New Delhi: It is often said that drinking hot drinks (especially hot tea) on a hot day will cool you down. However, this claim is challenged almost as much as it is asserted. After all, it seems illogical that drinking something hot would make you feel cool, right? But it seems that there’s hard science behind the old wives’ tale after all.
According to a research paper published by the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics, drinking hot drinks on hot, dry days can cool you down.
Yes, a hot drink can cool you down, but only in specific circumstances. “If you drink a hot drink, it does result in a lower amount of heat stored inside your body, provided the additional sweat that’s produced when you drink the hot drink can evaporate”.
How does this work? “What we found is that when you ingest a hot drink, you actually have a disproportionate increase in the amount that you sweat”. “Yes, the hot drink is hotter than your body temperature, so you are adding heat to the body, but the amount that you increase your sweating by—if that can all evaporate—more than compensates for the the added heat to the body from the fluid.”