Cooling Foods: 34 Foods and Herbs That Calm Heat in the Body

Some foods leave you flushed, wired and thirsty, and others leave you calm, light and cool. Chinese medicine and Ayurveda built that everyday experience into a system of food energetics: every food has a nature, warming, cooling or neutral, judged by the way it acts on your body rather than by its temperature on the plate.111

In Chinese medicine, heat builds upstream. A diet high in processed food and sugar, burning the candle at both ends and chronic stress all build heat in your body, which often corresponds to inflammation, an underlying driver of just about every chronic health condition you can think of.1 Cooling foods work at that root cause. They take fuel away from the fire and bring back water, minerals and calm, so a body designed to heal can settle itself. My Anti-Inflammatory Reset puts the order in three steps: remove the fuel, cool the fire, let the body heal.2

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Warming and cooling energetics are part of how I practice, and I explain them to my patients.10 Modern research is now showing how several of these foods and herbs do their work, from the water in a cucumber to the menthol in a mint leaf.512

Did you know?

• In a review of 20 Chinese food-therapy books for high blood pressure, the most-recommended foods include celery, tomato, banana, seaweed, apple, kiwi, watermelon and pear, and every one of those is on my list of cooling foods.131

• At least 56 Indigenous groups in Mexico, 81% of the total, sort foods and medicines as hot or cold, according to a review of 101 publications spanning almost a century.14

• Menthol, the compound that makes mint taste cool, switches on TRPM8, the same nerve receptor your body uses to sense cold.1215

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What are cooling foods?

Traditional Chinese nutrition uses each food's nature to balance the body's internal system.1 That nature describes what a food does after you eat it, which is why a bowl of steamed greens counts as cooling even when it's served warm.16

Behind the system sit yin and yang. Yin is the side of your physiology that brings moisture and coolness to the body; yang is the warming, activating side.10 Chinese medicine calls your body's energy qi, close to what we'd call cellular energy, and strong qi depends on a wholesome balance of the two.81 When heat builds or yin runs low, you run hot; when yang runs low, you run cold.1 Neutral foods sit in the middle and suit most people.8

Ayurveda reaches a similar place by a different road. It reads each food by its taste, its qualities and its potency, and matches food to your constitution, or dosha.11 The hot-cold idea runs through other healing traditions too, including the traditional medicine of Mexico.14

Signs you're running hot, and who cooling foods help most

Your body tells you when heat is building. In Chinese medicine, high blood pressure, rashes, fever and insomnia are all symptoms of excess heat, and my Top 50 Healing Herbs & Essential Oils guide matches cooling plants to people who run hot, with inflammation, irritability and flushing.18 Those are the people cooling foods help most.

Hot flashes and other menopause symptoms fit the same picture. Chinese medicine reads them as a kidney yin deficiency, a loss of the body's cooling, moistening reserve, and on my show I've put the answer plainly: "We want to bring moisture and coolness to the body and protect it. The number one food group that's going to help with that is going to be green leafy vegetables that are steamed."168

People who run cold, with chills, cold hands and feet, slow digestion and fatigue, do better leaning on warming foods.81

Many women with hypothyroidism already run cool, and as I said on my show, "A lot of those women are eating salads and drinking cold smoothies and ice drinks all day long, and they're making it way worse versus doing these warming foods like ginger and warm soups."10 If that's you, you can still enjoy cooling foods. Cook them, eat them warm and pair them with ginger, warm soups and stews. A gut that's healing or prone to IBS does best the same way, since raw foods can overwhelm it, so serve your cooling foods cooked, soft and warm.17

How cooling foods work in your body

Cooling foods do three jobs in your body. They hand back the water and minerals you lose to heat, they calm inflammatory signals, and some of them, such as mint, change how hot you feel. Here's how that plays out, step by step:

The traditions sorted these foods by what they do in the body, and the foods' makeup lines up with the sorting.1 Foods called heating tend to carry more caffeine, carbohydrate, protein, fat and calories, while foods called cooling run higher in water, fiber and alkalinity and are associated with anti-inflammatory and elimination processes, according to a scoping review of hot-cold food systems in which some of the studies, mixed in quality, supported the traditional classifications.22 Trials so far have tested single foods and herbs rather than a whole cooling diet, and the sections below show what each one does for you.

