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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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My mum always said to drink hot drinks in hot weather to regulate temperature. This was not her wisest advice.
Did she also advise to wear a coat so you feel the benefit?
Yeah, a cup of tea will make you feel cooler... trust me...
I guess that's like taking brandy to the hyperthermic people being rescued from avalanches...
Some cultures think that you should drink the opposite temperature. But if you look at what happens when you drink hot stuff, it doesn’t sound that crazy. Hot stuff makes you sweat. Sweat, when hot by dry air molecules, releases energy. That process cools you down.
You missed 1 critical part in the process. Hot stuff heats you up, that increased heat makes you sweat harder, the sweat evaporates, which cools you back down to where you were before you drank the hot drink, you briefly feel like you cooled down, which you did, just only from the increase caused by the hot drink. Kind of a win?
Ah. I see what you’re saying. You’re saying the heat from the hot water compensates for the increase in sweating.
I suppose it’s worthwhile investigating the relationship between the energy in the water and the energy lost through sweating. And indeed some people have studied that:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-hot-drink-on-a-hot-day-can-cool-you-down-1338875/
Interesting 👍 thanks for the link. So it does work, just only in very specific situations.
It’s fine advice if you’re not doing a bunch of labor on a hot day, it’s good for chilling in shade with a breeze where you’re not sweating as hard