When the weather is sweltering, we often turn to iced drinks to cool down.
However, many others believe that hot tea can still be enjoyed on hot days and even possesses cooling properties.
Is this accurate?
According to Professor of Pharmacy at King’s College London, Peter McNaughton, who specializes in studying body temperature regulation, hot tea can indeed help cool you down. “Although this may seem completely counterintuitive, drinking hot beverages can actually help lower your body temperature, as long as they are not too hot.”
Drinking hot tea can indeed help cool you down.
Professor McNaughton further explains: “If a beverage is hotter than your body, it will obviously make you feel warmer. But like all other warm-blooded animals, humans continuously self-regulate to maintain a stable internal temperature.”
The professor discovered that hot drinks and spicy peppers activate a receptor in our nerves known as TRPV1, which signals the body to cool down. In response, humans sweat.
While sweat pooling on the skin can be uncomfortable, a gentle breeze or fan creating airflow can help evaporate the sweat, taking heat away with it.
“Our survival depends on sweating. Sweating enables humans to endure some of the hottest recorded temperatures on Earth…”
However, sweating is less effective (in regulating body temperature) in high humidity because the air is already saturated with moisture and cannot absorb much more from the skin. This is why, in humid regions, survival temperatures can be significantly lower.
A study published in the journal Acta Physiologica in 2012 indicated that evaporating sweat can aid in cooling.
Conversely, cold drinks lower body temperature and then prompt the brain to reduce sweat production to return the body temperature to baseline.
