Water is an essential substance for our body, an adult human body is made up of 60% water. It is impossible for human to survive without water. For this reason medical experts always recommend drinking 8 to 10 glasses of water every day for the physical and mental health of human beings. But does drinking cold water regularly have a negative effect on your health? Like everything in this world, research suggests that drinking cold waters has some advantages and disadvantages.
To know what they are, we will delve deeper into it in this article. Scroll down to read more! Although some people distance themselves from cold water, because they believe that it weakens the digestive power. Also some people avoid drinking cold water with meals as they feel that it can worsen digestion. While others only drink cold waters because they feel it helps them burn more calories.
But unfortunately, there isn’t much evidence to support either argument. But drinking enough water, either cold or hot, is vital to good health.
Adding more water to our diet can be more complicated than just the cold waters you might be used to. We also need to consider things such as the temperature of what we are drinking and whether the water is beneficial to our body, regardless of its temperature. It is also important to note that this can have different effects depending on whether the water is hot or cold. Here are some advantages of cold water as compared to hot water and you can use it in your daily life. For this you stay with us till the end.
Cold water definition
Nothing feels better than a glass of cold waters to quench your thirst, and drinking it helps to replenish the fluid in your body after strenuous exercise or activities. Cold waters cools the body temperature, which prevents excessive sweating and is therefore able to prevent dehydration.
You may have heard that cold waters is harmful to you, but there is little scientific evidence to support those claims. Really any aspect that will help you get more pure, clean water in your system is good for you. If cold waters helps people drink more water, it is not necessarily harmful to your health.
Benefits of drinking cold water
One of the main benefits of drinking cold waters is that it helps lower your core body temperature. Drinking cold waters is very helpful to keep the body cool in the following situations-
- Cold water is a great drinkable beverage after a workout.
- Cold water helps in combating heat stroke during the summer months.
- Staying hydrated and lowering body temperature helps get rid of germs in the body when you have a fever.
- Water is a said substance to promote metabolism. This helps to burn an additional 70 calories each day (which is almost as much as you burn if you walk for 15 minutes).
- Cold water lowers the body temperature and prevents excessive sweating, thus also preventing dehydration.
1. Lowers body temperature
Drinking water is one of the healthy actions to refresh your body. It helps to cool down your body after an intense workout or intense sunlight.
Exactly the time when you need to lower your body temperature.
If at that time you do not reduce your body temperature, then you may have to face many diseases from it.
Apart from this, it is an effective way to reduce body temperature, reduce high fever and help the body fight diseases better.
2. Strengthens the Immune System
Cold water strengthens your immunity by increasing your red and white blood cells.
It helps in maintaining the balance between red and white blood cells and gives them the strength to better withstand things like diseases and infections. The thickening of your blood also makes this process easier for the body to flush out nutrients. When you are sick it does the work of making the blood solid for you.
Also cold water helps you to do something productive throughout the day.
3. Helps in Weight Loss
If you are trying to lose some weight, this benefit may be of interest to you.
According to research, drinking six cups of cold water increases your resting metabolism by 50 calories per day. Which is enough to lose five pounds in a year. This increase in metabolism is believed to be the result of extra work being done to maintain the body’s internal temperature. This extra calorie you can potentially burn by drinking a glass of cold water isn’t a huge amount, turning it into a habit can actually add up in the long run.
4. Stays alert and reduces pain
Cold water activates sensors just under our skin, which increase our heart rate. It adds an adrenaline rush to give us a playful and alive feeling. Adrenaline helps keep you alert and mentally prepared.
Research has shown that in addition to caffeine, drinking ice water helps you stay alert and more focused.
Keeping an alert mind by better adrenaline production helps in quick decision making; So improve your decision making skills. Adrenaline not only has the ability to make your mind strong, but it also increases the body’s pain tolerance.
This is why people involved in accidents are often given a glass of cold waters to keep their mind alert, and their body to feel less pain than in trauma.
5. Headache
If you normally wake up in the morning, and are greeted with a headache, cold waters can do a great job for you. One of the main reasons for this pain in the morning is the low water level in the body.
When you wake up with a headache, it means that your body does not have enough water. So, if you can drink some cold waters on an empty stomach, the pain can go away, and you can have a great day!
6. Improves Digestibility
It is an Ayurvedic practice to avoid drinking cold waters with meals. Ancient Indian systems of medicine believe that drinking cold water quenches your digestive fire, leading to indigestion of food in your stomach. For this reason, we often do not drink water for some time before and after eating food.
However, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, there isn’t much evidence to support Ayurvedic practices. Or drinking cold waters after meals harms your body in any way. In fact, drinking water, whether hot or cold, benefits digestion by helping to prevent constipation.
7. Calorie Burning
Drinking a glass of cold waters burns a little more calories than a glass of hot waters. But that’s only an extra 8 calories.
If you’re drinking cold waters after a meal to help you lose weight or burn more calories, those 8 calories won’t make much of a difference to help. Exercise, drink cold waters, it helps you burn more calories.