Water and minerals

The most cooling vegetables and melons are 90% to 95% water by weight, and they bring potassium with very few calories.3523 That water counts: about 22% of the water Americans take in comes from food, an estimate that runs higher in countries where people eat more fruits and vegetables.24 The chart shows the water in 100 grams, about 3.5 ounces, of each; the potassium figures are in the list below.

Calmer inflammatory signals

Cooling foods also seem to quiet inflammation itself. In a cell study, water extracts of three foods Chinese medicine calls cooling, chrysanthemum flower, bitter gourd and lotus seed plumule, damped the release of PGE2, a key inflammatory messenger, while extracts of the heating fruits litchi and longan raised it.6 A 2021 review of two decades of research ties the cold and hot natures of food to inflammation, oxidation and immune responses, and proposes that they act through NF-κB and MAPK, two of the body's main inflammation switches.27 Chrysanthemum tea and bitter melon are easy ways to bring those two into your kitchen.

Benefits of cooling foods and herbs

Each of these benefits traces back to a body that runs too hot, and the research now reaches blood pressure, comfort in the heat, hydration and digestion. Here they are, ranked from the best-studied down, with the traditional use that ties them together last:

Cooling foods in Chinese medicine: clearing heat

Chinese medicine's answer to heat is to clear it. As I wrote in my Anti-Inflammatory Reset, "Clear Heat with greens and bitter herbs; drain Damp by cutting sweets and greasy food; move Blood with turmeric, ginger and daily movement."2

How you cook matters as much as what you cook. When heat is the pattern, I recommend eating more boiled, steamed or raw foods than baked, deep-fried, roasted or barbecued ones, and easing back on the foods that build heat: fried foods, spicy foods, lamb, red meat, nuts, hard alcohol, excess oil and warming herbs.1 Cooked food can be cooling. Steamed greens, mung bean soup and boiled barley all count.161

Turmeric and ginger show how carefully the system reads food. By nature both are warming, which is why my herb guide matches ginger to people who run cold, and yet my Anti-Inflammatory Reset calls them cooling spices, because they cool inflammation.82 A traditional meal often balances itself the same way. On my show, I've pointed to sushi: the raw fish and seaweed are very cold and cooling to the body, and the wasabi and ginger served alongside are very warming, bringing the meal back toward neutral.10 For sushi, choose a fins-and-scales fish such as wild salmon.

Heat has a close cousin in Chinese medicine, dryness, with signs such as dry skin, night sweats, thirst and hot flashes.1 For dryness, my list of foods that boost yin and moisture overlaps the cooling list, with pears, watermelon, citrus, cucumber, celery, spinach, seaweed and yogurt, and adds foods such as pineapple, mango, olives, sweet potatoes, rice, eggs, bone broth, honey and herbal tea.1

Cooling foods in Ayurveda: calming pitta

Ayurveda reads your constitution through three doshas: vata, built from space and air; pitta, from fire; and kapha, from water and earth.11 Pitta is the dosha cooling foods serve. Pitta types are focused and intense but may lean toward inflammation, and in my approach they benefit from cooling foods like cucumbers and leafy greens.17 Vata types do better on warm, grounding stews and root vegetables, and kapha types on light, spicy foods like ginger, lentils and bitter greens.17 Ancient medicine treated the whole person and matched food to the body in front of it.17

Ayurveda also reads food by taste. People with a pitta constitution have a liking for sweet, bitter and astringent tastes, and those tastes ease the constitution's tendencies.11 In practice, that points toward sweet, juicy fruits and bitter greens. In Ayurveda, fever is aggravated pitta, and it's countered with bitter, pitta-calming herbs such as andrographis.11

Ayurveda times food to the season, too. Plain yogurt, or curd, is kept out of spring, summer and fall and isn't eaten at night, though curd churned with its butter removed becomes a healthy drink.11 That's one place the two traditions differ, since Chinese food energetics lists yogurt among the cooling foods.1 Our guide to the Ayurvedic diet covers the doshas in full.

Cooling foods list: 24 foods that calm heat

These are the cooling foods Chinese medicine relies on, grouped so you can shop by aisle.1 The water and potassium figures are per 100 grams, about 3.5 ounces.

