Hey, it’s Hot Out There!
As I write this, we are stuck in the midst of heatwave here in New Jersey with temperatures in the nineties, but feeling hotter with that yucky humidity. Yet I remind myself that as bad as it is, I’ve known worse.
In parts of the Middle East – mainly in the early and late summer - there is hot dry wind which often blows for several days at a time. With it comes intense heat along with sand and dust. Coming out of the deserts of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it can cause the temperature to rise more than 10 degrees within just a few hours. Because this wind occurs approximately fifty days in a year, it is known as a “khamsin”, the Arabic word for “fifty”. It affects Egypt in particular and is a real nuisance there, but also affects neighboring countries; Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. In Israel, the term khamsin is used by Hebrew and Arabic speakers alike.
Allegedly, a khamsin can affect human behavior - and not in the best of ways. Some believe it causes depression, anxiety, irritability and stress, and might be responsible in part for irrational and uncharacteristic behavior. According to my late husband David Eden, who died in July 2017, in Bedouin lore, a man who kills his wife after a full week of a khamsin cannot be tried for murder. It is presumed that the khamsin made him do it. On the other hand, if a wife kills her husband – well, that’s different. What is known is that a khamsin charges the air with lots of positive ions, which do cause negative moods and behavior.
After three years in the (Israeli) army, David spent several years working as a ranger for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and was stationed in southern Sinai, when it was still under Israeli control. Israel left the area in the early 1980s, as part of the 1979 peace agreements, where Egypt regained its former territory of northern and southern Sinai. Unlike northern Sinai, which is primarily desert, the southern part is known for its beauty spots popular with tourists, such as the towns of Dahab (Arabic for “gold”) and Nuweiba which are on the Red Sea. Yet, like the north, it too is affected by the seasonal khamsins. For that he always carried a keffiyah, a traditional Arab headdress made from cotton and wool, which provides excellent protection from sunburn, heat, dust, sand, as well as the cold.
While in Sinai, he had regular contact with Bedouin living in that area and learned to prepare a great Arabic (Turkish, as it is generally called in the US) coffee in a campfire. Among his duties were driving an army jeep in sand (an accomplishment with which he was very proud) as well as patrolling for poachers and other threats to the region’s flora and fauna. One night he caught a poacher trying to get away with a sizeable load of contraband lobsters. These lobsters can be sold for high prices on the black market, and are among the prime targets for poachers. The poacher pulled out a knife, and lunged at David, cutting him in the cheek. David was able to prevent further injury to both himself and the poacher by breaking the guy’s arm. Hardly ideal, but considering that David had a rifle and could have used it, it was no doubt the best outcome under the circumstances. The lobsters were returned to their habitat and lived to know another day.
Anyway, back to khamsins. While living on David’s kibbutz in the Galilee years later, I found myself one sultry afternoon during a khamsin in the central bus station in Tel Aviv, practically fused to a bench in the waiting area. Wiped out wasn’t the word, it was more like being a limp rag used for mopping floors in that part of the world. I was traveling from another area of the country and was on my way home to the kibbutz. I was trying my best to not flop down on the floor as I would have felt better lying down, but that would attract attention so I just suffered in silence. I felt very sick and nauseous and ached all over. What made the situation yet more daunting was that I had still had three more buses to take in order to get back home, followed by nearly a mile by foot to the kibbutz itself.
I honestly didn’t know if I could do it. This was back in the day before ubiquitous cell phones, and so with great effort, I was able to summon enough strength to painfully make my way to a public phone and call David. I told him I didn’t think I could make it back okay and that I “might” require medical attention. This was quite an understatement because I was absolutely positively sure that I was in dire need of medical attention.
David’s instructions were short and to the point. First of all, CALM DOWN. He was quite certain my condition was NOT life threatening and was very unlikely to require medical attention. He told me find a juice stand (there were quite a few in the station) get a cold fruit drink and drink it slowly. Then wait ten minutes and report back.
