pillow a couple times a day.
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5. Room Air Circulator by Vornado, starting $43.97

VornadoVornadoUnlike traditional fans, the Vornado air circulator does exactly what its name promises: it circulates air continuously, aerodynamically, to create a gentle breeze. Instead of aiming your Vornado in direct line, as you would with a traditional fan, the air circulator works best when the Vornado is aimed at a wall, allowing the vortex action to bounce the spiral of air, pushing it further into the room. The result is that the entire room receives refreshing air movement, eliminating any stagnant pockets of hot air. 
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