I really love to exercise and one of my favorite ways to exercise is by jogging.  I used to jog on a treadmill in my basement but I just got sick of staring at the same wall hours and hours on end - week after week and so I eventually started jogging outside.

Of course, that created all sorts of different problems for me because I live in an area that has constant weather changes throughout the year. A lot of different people like having four seasons, but I'm not one of them because it interferes with my jogging!

One of the strangest times of the year to jog for me is summer which may seem a little counter intuitive. Summertime should be the best time to jog, you would think, but the summers where I live are incredibly humid.

Have you ever tried to jog when it's really humid and incredibly sunny at the same time?

The air around you feels like a blanket. The humidity sucks the breath right out of your lungs making it difficult to breathe. The combination of heat and humidity also makes you sweat much more than you normally would, which brings up dehydration issues especially if you job for long distances of 4 to 5 miles or longer.

So that brings us to the question; should you jog in very humid weather?

Now I'm not a doctor and I can't even begin to pretend to give out medical advice, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe you should not jog when the weather is extremely humid.

I know people will disagree with me because I only have to look outside and see all the people jogging around to realize that my opinion is probably not the popular one; but it seems to me that we jog to get healthy and whenever I run in humid weather, I always feel worse after I've jogged, which is the exact opposite that I usually feel.

If you are going to jog in humid weather I suggest you take several precautions.

First, drink lots of liquids before you jog and during your run, especially if you're going to be jogging more than 5 miles.

Second, try to jog in the early morning or late afternoon when the sun is down so that at least you don't have that added heat burning on your back.

Third, try to jog in populated areas where there's lots of other people such as a park. The reason why I suggest that is because some people get dehydrated and actually pass out and if this happens to you, you'll want to be in a crowded area so that there are people around to call an ambulance or at least make sure you don't get run over by a car while you're passed out on the side of the road.

Jogging can be an incredibly fulfilling way to exercise and I hope you take advantage of it as much as you can but maybe, just maybe on those really humid days you should just go back down to the basement and pull out the old trusty treadmill. I think you'll be glad that you did