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Warm, cold or ice-cold drinks – which are best for your body?
As soon as the weather turns hot and sticky, all you can think about is downing a cold drink, and ice-cold, if possible! But it’s actually true what the British say – on a hot day, it’s better to have a warm or hot drink than, say, a glass of iced tea, however tempting the latter might seem. Here’s why.
Your body doesn’t like cold!
It’s true! While you may love a delicious iced coffee on a hot summer’s day, your body doesn’t! Your body is self-regulating, so while you may desperately want to cool down when it’s 38° in the shade, a glass of iced water will provide only a slight and very short-lived sense of relief before your system starts working to heat it back up to body temperature. So you simply end up making your body work harder to produce heat, and getting even sweatier!
The best thing to do when you’re hot is to drink things that are as near as possible to body temperature. They don’t have to be hot – drink a warm herbal tea, and keep an unrefrigerated bottle of water on hand, because nothing beats water for rehydrating the body. Save the ice cubes for those after dinner drinks on the terrace. And in winter, stave off the cold and rain with steaming mugs of cappuccino and hot chocolate.