I got what would be a smoothie here, and the results were amazing. I was born anew. I knew that I could, and would, survive that two and a half hours schlepp back. When I called him with the big news, he was not surprised. “You know you have to trust me on stuff like this”, he told me. The fact was that I was dehydrated, plain and simple. That’s the thing about khamsin type weather, it can so deplete the body’s moisture that even if you are drinking water, which I had been, you still need more. There are no cooling breezes, just very hot, heavy and oppressive air that at times feels stifling. Given the choice between that kind of weather and what we are having here, I’ll go with here.
And then there is also too much of a good thing.
Several years later, we were at the Princeton Hospital Fete one sweltering day in June. This was after David had been “dragged kicking and screaming”, as he would tell friends, from Israel to the U.S. by me. In fact, I didn’t have to pull too hard, and there wasn’t a whole lot of kicking and screaming on his part.
Since it was so hot, I had been drinking a lot of water. That evening I felt very ill, and David insisted on taking me to the emergency room. My tests indicated my sodium level was dangerously low, and I was admitted to the hospital that night.
The next morning my primary care doctor appeared at the head of my bed. White coated, arms folded and a look of amusement on his face, he told me, “Well it seems like you drank yourself into the hospital”. It turned out I had a condition called hyponatremia, which came from all the water I had been drinking the previous day. This had diluted the sodium and other electrolytes in my blood, and upset their normal balance. Fortunately my sodium level had improved overnight, and I’d be okay, but had I waited longer to go the E.R., it was likely I would have had convulsions and my condition would have been much more serious.
The next day I was sent home and told to drink tomato juice and eat salty potato chips for the next couple of days. (Yes, really. The nurse who gave me the doctor’s instructions told me it was the first time she had ever heard a doctor actually prescribing salty potato chips to a patient!)
Two weeks after this bit of drama, my brother Joel inadvertently succeeded in both copycatting and upstaging (pun intended) me by passing out in front of an audience of several dozen preschoolers. A musician in Chicago, he worked as a full time children’s musical performer. That day, as he began the program, he suddenly felt faint. Putting down his guitar, he announced to the kids that he needed to rest for a minute or two and laid down on the stage floor. When a presenter asked if he was okay, he told her he was fine. Wisely not taking his word for it, she called 911. Several minutes later, Joel was joined on stage by two (very handsome as he told me later) Chicago FD EMTs. After quickly examining him, they inserted an IV into his arm, put him on a stretcher and whisked him into an ambulance. Like me, he had hyponatremia, caused by drinking a lot of water on a hot day without eating anything. Since it was a milder case than mine, he was able to go home the same day.
Based on my now vast experience, it’s best to not only drink water, but to eat fruit as well.
Fruit will restore your electrolytes and prevent dehydration. I happen to be partial to fruit, and that’s what I had been advised to do while in Israel. One year I had the opportunity to spend the months of May and June with friends who had an orchard of apricot trees. Since those are the months when apricots become ripe, I could have fresh apricot juice every day. There is also the cactus pear (sabra in Hebrew, saber in Arabic) which is very sweet and juicy. Served icy cold, they are a summer treat. FYI: I have seen Mexican cactus pears at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market in Mercerville.
With this said, I am by no means knocking vegetables. Vegetables have the advantage of not being high in fructose, as well as providing important nutrients. Come to think of it, one of the most delicious refreshing drinks I’ve ever had is fresh squeezed carrot juice commonly sold on the street in Israel. True, carrots have more sugar than other veggies, but they are a great nutritional boost, especially in the morning. I happen to be a fan of Trader Joe’s Organic Carrot Juice. It doesn’t beat what I had in Israel, but it’s close enough. Be they fruits or veggies, it’s hard to go wrong by juicing them or adding them to smoothies.
Here are some books that, whatever the weather, will keep you from passing out.
Smoothies: 50 Recipes for High Energy Refreshment by Mary Corpening Barber, et.al.
