Drinking Cold Water : Good or Bad ?

Drinking cold water is favorite task of most of the people after returning home on a hot day. But have you ever tried to find if it is a healthy habit or not. Normally we feel that cold water reduces the body temperature and helps in relaxing, which is true up to some extent. If you are doing a workout and drinking cold water during intervals then it keeps your core body temperature low and also keeps you hydrated. But the truth is that drinking cold water have an overall negative effect on your health.

Negative effects of Drinking Cold Water

• Temperature of stomach plays an important role during digestion. Drinking cold water just after a meal hinders the digestion as it reduces the temperature below the optimum temperature required for digestion.
• Cold water makes stomach muscles unable to work properly unless body raises their temperature. Proper functioning of stomach muscles is necessary to break the food before passing it into the intestine. If you have got a little knowledge of workout science, then you must have known the fact that warming-up of muscles is necessary before a workout (especially during winters), as cold muscles can't contract and relax easily and may result in muscle damage.
• Drinking cold water can decrease the sterilization capacity of gastric acid. It can make some germs in your stomach food to be passed to your gut which may result is typhoid, dysentery, infectious diarrhea or enteritis.
• When we drink the cold water, it disturbs the organs which come in direct contact with that water. So it affects respiratory system and the gastrointestinal system the most. Thus long term drinking of cold water makes our oral cavity and respiratory system mucous membrane more fragile. It may also result in inflammation, cough, pneumonia and bronchitis.
• Cold water shrinks the blood vessels and reduces blood flow. It can increase the blood pressure temporarily. If you have got a bad habit of drinking cold water then are at increased risk of hypertension and cardio-vascular diseases. If you are already a patient of hypertension then drinking cold water increases your chances of cardio-vascular diseases.
• If you drink cold water just after a meal then it results in excess mucus build-up, which may result in other side effects. An old study done during 1978 which involved 15 human subjects, found that drinking cold water made nasal mucous thicker.
• A 2001 study found that drinking cold water can trigger migraine pain in those people who are already a patient of this disease.
• According to Ayurveda and ancient Chinese medicine system, cold water with hot food creates imbalance in body. Drinking luke-warm water is recommended by these old traditional systems to get best results and better health.

Some people believe that drinking cold water make our body use some calories to rise its temperature to body temperature and thus helps in reducing weight. But in reality that type of calorie consumption is very less. The benefits of drinking cold water are lesser than disadvantages, so we don't recommend to drink cold water to reduce weight.

So if you ever have an urge to drink cold water then don't gulp it fast, instead sip it slowly and keep it for sometime in your mouth and then drink it. It will help in better relaxation from hot with least side effects on your body. You may drink cold water if you feel necessity but don't make it a habit.