Why is tea refreshing in hot weather

How does it affect your liquid consumption? Even chilled water doesn't help, it's got to have ice cubes. BarrieB 53 months ago My wife has observed that I drink less when it's hot than when it's cold. It's agony when it's too hot, mini skirt, t shirt, no socks - got to cool down some way. With cold drinks I can drink from a pint glass too so I keep my fluids up more compared to a mug or cup of tea.

If you drink something cold you lower you inner body temperature. This will result in sweating more. On the other hand drinking something hot will bring your inner body temp up and although it may not match the outer body temp, it does help to reduce sweating. And that's the thing I hate most about hot weather I hate damp clothes clinging to my body!

But as Dr Gordon explains, there is some science behind the fact that many people living in hot climates, such as in Asia, India or South America, tend to eat spicy foods rather than "refreshing" foods like melons and frozen treats.

This causes an increase in heat in the mouth and will cause the skin temperature to increase resulting in vasodilation - a dilating of the blood vessels - and sweating. This in turn will move the heat away from the body to the skin and then to the air surrounding the body," says Gordon.

So whilst many of us - living in the colder parts of the world - will opt for a cool refreshing drink on a hot day, drinking or eating too much of anything extremely cold can cause blood vessels to tighten, making you feel much hotter, rather than cooler. As temperatures soared across Europe this week, DW asked its Facebook followers to share their tried and tested methods for staying cool over the summer months. We put your suggestions to Professor McNaughton.

It's cold, you put your feet in, your feet get cold. And because you've got a very efficient blood stream, that cool blood will come back to the center and keep you cool.

Sitting in front of the fan helps because that helps evaporate water or sweat more rapidly from your body's surface - so that means the sweat will cool you down more quickly and therefore you'll get cool. Storing your underwear in the fridge may give you more of a hot thrill than a long-term cooling effect. Under those circumstances your body temperature can rise. McNaughton says the best ways to stay cool over the summer months are either "putting a cold towel around your head or going for a swim because the water in the pool is almost always cooler than you are and when you get out the evaporation will cool you down more.

And above all, keep hydrated, because drinking "will give you the material with which you can produce sweat, thereby reducing your own temperature. Join the conversation and tell us what you do to stay cool in summer - on Facebook.

How does this work? The increased rate of perspiration is the key. Although sweat may seem like a nuisance, the body perspires for a very good reason.

When sweat evaporates from the skin, energy is absorbed into the air as part of the reaction, thereby cooling the body. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

As a seven-year-old, this seemed like a crazy idea, especially when all I wanted was a cold lemonade and another ice cream. The idea of drinking hot drinks in warm weather goes back hundreds of years. Recently, evidence has begun to emerge that drinking hot drinks may really help to cool you down , too.

In , Ollie Jay published the first of a series of papers to see if drinking a warm drink can actually lower the amount of heat stored by the body compared to a cold drink. However, when the authors considered the effect of drink temperature on body heat storage, which is a better indicator of total body temperature, the results were very different.