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(meteorobs) Hot Drinks warm you up!
Drinking hot beverages raises your core temperature, which in turn allows
your blood vessels to expand and take more nice warm blood out to your
extremities, meanwhile keeping your body core up to temperature. This
should make you warmer. There is the added benefit of warming your
fingers on the cup as well. My conclusion is that the net effect would
be that your whole body would be a little warmer.
Alcohol, on the other hand, expands your blood vessels WITHOUT adding any
extra heat to your innards, thus FOOLING your body into thinking that it
is warmer, while cooling off the blood that is now circulating more
freely in your extremities. The conclusion to that train of thought is
that you should NOT drink alcohol to warm up.
Enterprising souls might decide that the thing to do would be to add
alcohol to your nice warm coffee for a combined effect. Alas, the
alcohol would still do you a disservice by allowing your body to cool
more rapidly than the net gain of the hot beverage.
I have heard the idea of drinking cold beverages in the cold as a warm-up
strategy by practitioners of eastern religious thought. They also
recommended that you suck on a pebble to alleviate a fever, rather than
drink water to avoid dehydration. THis is not based on science, but on a
distortion of the eastern ying/yang understanding of the universe.
Proponents of this discipline recommend doing just the opposite of what
your body is crying out for. I can guarantee that when we were growing
up in Alaska, we never turned down a warm drink when we felt cold.
Also, if the weather is below freezing or very dry, a moderate amount of
fluid shouldn't increase your trips to the bushes substantially, because
just breathing in very dry or frozen conditions dehydrates the body.
AND, if your hot beverage doesn't contain too much caffeine it would be
helpful, since caffeine is a diuretic and leaves you more thirsty and
needing a bathroom at the same time! Cocoa, however, does not have a
substantial amount of caffeine.
JanFries
On Thu, 4 Jan 2001 18:46:45 EST AstronomerTed@aol.com writes:
> The International Meteor Org states on their website
> <http://www.imodot net/visual/major01.html>
> "do not have hot drinks -- they dilute the blood vessels and make
> you feel
> colder"
>
> This is really true? Everyone that I've ever observed with has
> always
> advacated "Drink some hot chocolate, or do you want something hot to
> drink?"
>
> Is this indeed true?
>
> I just can't see drinking a glass of cold chocolate milk in -30
> degree
> windchills...... I'd much rather have some hot cocoa...
>
> Let's have some discussion on whats better to drink when observing
> and if
> this is true or its just an old myth..
>
> ~Ted
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