Cape Town’s been bringing the heat – quite concerning as we’re right in the middle of winter. But the good news is that our beautiful city is filled with hipsters that love coffee. You’ll find out in a bit why that’s an advantage.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t down a glass of warm milk after a run. To me, that sounds like dipping a french fry into my mashed potatoes – something I’ve actually done on multiple occasions.

Eish, maybe the mense at the HuffPost have a point:

Drinking a hot drink increases the body’s heat load and the body responds to that by sweating. The output of sweat is greater than the internal heat gain, and this is where it all starts to make sense ― when the sweat evaporates from the skin, it cools us down.

How does one explain this madness in more detail? Well, it all comes down to the tongue. When we drink something hot, the nerve receptors in our taster tells the ol’ brain to cool us down. It does this with sweat.

But there’s a catch:

If you’re drinking a hot drink in an environment where the sweat won’t evaporate ― like somewhere hot and humid ― that hot drink probably won’t do the trick.

So don’t sip on anything with steam unless I’m naked in Antarctica. Got it.

We wouldn’t know any of this without Ollie Jay, a researcher at the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics. Thanks Ollie! He says that:

“The hot drink still does add a little heat to the body, so if the sweat’s not going to assist in evaporation, go for a cold drink.”

Maybe a beer (I’ve heard Sol is pretty good)? We’re still saving water, remember?

Oh and as for the coffee-demanding hipsters in the Mother City, we now have a shop on every corner, just in case we need to fight heat with heat.

[source:huffpost]