Cooling vegetables

• Cucumber: 95.2% water, with 147 mg of potassium and 15 calories.5 Slice it into salads, blend it into a chilled soup or drop it into a pitcher for cucumber water.
• Celery: the most water-rich of the foods measured on this page, at 95.4%, with 260 mg of potassium.3 Celery is one of the most-recommended foods in Chinese food-therapy books for high blood pressure.13
• Leafy greens: spinach, romaine, chard and their cousins. Romaine is 94.6% water.31 Steam them, the way I recommend them for hot flashes, or eat them raw in salads, and aim for 2 or more cups a day.162 Spinach and romaine are the easiest places to start.
• Zucchini: 94.8% water, with 261 mg of potassium.18 Zucchini is the summer squash on the cooling list; steam it, sauté it lightly or spiralize it raw.
• Radishes: 95.3% water, with 233 mg of potassium and a peppery bite.4 Slice radishes thin over salads and grain bowls.
• Tomatoes: 94.5% water, with 237 mg of potassium.32 Tomatoes are another regular in the Chinese food-therapy books for blood pressure.13
• Asparagus: on both my cooling list and my list of moistening yin foods.1 Steam or boil asparagus to keep it cooling.
• Cabbage: a cooling crucifer.1 Shred it raw into slaw, or cook it gently if raw cabbage is hard on your gut.17
• Water chestnuts: crisp, mild and cooling.1 Water chestnuts add crunch to a light stir-fry.

Cooling fruits

• Watermelon: 91.4% water.26 As I said on my show, "Watermelon, especially in the summer months, is incredible for supporting hydration."33 In a 6-week trial, a watermelon extract supplying 6 grams a day of L-citrulline and L-arginine lowered upper-arm systolic blood pressure 15.1 points and diastolic 7.6 points while people took the extract, a significant drop compared with placebo, in 14 adults with obesity and prehypertension or stage 1 high blood pressure, each of whom tried both.34 Two daily 360 mL servings (about 12 ounces each) of 100% watermelon juice, tried against a placebo drink by 21 healthy postmenopausal women for 4 weeks, raised their lycopene without changing blood pressure or blood vessel function.35 Eat the whole fruit, cut fresh, as your summer snack.
• Cantaloupe and other melons: cantaloupe is 90.2% water, with 267 mg of potassium.23 Cantaloupe and honeydew are on the cooling list alongside watermelon.1
• Apples: a cooling fruit and a regular in Chinese food therapy for blood pressure.113 Apples travel well for a hot-day snack.
• Pears: cooling and moistening, on both my cooling and yin lists.1 A ripe pear is one of the gentlest ways to cool a dry, hot body.
• Bananas: a cooling fruit.1 Bananas blend into goat milk yogurt for a cooling breakfast.
• Citrus fruits: oranges, lemons and limes.1 A squeeze of lime or lemon brightens cucumber water and salads; our guide to citrus fruits covers the whole family.
• Kiwi: a cooling fruit and another regular in the Chinese food-therapy books.113 Kiwi pairs well with yogurt.
• Avocado: cooling, moistening and rich in healthy fat.1 Add avocado to salads so the meal satisfies.
• Coconut water: 95.0% water, with 250 mg of potassium, about 600 mg in a cup.25 The cooling drinks section has the rehydration study.

Cooling grains, beans, sea vegetables, fish and dairy

• Mung beans: eaten in China for more than 2,000 years, where they're used in summer to refresh the mind and reduce swelling.36 Simmer mung beans into a thin soup or porridge.
• Barley: a cooling grain.1 Cook barley into soups, or simmer it and drink the cooled barley water.
• Millet: a light, cooling grain that cooks like rice.1
• Seaweed: cooling, and a regular in Chinese food therapy for blood pressure.113 Add seaweed to soups and salads.
• Raw fish: the sashimi and sushi of Japanese cooking, made from a fins-and-scales fish such as wild salmon.110 Our guide to the best fish to eat helps you choose.
• Yogurt: cooling in Chinese food energetics.1 Choose goat milk or sheep's milk yogurt, with goat milk kefir or coconut kefir alongside; cultured A2 cow's milk is an option if you tolerate it.

Cooling herbs that calm heat, and how to use them

Herbs carry a nature just as foods do, and these 10 are the cooling herbs on my lists. Most work best as a tea or in your cooking.

