Grief During the Summer Months and How Food Can Help

Our ancestors understood something modern life has made us forget: the seasons don’t just shape our environment, they shape what happens inside us too. Summer arrives with brightness, warmth, and an unspoken expectation to be out there, doing things, enjoying ourselves.

However, grief doesn’t always follow the season’s cheerful script. That brightness can feel like a spotlight on our pain, making the contrast with our grief even sharper.

There's another reason summer can be especially difficult. Heat doesn't just affect our comfort. It affects our body, digestion, energy and emotions, all of which may already be under strain when we're grieving.

When temperatures rise, the body has to work harder to keep us cool. Blood is redirected away from the digestive system towards the skin to help regulate temperature, which means digestion can become weaker and more sluggish. At the same time, grief has often already compromised digestion. When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, digestion takes second place.

Now add summer heat to these issues and something fundamental changes again. The symptoms we’ve been experiencing don’t just continue. They intensify, and others can appear too.

You may notice:

• Irritability or anger that seems to come from nowhere

• More digestive upset: constipation, diarrhea or both

• Skin problems and heat rashes

• Burning sensations, including acid reflux

• More internal heat, making inflammatory conditions like diverticulitis or arthritis feel worse

• Fatigue that feels relentless despite the long daylight hours

• Dry or irritated eyes

• Increased sensitivity to food and other triggers

All these symptoms are part of the same picture – the powerful mix of heat and grief.

Summer Heat and Anger

One of the most startling changes people may notice in summer is how much more irritated,

frustrated or angry they are. While anger is a very natural response to loss, in summer, there’s something else going on. Additional factors can intensify it almost like pouring fuel on a fire.

Our body and emotions are far more connected than we think. What we eat, drink, and how we live all play a role in shaping the intensity of our emotions, including anger.

In summer, grief and heat already place the body under more strain than we often realise. Layer on things like spicy foods, alcohol, coffee, excess exercise in the sun, or simply lying on a beach for hours on end, and you get the perfect recipe for ‘heated’ emotions.

So if you find yourself more irritable, snapping at people you care about, or feeling a rage that surprises you with its intensity, it’s not a character flaw, it’s physiology meeting emotion.

The Digestion-Mood Connection

Here’s something most people don’t realise. Our digestion isn’t separate from our mood, either.

When our digestion lacks strength and often fluids due to dehydration, and we’re eating

foods that require extra digestive effort (cold, raw, heavy foods), the system becomes even more burdened.

Traditional summer foods can dampen our mood when we least expect them to: ice-cold drinks, milkshakes, cold yoghurt, raw salads straight from the fridge. These may feel refreshing, but they ask the body to do more work, not less.

The result can be gas and bloating, IBS-like symptoms, or constipation. And because about one third of our nervous system is in our gut, this can then show up as heightened anxiety, lethargy, irritability, or depression, depending on our pre-existing imbalances.

Instead, we’re often better off with foods that are moistening, easy to process, and deeply

nourishing. A warm, well-cooked dish with moisture (like soups or dhal), or even simply adding something warm to a salad (like heated tinned lentils), can support digestion in simple ways.

It can feel counterintuitive but the body has its own logic. When heat weakens digestion even more, we need to make it easier for the stomach to break food down, and warm, cooked food does exactly that.

The Missing Mineral

One more piece of the summer grief puzzle: magnesium. This mineral is depleted rapidly when we’re under stress, grieving, sweating in heat, or dealing with diarrhea. When magnesium drops, this can also affect our mood, energy, digestion, and sleep, leaving us even more anxious, sluggish, and depleted.

The good news? Magnesium is one of the easiest minerals to replenish, but timing, dosage, and the form we choose all matter. Changes in how we feel can be noticeable within just a few days.

If grief feels harder for you in the summer, here’s what I recommend:

1. Adapt what you eat. Warm, cooked, moist foods are easier to digest and support emotional stability and overall well-being. This isn’t about being “perfect” with food; it’s about giving the body what it needs most, and using an 80:20 approach when life doesn’t go to plan.

2. Change your fluid intake. Water infused overnight with rose petals or hibiscus is more supportive than ice-cold drinks. Download my free Cooling Drinks Guide at:

www.sabinehorner.com for nourishing summer drink ideas.

3. Support your magnesium levels. Stress, grief, heat, sweating and digestive upset can all increase your need for magnesium. The right form and dosage can make a noticeable difference.

4. Understand the heat-grief-gut connection. Digestion is affected when heat and grief collide, and how to turn everyday foods into something your grief-stressed digestive system can actually handle.

Summer heat doesn’t have to add stress to an already overwhelmed system. You’re not powerless. By understanding how heat, digestion, and mood are connected, you can

make choices that support your body instead of working against it.

Your grief is real. The impact of summer heat on your grieving body is real. But so is your capacity to nourish yourself through this season: with food, fluids, minerals, and understanding. Summer is hard. But it doesn’t have to be harder than it needs to be.

About Sabine

Sabine Horner is a qualified nutritionist, yoga therapist, and Ayurvedic health practitioner who supports bereaved people struggling with the very real physical impact of grief and the day-to-day practicalities of cooking for only one person.

After losing her husband Kevin, Sabine experienced how grief affects not only our emotions and mood, but also our digestion, appetite, daily routines, blood sugar, energy, and sleep. She combines professional expertise with lived experience as a widow to provide practical, achievable strategies for physical self-care that actually work - and make emotional pain a little easier to bear.

Sabine is the author of Nourishing Through Loss: A Gentle Holiday Guide and provides support through practical grief resources, cooking workshops, yoga classes, comprehensive health assessments, and 1:1 mind-body support. You can find out more about Sabine at

www.sabinehorner.com