Water, as they say, is an essential element for your well-being. With 70 percent of our body being built with water, it should not come as a surprise that drinking enough water should be one of the prime medications against a good deal of health issues. Of course, you can consume water either in its cold form or as hot water. Is drinking hot water beneficial to your body and health? Let us explore what hot water can do to your body.
Contents
- 1 Benefits of Drinking Hot Water
- 2 General Benefits of Drinking Hot Water Whole Day
- 3 Benefits of Drinking hot water at Night before Going to Bed
- 4 Benefits of Drinking Hot / Warm Water in the Morning
- 5 Benefits of Drinking Hot water with Lemon and Honey, a Real Remedy?
- 6 Disadvantages of Drinking Hot Water
- 7 Parting Thoughts on Benefits of Drinking Hot Water
Benefits of Drinking Hot Water
Well, drinking hot water can be one of the most inexpensive means of staying healthy. There are several other benefits associated with drinking hot water. In fact, experts in the medical fraternity also suggest consuming hot water along with a few other ingredients like lemon and honey.
The best results of drinking hot water would be evident from consuming it the first thing in the morning and before going to bed.
General Benefits of Drinking Hot Water Whole Day
Let us check out a few health benefits of drinking hot water based on the ancients practices, scriptures, and suggestions from the medical fraternity.
Eases Digestion
One of the major benefits of drinking hot water is it would help you cleanse your digestive system. Drinking a glass of hot water can soothe your digestive system and help in driving out the toxins. In fact, hot water helps to break down the food that your digestive system may have failed to digest.
Hot water would act as a lubricant and thus helps your intestines and other bodily organs from efficiently handling their tasks. Cold water, on the other hand, can harden the oils in your food and thus cause indigestion. Hot water supports the bowel movements and thus helps avoid constipation.
A Good option to Destress
If you have stress and anxiety, a glass of hot water can be the best that can help you ease it out. A study by P. Quinlan, Joan Lane, and Laurence Aspinall have proved that consumption of hot liquids can improve stress reduction and help combat anxiety. Why not consume hot water instead of opting for tea or coffee with their harmful effects?
Hot water can soothe your central nervous system and thus aid you in feeling relieved from pain. When your nervous system is at its prime comfort, it would be able to control pain and aches. This will help you stay calm and less panicky throughout the day.
Anti-Ageing Properties
Drinking hot water can help you detoxify your body. It can help you cure premature aging. It would make your skin firm and beautiful and thus help you address aging to a greater extent. The detoxification will also lead to the removal of acne and other issues.
Drinking hot water can be helpful in keeping your body completely free of toxins and thus prevent the signs of aging. In addition to skin, hot water also benefits your hair by letting your scalp stay hydrated. You can have shiny hair while hot water accelerates your hair growth. As we all aware of, healthy hair is a clear sign of youthfulness.
Prevention of Nasal Congestion
The winter season is in, and it is the time that we come across health conditions like nasal congestion and sinusitis like infections. Of course, medicines can provide relief in those health issues, but a glass of hot water can be one of the best options to get rid of the discomfort associated with nasal congestion.
Hot water produces steam that can relieve the nasal cavities. Nasal congestion is caused by blocked mucous. Hot water can help loosen the mucus and thus relieves you from sinuses. In fact, it can even relieve a headache caused by sinus. You would also find it helpful in clearing your sore throat and make you feel warm enough.
Weight Loss
This is probably one of the best effects that hot water can help you with. Weight gain is indeed the root cause of a host of health-related complications. You need not manage those dreaded diets that you would keep you undernourished. A glass of hot water can be much beneficial than eating less than what your body needs to keep your weight under control.
Since hot water has a high temperature, your body compensates it by bringing the internal temperature down. This, in turn, improves your metabolism rate. The improved metabolism rate can be quite beneficial in keeping your body weight in tune. As we already are aware of, hot water improves your digestive system and thus can be quite helpful in making you feel less bloated.
Benefits of Drinking hot water at Night before Going to Bed
Our elders have always suggested us to drink hot water at night just before going to sleep. In fact, this practice comes with a host of health benefits.
