Can Hot Coffee Cool You Down in the Summer?

Science. It's mind-blowing. Especially when it has to do with coffee & caffeine intake! We wanted to dive into the question of can hot coffee cool you down in the summer? A valid question since there are so many people who drink iced in the winter. We have seen people time and time again fight for their cold brew in winter but to use that just seems a little less crazy then carrying a hot coffee in the heat of summer. So we dove into a little research so that we can tell you if it is smart to even considering drinking hot drinks on a hot day. We the the sweaters out there are curious. After diving in and reading a few different opinions on the matter it sounds like it all comes down to sweat, actually. Your body sweats to cool its-self down. So at first your body sweats and them moisture cools your skin down and then it evaporates and removes the heat from your body. The key here is that the sweat must evaporate. Some experts are saying that if it is a hot and muggy day - DO NOT BUY HOT COFFEE. You body doesn't have time to let sweat evaporate. That being said if it is a dry and hot day you can order a hot coffee. Even though the drink is hotter than your body temperature you will sweat and then as along as the sweat evaporates you will remain cool. Wow. Science. If that is not enough for you see below. When we first started wondering if a hot coffee cool you down in the summer we found this explanation from a PhD candidate. See below for a excerpt we pulled from The Cut where Anthony Bain, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Heart, Lung, and Vascular Health at the University of British Columbia goes into depth about the topic!

When we’re hot, we naturally cool our bodies primarily by sweating, or more specifically by having the sweat evaporate from our skin (that’s important!). Our bodies sense changes in tissue temperature by a network of thermosensors located in the skin and in more central parts of our body, which send input to our brain (specifically, the hypothalamus), which then initiates sweating. When we take in a hot drink, it appears that the thermosensors located in the stomach become overactive, and send strong signals to our hypothalamus that we are hot. In turn, the hypothalamus reacts by initiating an over-compensatory sweating response. So, when this sweat evaporates from our skin, the heat energy we lose due to evaporation exceeds the heat energy gained by drinking the hot drink. In other words, it is because our body overacted to the hot drink that we end up cooler in the end.