8. Helpful in Constipation
You must have experienced the discomfort and discomfort of constipation at some point in your life. Drinking plenty of cold plain water is one of the simplest remedies for anyone suffering from constipation.
This is because constipation is tied to a dehydrated colon.
When you’re properly hydrated, your body doesn’t need to take in extra water from your colon. This is where drinking cold waters can help prevent constipation.
9. Helps Combat Heat Stroke
Taking part in an activity or being in a hot place for too long in the summer can cause your body temperature to rise rapidly, putting you at risk of heatstroke.
Drinking cool water can help combat heat stroke by keeping you hydrated and regulating your body temperature. Although the doctor suggests avoiding very cold drinks which can cause stomach cramps. Severe heat wave prevails in India during the summer season, especially in North-West India.
To avoid this heat, doctors recommend drinking cold waters.
10. Draws out toxins
After nourishing the cells of your body, cold water also helps in flushing out unwanted toxins from your body.
While you are sleeping, your body usually supplies energy, repairs itself and balances hormones in the body.
This usually results in the release of toxins and other waste materials. If you drink some water in the morning, you’ll clear these waste products from your body, feel better, and be able to absorb more nutrients during breakfast. It also improves your overall health and clears the skin.
11. Makes skin glow
Hot water strips the essential oils from your skin. Cold waters, on the other hand, does the opposite. It acts to bring the blood back to the surface of the skin and gives you a healthy glow.
Drinking cold waters makes you feel refreshed, your skin glows.
Disadvantages of drinking cold water
Just as there are some benefits of drinking cold water, it also has some disadvantages. It has the opposite effect in many people. Cold waters has an adverse effect on digestion as it causes your body to shrink and slow down.
When you drink cold water, your body has to draw more energy from your body to heat cold foods and liquids.
This makes the digestion process take longer than drinking warm liquids and can lead to indigestion, constipation and other digestive problems.
Cold water can make stomach and stomach cramps worse, as the body processes cold water. The stomach contracts and hardens, causing more pain around the abdomen. However, these adverse effects only affect a small number of people.
Many people believe that drinking cold water does more harm than good. It is said that cold water can shrink your stomach, making the digestion process difficult.
Some people also believe that if they drink water at 4°C or less, their body will have to work harder to maintain the optimum internal temperature (37°C).
Now let’s know the disadvantages of consuming cold water. We all know that water is very important for the human body especially by drinking 8 glasses of water daily.
Most of us drink cold water after returning from work and especially during summers to quench our thirst. It is time to discuss the harmful effects of drinking cold water.
1. Affects Digestion
Cold water is said to slow down a person’s digestion, a fact that has been proven by many studies. Although the exact cause has not been confirmed, there is an explanation that tops it, and most researchers agree.
Drinking cold water or cold drinks reduces the core temperature of our body. This causes our blood vessels to constrict.
Therefore, the body needs to expend valuable energy to bring our core temperature back to normal. Instead this energy could have been spent on digesting the food we ate.
Therefore, it affects our digestion by slowing down and redirecting energy. This slow digestion will mean that the body develops a “slime” that can cause allergies, headaches, fatigue and even impair our immunity.
Similarly, cold water or drinks solidify the fat we eat. That’s why they don’t break down so easily, because the body needs to expend more energy to do so.
2. sore throat
There is another very obvious reason why you should not consume cold water. Because it increases your chances of getting a sore throat and stuffy nose. Drinking cold water, especially after a meal, leads to the build-up of excess mucus (respiratory mucus), which forms the protective lining of the respiratory tract. However, when the tract becomes congested, it becomes vulnerable to many inflammatory infections.
3. May lower the heart rate
Some studies have also shown that cold water has a role in lowering your heart rate. Drinking ice water is believed to stimulate the vagus nerve. This nerve is an important part of the body’s autonomic nervous system, and it plays an important role in lowering the heart rate. When you consume cold water, the low temperature of the water stimulates the nerves to lower the heart rate.
4. Headache
Drinking too much cold can cause the problem of ‘brain freeze’. It is caused by excessive consumption of ice water or ice cream.
The cold water in this cools the sensitive nerves of the spine, due to which it affects the brain. Due to this headache and sinus problems can also occur.
5. Constipation
Drinking water at room temperature is essential for digestion, although drinking cold water can cause constipation. This is because when you drink cold water, the food freezes and hardens as it passes through the body. The intestines also contract which is one of the major causes of constipation.
6. Causes of Extra Fat
The weight loss trick of drinking lots of ice cold water to force the body to work harder and thus burn more calories is not entirely true. This is because the cold temperature in the body causes fat to harden and freeze, making it difficult for the body to digest it.
7. Not Good After Workout
It is generally advised by trainers that one should not drink cold water after their workout session. Because at that time one’s body is already warm and mixing cold water at high temperature can affect health. The body also has trouble absorbing cold water after a workout. This can cause chronic pain in the abdomen.
Final Thoughts:
So friends, this was the advantages and disadvantages of drinking cold water, we hope that after reading this post, you must have got complete information about the benefits and side effects of cold water.
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