Superfood Smoothies: 100 Delicious Energizing and Nutrient Dense Recipes by Julie Morris
Juice It Blend It Live It: Over 50 Easy Recipes to Energize, Detox and Nourish Your Entire Mind and Body by Jamie Graber
Green Smoothies for Life by J.J. Smith
Speedy Juicing: 120 Healthy and Delicious Juices and Smoothies
Simply Smoothies: Fresh & Fast Diabetes-Friendly Snacks & Complete meals by Linda Ame Gassenheimer
The Healthy Juicer’s Bible: Lose Weight, Detoxify, Fight Disease, and Live Long by Farnoosh Brock
In parts of the Middle East – mainly in the early and late summer - there is hot dry wind which often blows for several days at a time. With it comes intense heat along with sand and dust. Coming out of the deserts of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it can cause the temperature to rise more than 10 degrees within just a few hours. Because this wind occurs approximately fifty days in a year, it is known as a “khamsin”, the Arabic word for “fifty”. It affects Egypt in particular and is a real nuisance there, but also affects neighboring countries; Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. In Israel, the term khamsin is used by Hebrew and Arabic speakers alike.
Allegedly, a khamsin can affect human behavior - and not in the best of ways. Some believe it causes depression, anxiety, irritability and stress, and might be responsible in part for irrational and uncharacteristic behavior. According to my late husband David Eden, who died in July 2017, in Bedouin lore, a man who kills his wife after a full week of a khamsin cannot be tried for murder. It is presumed that the khamsin made him do it. On the other hand, if a wife kills her husband – well, that’s different. What is known is that a khamsin charges the air with lots of positive ions, which do cause negative moods and behavior.
After three years in the (Israeli) army, David spent several years working as a ranger for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and was stationed in southern Sinai, when it was still under Israeli control. Israel left the area in the early 1980s, as part of the 1979 peace agreements, where Egypt regained its former territory of northern and southern Sinai. Unlike northern Sinai, which is primarily desert, the southern part is known for its beauty spots popular with tourists, such as the towns of Dahab (Arabic for “gold”) and Nuweiba which are on the Red Sea. Yet, like the north, it too is affected by the seasonal khamsins. For that he always carried a keffiyah, a traditional Arab headdress made from cotton and wool, which provides excellent protection from sunburn, heat, dust, sand, as well as the cold.
While in Sinai, he had regular contact with Bedouin living in that area and learned to prepare a great Arabic (Turkish, as it is generally called in the US) coffee in a campfire. Among his duties were driving an army jeep in sand (an accomplishment with which he was very proud) as well as patrolling for poachers and other threats to the region’s flora and fauna. One night he caught a poacher trying to get away with a sizeable load of contraband lobsters. These lobsters can be sold for high prices on the black market, and are among the prime targets for poachers. The poacher pulled out a knife, and lunged at David, cutting him in the cheek. David was able to prevent further injury to both himself and the poacher by breaking the guy’s arm. Hardly ideal, but considering that David had a rifle and could have used it, it was no doubt the best outcome under the circumstances. The lobsters were returned to their habitat and lived to know another day.
Anyway, back to khamsins. While living on David’s kibbutz in the Galilee years later, I found myself one sultry afternoon during a khamsin in the central bus station in Tel Aviv, practically fused to a bench in the waiting area. Wiped out wasn’t the word, it was more like being a limp rag used for mopping floors in that part of the world. I was traveling from another area of the country and was on my way home to the kibbutz. I was trying my best to not flop down on the floor as I would have felt better lying down, but that would attract attention so I just suffered in silence. I felt very sick and nauseous and ached all over. What made the situation yet more daunting was that I had still had three more buses to take in order to get back home, followed by nearly a mile by foot to the kibbutz itself.
I honestly didn’t know if I could do it. This was back in the day before ubiquitous cell phones, and so with great effort, I was able to summon enough strength to painfully make my way to a public phone and call David. I told him I didn’t think I could make it back okay and that I “might” require medical attention. This was quite an understatement because I was absolutely positively sure that I was in dire need of medical attention.
