Do you want to take an ice-cold shower in this heat? Do not do it

The heat is like a glowing lid over Switzerland – the meteorologists promise us that it will not cool down until the end of this week. In addition to a cool bath in a river or lake, an ice-cold shower promises a quick cooling. You might think that water that is as cool as possible helps against extreme heat.

But is that really true? Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case: a cold shower may seem refreshing at the moment, but it’s ultimately counterproductive. At least that’s what experts say. Why is that?

The cold water tricks the body into thinking it is cold. It responds by constricting the blood vessels dilated by the heat. Incidentally, the maximum narrowing only occurs at tissue temperatures of 15 degrees. This reaction, which makes sense when it’s cold, serves to keep the heat in the body. However, when it is warm, it becomes more difficult for the body to stabilize core temperature.

Most importantly, the constriction of the blood vessels at the periphery of the body undermines one of the main strategies for dissipating heat: pumping blood closer to the skin’s surface, opening the pores and allowing perspiration to escape, which then evaporates to leave us cooling down. When we take a cold shower, we immediately feel cooler, but the pores close. The core temperature of the body does not drop as a result.

On the other hand, lukewarm showers, counterintuitive as it may sound, promote blood circulation in the skin and thus increase heat loss. If you really want a cooler water temperature, start with a lukewarm shower, then gradually lower the temperature towards the end of the shower, in increments of about 10 seconds.

While a cold shower is usually short-lived, swimming in a lake or river is usually a different matter. If the body is immersed in cold water for a longer period of time, it can gradually cool down and then also more easily maintain a stable core temperature. It does not necessarily have to be a dip in a lake or river; At home you can also take a so-called descent bath.

You let lukewarm water run into the bath, so that you are neither cold nor hot. Then slowly add cold water until it starts to feel uncomfortably cool. Then you immediately get out of the bath. This procedure slowly extracts heat from the body without initiating a counter-reaction.

The question of whether hot or cold is better when hot also arises when it comes to drinks. It is often said that cold drinks force the body to warm them up, which consumes energy and leads to increased sweating. However, according to new findings, this is not the case; a cold drink passively warms up to ambient temperature in the gastrointestinal tract without the body actively doing anything about it. In exactly the same way, he does not need to cool hot drinks. The body regulates its temperature largely independently of the temperature of the drinks consumed.

This also applies to hot drinks, which are often recommended as a means of cooling down in the heat – usually in reference to the customs of southern countries, where you often see people drinking hot tea. According to experts, this has little to do with the heat, but rather with tradition. Their background is often a lack of clean drinking water, which means that water has to be boiled.

So cold drinks are no worse than hot ones when it comes to temperature control. However, icy liquids, especially when drunk quickly, can lead to stomach cramps and intestinal problems such as diarrhea. However, the quantity is always more important than the temperature: the drinks are not there to regulate our temperature, but to replace the fluid we lose through sweating, urine and the air we breathe. This replacement is best done continuously throughout the day. Experts recommend an amount of at least one and a half to two liters per day, and even three to four times as much during a heat wave. (i.e)