is drinking hot water good in winter?
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Hello, I have my old parents at my home. During this winter, we want to stay healthy and keep ourselves protected. Is drinking hot water good in winter? Please elaborate on this.
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@kinjal The relationship between environment, beverage temperature and performance has almost exclusively been examined from the perspective of whether cold drinks can enhance performance in hot conditions (the general consensus seems to be that they do help a very small amount compared to room temperature fluids), not the other way around. This is unsurprising as there has been far more attention given to how to improve exercise capacity in the heat. That’s despite the cold arguably being more challenging in many respects. So, if the peer-reviewed science is a bit thin on the ground, it comes down to drawing a bit more heavily on experience and common sense. Whilst my own experience of training and competing in cold conditions are not exactly comparable with elite winter sports athletes, I’ve done longish periods of cross-country skiing (as part of my winter cross-training for triathlon), competed in winter ultra endurance events like the Devizes to Westminster kayak race (where you can be racing through the night in sub-zero conditions) and I often open water swim, kayak or surf in reasonably chilly water. Also, as I’m British, I’m used to the day-to-day challenge of putting in long running and cycling miles in the middle of a typically cold U.K. winter! Based on all of those experiences and from talking to many elite athletes who do train and compete in alpine and winter sports, my strong instinct is to say that I think there are some advantages to be gained from using hot drinks over cold ones, at least when the temperature gauge drops really low.