• Peppermint: a cooling herb, and I match it to people running hot, with tension headaches, red irritated eyes, a sore throat or a cold with fever and few chills.8 For a tension headache, rub peppermint oil, diluted to 10% in a carrier oil, on your temples.8 In a meta-analysis of 17 randomized studies of menthol during exercise, people felt cooler, with sweat and core temperature essentially the same as without menthol (a 0.02 °C difference), and in a second meta-analysis of 13 studies menthol improved exercise performance, most when taken by mouth.719 That's cooling in the Chinese sense, a change in how the body feels and works. For the gut, my herb guide ranks enteric-coated peppermint oil for IBS symptoms as strong evidence, from multiple meta-analyses.8 Steep 1 to 2 teaspoons of dried mint leaves for 5 to 10 minutes and drink it after meals.8 Spearmint is the milder cousin.
• Cilantro: the one leafy herb on my cooling food list.1 Pile fresh cilantro onto salads, salsas and soups.
• Aloe vera: on my show, I've put it this way: "Coolness is the opposite of inflammation in most cases. Aloe vera in particular is very cooling, very moistening."10 In a meta-analysis of 3 placebo-controlled trials in 151 adults with IBS, aloe vera improved symptom scores, and people taking it were 1.69 times as likely to respond, a benefit that was clear at 1 month, though not in the treatment periods past 3 months.30 In those trials, people took it as a drink or a tablet two to four times a day.30
• Chamomile: Roman chamomile oil is cooling, and I match it to irritable, tense, overheated people.8 A cup of chamomile tea in the evening is the simplest way to use it.
• Lemongrass: I rate lemongrass oil cooling and match it to heat, achy muscles and sluggish digestion.8 Simmer bruised fresh stalks for tea, or add them to soups; our guide to lemongrass essential oil covers the oil.
• Stinging nettle: a cooling herb in Chinese medicine and in my herb guide.18 Stinging nettle leaf makes a mild, mineral-tasting tea.
• Skullcap: a cooling herb on my list.1 Skullcap is usually taken as a tea or tincture.
• Rose: a cooling flower.1 Steep dried rose petals alone or with mint.
• Mulberry: a cooling herb on my list.1 Mulberry leaf is brewed as tea, and the fruit is eaten fresh or dried.
• Andrographis: a very bitter cooling herb, used in Ayurveda against the pitta of fever.111 Andrographis is usually taken in capsules.

I also rate elderberry, echinacea, rhodiola, bacopa, saffron, black cohosh and milk thistle as cooling, and dandelion as cold.8 Fennel is classed both ways, cooling in Chinese food energetics and warming as a seed in my herb guide, so I leave it off this list.18

Cooling drinks for hot days

Water stays the base. In my Anti-Inflammatory Reset, the daily target is filtered water, half your body weight in ounces, and cooling foods add to it.2 Our guide to how much water to drink a day walks through it. On top of that base, these are the drinks that cool.

Hibiscus tea. Deep-red hibiscus tea is one of the best-studied cooling drinks, and it's in my High Blood Pressure Protocol at 2 to 3 cups a day.9 In a placebo-controlled trial of 65 adults aged 30 to 70 with prehypertension or mild high blood pressure, none of them on blood pressure medicine, three 240 mL cups a day for 6 weeks lowered systolic pressure, the top number, 7.2 points, against 1.3 on a placebo drink.28 Diastolic pressure fell 3.1 points against 0.5, a gap small enough to be chance, and people who started higher saw bigger drops.28 In a 2022 review of the randomized trials, systolic pressure fell 7.10 points against placebo, other teas or a diet, and 10.05 points in the placebo-controlled trials alone.37 In the trials that compared it with blood pressure medicine, hibiscus lowered pressure about as much as the drugs did, with no statistically significant difference between them.37 Brew about 1.25 grams of dried calyces per cup, the amount in the 6-week trial, and drink it hot or over ice.2837

Coconut water. Coconut water is 95% water and rich in potassium.25 In a trial where each of 8 healthy men tried three drinks after exercising in the heat until they'd lost 2.78% of their body weight, they regained 75% of it with fresh young coconut water, 73% with plain water and 80% with a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink, differences that weren't statistically significant.29 The men also found coconut water the easiest of the three to drink in larger amounts, with less nausea and fullness and no stomach upset.29

Proverbs 25:25 says, "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country."38 On a hot day, a cool drink is one of the simplest gifts you can give your body.

Mint tea, cucumber water and green tea. Peppermint tea is the classic cooling tea.8 A pitcher of water with sliced cucumber, mint and lime turns plain water into something you'll want to drink all afternoon. Green tea is a daily drink in my Anti-Inflammatory Reset, at 2 to 3 cups a day.2 More herbal teas from the herb list above, such as chamomile, lemongrass, nettle and rose, round out the rotation.

