this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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We're not setup for hot weather, so we resort to all kinds of things to keep us and our homes cool.

Apart from ordering fans from Amazon, what else have you been doing to keep cool?

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[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Some cultures think that you should drink the opposite temperature. But if you look at what happens when you drink hot stuff, it doesn’t sound that crazy. Hot stuff makes you sweat. Sweat, when hot by dry air molecules, releases energy. That process cools you down.

[–] fozid@feddit.uk 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You missed 1 critical part in the process. Hot stuff heats you up, that increased heat makes you sweat harder, the sweat evaporates, which cools you back down to where you were before you drank the hot drink, you briefly feel like you cooled down, which you did, just only from the increase caused by the hot drink. Kind of a win?

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ah. I see what you’re saying. You’re saying the heat from the hot water compensates for the increase in sweating.

I suppose it’s worthwhile investigating the relationship between the energy in the water and the energy lost through sweating. And indeed some people have studied that:

“Yes, the hot drink is hotter than your body temperature, so you are adding heat to the body, but the amount that you increase your sweating by—if that can all evaporate—more than compensates for the the added heat to the body from the fluid.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-hot-drink-on-a-hot-day-can-cool-you-down-1338875/

[–] fozid@feddit.uk 1 points 4 days ago

Interesting 👍 thanks for the link. So it does work, just only in very specific situations.