this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Why avoid ice water?
The reason Iβve heard is that your body has to work really hard to warm up the cold water, which in turn means you feel warm more quickly once the effect of the cold water wears off. Thatβs why people in the desert drink warm tea.
It's important to remember that humidity plays a huge role when it comes to managing thermal comfort, and the desert is a very dry place. Advice that is applicable to the desert might not apply in other places with high temperature/high humidity.
I don't know whether drinking hot tea actually helps to beat the heat, but speculating a bit on it, we might guess that hot tea would promote sweating, which is highly effective for reducing body temperature in dry contexts, but less so in humid ones. The tea is also warmer than your body temperature if it is to be considered warm, and as such you will get hotter without getting any relief from the sweating, making drinking hot tea in a hot/humid scenario counterproductive if these assumptions are correct.
Just something to keep in mind.
Nah. The body does not have to work "really hard" to warm it up. And if your body is already hot and trying to cool down by sweating then the cold water will help with that. You need 1 kcal to heat up a litre of water by a degree. So if you drink a litre of 6C water and your body temp is 36C then you will need a whopping 30kcal to heat it up. That's like 5g of peanuts, so like 7.
Ahh that does kinda make sense to be honest. Thanks!
Also one of the reason why people in hot climates love eating spicy foods, especially during the day. When you eat something spicy, your mouth feels hot, but your body temperature is not actually increased. You'll start sweating, but as your body temperature is not actually increased, you'll ended up cooling your body instead.
Yeah I'm confused about that too. I drink ice water all the time when it's hot... But I live in an area with a mild climate, where 27C (80F) is considered hot.
Avoiding cold water is just bad advice and it's perpetuated by people who do not live in hot climates. It violates thermodynamics to say adding cold stuff makes you hot.
If you're already to the point of sweating, your body is trying to cool you down. Adding cool liquid will make you colder, not hotter. Go read medical recommendations for how to treat heat stress, they will never tell you to drink hot tea and eat some chillies