David’s instructions were short and to the point. First of all, CALM DOWN. He was quite certain my condition was NOT life threatening and was very unlikely to require medical attention. He told me find a juice stand (there were quite a few in the station) get a cold fruit drink and drink it slowly. Then wait ten minutes and report back.
I got what would be a smoothie here, and the results were amazing. I was born anew. I knew that I could, and would, survive that two and a half hours schlepp back. When I called him with the big news, he was not surprised. “You know you have to trust me on stuff like this”, he told me. The fact was that I was dehydrated, plain and simple. That’s the thing about khamsin type weather, it can so deplete the body’s moisture that even if you are drinking water, which I had been, you still need more. There are no cooling breezes, just very hot, heavy and oppressive air that at times feels stifling. Given the choice between that kind of weather and what we are having here, I’ll go with here.
And then there is also too much of a good thing.
Several years later, we were at the Princeton Hospital Fete one sweltering day in June. This was after David had been “dragged kicking and screaming”, as he would tell friends, from Israel to the U.S. by me. In fact, I didn’t have to pull too hard, and there wasn’t a whole lot of kicking and screaming on his part.
Since it was so hot, I had been drinking a lot of water. That evening I felt very ill, and David insisted on taking me to the emergency room. My tests indicated my sodium level was dangerously low, and I was admitted to the hospital that night.
The next morning my primary care doctor appeared at the head of my bed. White coated, arms folded and a look of amusement on his face, he told me, “Well it seems like you drank yourself into the hospital”. It turned out I had a condition called hyponatremia, which came from all the water I had been drinking the previous day. This had diluted the sodium and other electrolytes in my blood, and upset their normal balance. Fortunately my sodium level had improved overnight, and I’d be okay, but had I waited longer to go the E.R., it was likely I would have had convulsions and my condition would have been much more serious.
The next day I was sent home and told to drink tomato juice and eat salty potato chips for the next couple of days. (Yes, really. The nurse who gave me the doctor’s instructions told me it was the first time she had ever heard a doctor actually prescribing salty potato chips to a patient!)
Two weeks after this bit of drama, my brother Joel inadvertently succeeded in both copycatting and upstaging (pun intended) me by passing out in front of an audience of several dozen preschoolers. A musician in Chicago, he worked as a full time children’s musical performer. That day, as he began the program, he suddenly felt faint. Putting down his guitar, he announced to the kids that he needed to rest for a minute or two and laid down on the stage floor. When a presenter asked if he was okay, he told her he was fine. Wisely not taking his word for it, she called 911. Several minutes later, Joel was joined on stage by two (very handsome as he told me later) Chicago FD EMTs. After quickly examining him, they inserted an IV into his arm, put him on a stretcher and whisked him into an ambulance. Like me, he had hyponatremia, caused by drinking a lot of water on a hot day without eating anything. Since it was a milder case than mine, he was able to go home the same day.
Based on my now vast experience, it’s best to not only drink water, but to eat fruit as well.
Fruit will restore your electrolytes and prevent dehydration. I happen to be partial to fruit, and that’s what I had been advised to do while in Israel. One year I had the opportunity to spend the months of May and June with friends who had an orchard of apricot trees. Since those are the months when apricots become ripe, I could have fresh apricot juice every day. There is also the cactus pear (sabra in Hebrew, saber in Arabic) which is very sweet and juicy. Served icy cold, they are a summer treat. FYI: I have seen Mexican cactus pears at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market in Mercerville.
With this said, I am by no means knocking vegetables. Vegetables have the advantage of not being high in fructose, as well as providing important nutrients. Come to think of it, one of the most delicious refreshing drinks I’ve ever had is fresh squeezed carrot juice commonly sold on the street in Israel. True, carrots have more sugar than other veggies, but they are a great nutritional boost, especially in the morning. I happen to be a fan of Trader Joe’s Organic Carrot Juice. It doesn’t beat what I had in Israel, but it’s close enough. Be they fruits or veggies, it’s hard to go wrong by juicing them or adding them to smoothies.
Here are some books that, whatever the weather, will keep you from passing out.
- by Elka R. Frankel, West Windsor Branch
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