Warm tea on a hot day. Hot tea in hot climates makes physiological sense when the air is dry. In a lab study, 9 men cycled in dry, room-temperature air, each trying water at four temperatures, and the warmest, 50 °C (122 °F), left the least heat stored in their bodies, because it drove more sweating that could evaporate.20 In a second study, 9 men cycled in hot, dry air (about 92 °F), each trying both drinks, and an ice slurry cut sweat-based cooling so much that their bodies lost less heat overall than with a body-temperature drink.21 That fits my caution about ice drinks all day long.10 So on a dry summer day, when sweat can evaporate, a warm cup of mint or green tea is a fine choice.

How to build a cooling plate (and a sample day)

A cooling plate is built mostly from the lists above, cooked by boiling, steaming or not at all, with a little warmth for balance.1 Start with greens and water-rich vegetables, add a cooling grain or mung beans, choose yogurt or fish for protein, and finish with a cooling herb. If you run cool, add fresh ginger, the way sushi pairs raw fish with ginger and wasabi.10

Here's one hot-weather day built only from cooling foods:

• Breakfast: goat milk yogurt with kiwi, sliced pear and a squeeze of lime.
• Lunch: a big salad of romaine and spinach, cucumber, radishes, tomato, avocado and cilantro, with a side of wild salmon sashimi or a scoop of cooked mung beans.
• Snack: cold watermelon, or celery sticks.
• Dinner: mung bean and zucchini soup with steamed greens over barley, and a little seaweed.
• Drinks: filtered water through the day, hibiscus tea in the afternoon, and peppermint or chamomile tea after dinner.

Eat with the season, too. Ayurveda adjusts food to the season as well as the person, so lean on the cooling column in summer and whenever you run hot, and shift toward the warming column as the weather turns cold.1117

Warming vs. cooling foods

Cooling foods from Chinese food energetics; warming foods are the yang-boosting foods and herbs in the same system.18

When cooling foods aren't enough: heat illness warning signs

Cooling foods help your body keep its balance through hot days. Heat illness is a different matter, and it needs action right away.3940

Heat exhaustion: heavy sweating with cold, clammy skin, weakness, fatigue, headache, nausea or vomiting, or being unable to keep going.3940 Stop, get to shade or air conditioning, lie down with your legs raised, cool your skin and sip fluids, and get medical care, since heat exhaustion can lead to heat stroke.40

Heat stroke: confusion or any change in thinking or behavior, fainting, seizures, or hot skin with or without sweat. Any change in mental state in the heat counts as heat stroke, whatever the temperature. Call 911 and start cooling the person at once; immersion in ice-cold water within 30 minutes is the standard.4039

Hibiscus tea: in healthy men, a hibiscus drink cut the amount of chloroquine, an antimalarial drug, reaching the blood by about 71%, so don't take the two together.41 Hibiscus lowers blood pressure on its own, so if you take blood pressure medicine, keep taking it as prescribed and check your home readings more often when you add the tea; our hibiscus tea guide covers its other interactions.28 Skip hibiscus while pregnant or nursing: in rats, a hibiscus extract taken during pregnancy delayed puberty in the offspring, and we found no human studies of hibiscus in pregnancy.42

Aloe vera: drink only aloe made for drinking, from the inner-leaf gel. Aloe latex and whole-leaf products act as strong laxatives and have been tied to diarrhea and low potassium.43

Raw fish: on my show, I've warned that sushi-grade fish often still carries parasites.44 If you're pregnant, feeding a young child, or living with liver disease or a weakened immune system, skip raw fish and choose cooked wild-caught fish, which is on my list of moistening yin foods.451

Peppermint: keep peppermint oil away from the faces of children under 6, and if peppermint worsens your heartburn or reflux, switch to chamomile.8

The bottom line

Cooling foods: frequently asked questions

References

1. Axe J. Ancient Remedies: Secrets to Healing with Herbs, Essential Oils, CBD, and the Most Powerful Natural Medicine in History. Little, Brown Spark (Hachette Book Group); 2021 (Part 1, "Curing the Root Cause": yin and yang, yang-boosting and yang-depleting foods and herbs, p. 43; "Cold and Heat," pp. 44-46: the excess-heat passage and the cooling foods list, p. 45; cooling herbs, foods to avoid for heat and cooking methods, p. 46; foods and herbs to boost yin and reduce dryness, p. 48).
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Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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