Comments on: Tea Cools You Down

By: Anon

Anon — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:03:15 +0000

It’s not a closed system.

Sweating has done it’s job, as have other physiological functions to expose the body’s heat to the environment where it will radiate away more efficiently and continue to do so – because it’s not a closed system.

The same conclusions are to be drawn from experiments in extreme cold. Those with wet skin (either from sweat or falling into icy water for example) will lose body heat, far faster than the same person with dry skin.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:11:27 +0000

Anon, yes sweating does cool you down. But, there is a limit and wrt to the whole “tea cooling” issue, you still haven’t accounted for the fact that you’re adding heat to the system…

By: Anon

Anon — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:39:41 +0000

Sweating cools you down, as water against the skin, which radiates heat away from the body, 20 times more quickly than if it were dry. It is particularly cooling in front of a fan for the same reason.

This is one of the reasons why it is better to take off wet clothes in extreme cold. You’ll survive longer with no clothes!

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:29:45 +0000

Yes, sweating does cool you down. But, it’s not 100% efficient and adding a volume of hot liquid to a system with such an evaporative cooling system will cause the temperature of the system to rise regardless. Moreover, as the level of sweating rises it becomes more and more inefficient at cooling you down if there is no effective way to allow the sweat to evaporate.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:36:52 +0000

When you sweat it does some what cool you down you know!