My Russian friend Elena brought along a thermos of hot tea a couple weeks ago on a trip to the zoo with our children. Her opinion is that drinking a hot drink on a hot day raises your body temperature in pace with the rising outside temperatures, thus you feel cooler.
Hm. I looked at the tea and couldn’t think of anything I’d want less to drink. She was dedicated to the opinion, although she did concede that growing up in chillier climes than I did (U-S upper South) could be the reason.
My question: Is Elena’s a valid theory … or perhaps a Soviet time-delayed bomb designed to eat into Coke sales to expatriate Russians?
Tell Elena Nyet. The hot day outside is doing its damnedest to warm you up and will do a lot better job than drinking hot tea. Your body on the other hand is pretty adamant about keeping your body at a constant temp, and is in step trying to cool you off. Adding the hot tea will only mean that whatever minor amount of heat that leaves the tea will eventually be shucked off by your body. To cool yourself down, water and lots of it. Shade doesn’t hurt either
In a 1950’s edition of World Book Encyclopedia, one of the little cartoon diagrams (don’t remember the entry) illustrated that drinking cold beverages actually makes a person hotter because it “increases circulation.”
I didn’t buy it.
Of course, this same edition, under the entry “Negro” showed a photo of a Dudley Dickersonish porter with the caption that read (as best I can remember) “Pullman porters are known for their courtesy and smiling disposition.”
Huh, thought so. She’s always a popcicle unless it’s about 105 outside.
Wondering about that now – why are some people hot-natured and others cold-natured? Women always seem chillier than men and it’s standard office procedure for there to be a world war going on over the thermostat. Any dope on that?
That has to do with muscle mass. Muscle uses more calories even at rest than an equal amount of fat, thereby generate mork heat from the work. Men, on average, have more muscle mass than women thus produce more heat for themselves and anything in their immediate vincinity. A phenomenon that my girlfriend is a big fan of. IIRC, iron has something to do with it too and women have, on average, more trouble with difficiencies of this mineral.
The theory I heard was that hot drinks make you cooler because your bodies reacts by sweating more. It isn’t necessarily because of any thermodynamic process, it’s just that, when your body gets hot on the inside, it automatically starts sweating to balance it out. A much more efficent way to do this would be to eat a hot pepper, which won’t actually affect your temperature but does a pretty good job of fooling your body into sweating (and getting blotchy and begging for cool beverages, which are questionable methods of cooling “spicy hot” but good methods of cooling “temperature hot”). Wouldn’t it be great if they had, like, jabaneros and stuff in Mexico? <- laugh politely at that one
Another theory I had was just that, getting hot on the inside makes the outside world strike you as cooler. Getting hot on the outside can do the same thing, really - step out of the shower and feel the air temperature. This doesn’t have anything to do with real changes in internal temperature, either, it’s psychological.
Some years ago I was in Morocco and it was extremely hot and the price of anything cold was exorbitant and I was also told by the locals to drink hot tea and my first reaction was also of disgust but, forced by the situation, I tried it and my surprise was that drinking hot tea did not make me feel any hotter. After thinking about it I realised a cold drink gives a sensation of refreshment for a fraction of a second. If you think about it, the amount of heat supplied by a hot drink or subtracted by a cold drink is really miniscule compared to the entire mass of the body. What is extremely important is to not dehydrate. So in acountry where refrigeration is expensive, hot tea, or plain water, are a very good choice.
It could also be that it aids perspiration but for that it first has to make you feel hot.
mjollnir, i also heard that drinking a cold drink when your cold would make you warmer, but i always thought that it was from the heat that your body creates by the burning of calories to warm up the ice cold drink you just drank. can any one tell me if this is true or not?
Consider that hot tea is about 110-130 degrees F. Your body temperature is 98 degrees F, maybe 99 if you have been outside on a hot day for a while. the heat added by drinking hot tea is minuscle. But tea is not a good choice because it is a diuretic. You need that water for sweating, not passing through through kidneys. Also, nobody drinks a 44 oz big gulp of hot tea. The key is drinking water and lots of it. I remember in my college days my air conditioner in my car was busted. I had a nine hour drive to school in 100 degree heat. I would roll down my windows and drink about 3 44oz Big Gulps on my way. I almost NEVER had to go to the bathroom. The amount of water I passed through my pores must have been amazing, but as long as my body was sufficiently hydrated and could sweat freely I never got too hot.
Talk about sweating & not having to go to the bathroom. Everyone is different. For example, Orientals sweat much less than others. I’m that way, too. I hardly sweat, except in extreme heat, my armpits, forehead, neck, chest & stomach. Not my face, arms or legs. And never as much as others. ALSO, if I drink alot, it mainly goes out the other way. I suspect it’s because I don’t have too much spongy tissue in my joints to absorb water & storage it, acting like a cushion for the joints. In other words, I have creaky, non-cushioned, joints & probably insufficient extracellular water (the latter associated with good muscle tone).