{"id":3017,"date":"2018-07-30T09:56:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T05:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=3017"},"modified":"2018-07-30T09:56:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T05:56:33","slug":"does-drinking-hot-tea-cool-you-down-in-a-heatwave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/07\/30\/does-drinking-hot-tea-cool-you-down-in-a-heatwave\/","title":{"rendered":"Does drinking hot tea cool you down in a heatwave?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As air conditioning unit manufacturers across the globe\u00a0break out their atlases to find where Britain is on the map, the public have been turning to all sorts of methods for keeping cool.\u00a0Among more conventional ideas, such as plunging into the local lido or stripping down to expose as much flesh as legally possible, one old chestnut of folk wisdom has been doing the rounds of dinner party conversation: drinking hot tea cools you down, because if your insides are warmer, you don\u2019t feel\u00a0the external heat\u00a0so much.<\/p>\n

Truth or balderdash? Well, as with so many intriguing questions, it\u2019s quite possibly a little bit of both.<\/p>\n

In the history of tea\/heatwave science,\u00a0a 2012 study\u00a0by Ollie Jay at the University of Ottawa\u2019s school of kinetic sciences, was a landmark. It examined just this question and came to a firm conclusion: Yes, drinking hot tea will cool you down…\u00a0but only if there\u2019s a nice breeze.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you drink a hot drink, it does result in a lower amount of heat stored inside your body, provided the additional sweat that\u2019s produced when you drink the hot drink can evaporate,\u201d he \u00a0told the Smithsonian Magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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S<\/span>o what\u2019s going on? \u201cWhat 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 \u2013\u00a0if that can all evaporate \u2013\u00a0more than compensates for the the added heat to the body from the fluid.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Dogs<\/div>
Dogs cool off during a swim-with-your-dog day at Saltdean Lido in Sussex<\/span>\u00a0CREDIT:<\/span>\u00a0CHRISTOPHER PLEDGER<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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S<\/span>weat, of course, works by absorbing some of the body\u2019s heat, and then evaporating into the air, taking that heat with it. However, for the sweat-based reduction in temperature to exceed the increase due to the hot drink, you need to let all the sweat evaporate. And that means if you\u2019re in a hot, humid room, or you\u2019re wearing long sleeves and trousers, hot tea\u2019s probably not going to work.<\/p>\n

In that case, Jay suggests the opposite course of action: \u201cThe hot drink still does add a little heat to the body, so if the sweat\u2019s not going to assist in evaporation, go for a cold drink.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who want to drill down into the mechanics of how hot drinks make you sweat, it\u2019s not, in fact, a direct response to your core temperature increasing. We have thermosensors in the mouth and throat that seem\u00a0to be the key. When they detect heat, the brain activates the sweating response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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T<\/span>hat means, for those with nerves of steel, there\u2019s another option,\u00a0as Professor Peter McNaughton from the University of Cambridge, suggests: “Eat a very hot meal \u2013\u00a0as in chili hot \u2013\u00a0because the active ingredient in chili peppers, capsaicin, acts on the same receptors in your mouth and upper digestive tract that detect heat and cause sweating, which of course cools you down.\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt the perfect option for a university rugby team desperate to prove their resilience \u2013\u00a0but for the rest of us, he has a method that\u2019s less of a white-knuckle ride: \u201cPutting a wet towel around your head, or around your wrists, or around any part of your body will cause cooling because of course water in the towel will evaporate. This is why a wet towel feels cool when you put your hand up against it and that will cool you down.”<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As air conditioning unit manufacturers across the globe\u00a0break out their atlases to find where Britain is on the map, the public have been turning to all sorts of methods for keeping cool.\u00a0Among more conventional ideas, such as plunging into the local lido or stripping down to expose as much flesh as legally possible, one old …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3019,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3017\/revisions\/3019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}