Drinking hot water can raise your body temperature and even help you lose weight? Don’t believe it anymore

Hello, this is Science Popularization China. Recently, there seems to be a saying that "drinking hot water can improve metabolism, and drinking it often can help lose weight." Those who say this also give some arguments: first, drinking hot water will make you sweat, and sweating will make you lose weight; second, after drinking hot water, the body temperature will rise, and when the body temperature rises, the metabolism will increase. Don't say, it really sounds like that. Today, let's take a closer look at whether drinking hot water can improve metabolism is true.

Does water temperature affect metabolism?

There is one thing that is true in these two statements. An increase in body temperature can really increase metabolism. For example, when you are sick and have a fever, your metabolism will increase. Unfortunately, drinking hot water has almost no effect on the body temperature of healthy people. No matter how much hot water you drink, your body temperature remains constant, so the effect on basal metabolism is of course minimal.

However, surprisingly, the results of an experiment published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism showed that drinking room temperature water has no effect on metabolism, but drinking ice water can increase metabolism.

How much can drinking ice water increase your metabolism?

In this experiment, a group of healthy adults were divided into three groups. Before the experiment, each group had their metabolism measured, and then they were given room temperature water, room temperature salt water, and 3 degrees Celsius ice water. The results showed that only after drinking 3 degrees Celsius ice water, these people's metabolism increased by 4.5%, and this effect lasted for 60 minutes.

Unfortunately, this result cannot be used to control weight. Although drinking cold water can increase metabolism, the amount of increase is very limited. For example, for an adult woman, if the basal metabolism is 1200 kcal, 4.5% can only increase 54 kcal, which is the calories of half a spoonful of oil in cooking.

Having said so much, we should choose the water we drink according to our physical condition. The impact of water temperature on metabolism is actually very small.

Okay, that’s all for today. See you next time.

Reviewer: Song Shuang, Associate Researcher, Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

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