Enhanced Mood
If your body is deprived of water, it can have detrimental effects on your mood. In fact, a recent study has indicated that water deprivation can cause mood swings and this can further cause your sleep deprivation.
It may not be clearly visible in many cases. If you can improve your water intake, you would definitely find an increase in positive emotion, satisfaction, and calm option. Lack of water can cause you to affect your sleep cycle and can considerably affect your overall health.
Avoid Constipation
Like we stated above, hot water comes with benefits associated with fighting indigestion. However, the effects of fighting indigestion would increase if you are consuming hot water before going to bed.
Hot water improves your blood circulation. This will aid you to break down waste in a positive manner. This can help you improve your sweat output. Apart from reducing your skin temperature, it also aids you to remove the salt toxins from your body. It can also help you clean your skin cells.
However, there are a few issues related to drinking hot water at night. You would need to take care not to indulge in heavy drinking of hot water at night, especially just before going to sleep. This can increase the number of times you would get up to urinate.
In fact, body mechanism decreases the urine output at night to ensure that you get a minimum of six to eight hours of sleep. Drinking more than one glass of hot water (or even cold water) can disrupt this cycle. Multiple health issues can be caused by sleep deprivation. Some such issues would include high blood pressure, nausea, high levels of cholesterol and weight gain. It would be advisable to check your hot water intake at night for better effects.
Benefits of Drinking Hot / Warm Water in the Morning
Well, this is yet another option that health experts and nutritional experts suggest. Most of us are used to begin our day with a cup of coffee or tea. It would, actually, be a good practice and further, there are several benefits of drinking hot water empty stomach in the morning.
It can indeed be a good experience to begin your day with a glass of hot water on an empty stomach. In fact, the benefits would include the ones we outlined while compiling the hot water advantages of drinking it throughout the day.
Some of the essential benefits would include
You Stand to get a Boost in Metabolism
There is a myth that you need to take care of metabolism only if you are overweight. However, no matter whether you are on a weight loss regime or not – it is essential to take care of metabolism every now and then. Hot water intake definitely improves it.
Drinking hot water on an empty stomach and starting your day with a glass of hot water can indeed help you improve your metabolism rate to a good extent. It can also help you have proper bowel movements and a proportional body weight.
Protect Your Teeth
You may consider it a myth, but it has been shown that cold water can be bad for your teeth. At least make it a point to drink hot water every morning. Your teeth indeed need a good nurture, and hot water can indeed be the first breath of fresh air for them.
However, you will need to make sure that the water is not scalding hot. It should be ideally moderately hot. Cold water can increase the risk of tooth cavities and other issues.
Benefits of Drinking Hot water with Lemon and Honey, a Real Remedy?
Sipping in a cup of hot water with lemon and honey can indeed be refreshing and soothing in its own right. The health and fitness world swears by this mixture and touts it as the elixir of life. There have been claims that this can help you get rid of fat and clean up your body.
There is no denying the fact that both lemon and honey have undisputed health benefits. Honey has a host of therapeutic uses like treating skin in addition to being a replacement for sugar; lemon is well known for Vitamin C and other plant-based compounds. There have been claims that combining both these ingredients can be helpful in treating many ailments like digestive problems, skin issues like acne and weight gain. However, not all these claims are backed by science.
Some health benefits offered by hot water with honey and lemon would include the following –
It can help you in sickness
Drinking hot water with lemon and honey can be beneficial if you are down with the illness. Vitamin C would be helpful in improving your immunity. While lemon can be effective in improving the growth of white blood cells, honey reduces the severe coughs and other similar respiratory syndromes –, especially in children.
The glass of hot honey lemon water can be much soothing and will refresh you are sick. It can also soothe a sore throat and reduces the length of the common cold, as the studies have shown.
Help with Weight Loss
As we are already aware of, hot water improves your performance when it comes to a weight loss regime. We have already found that hot water improves the metabolism rate. Mixing honey and lemon can further improve this functionality. This can further enhance your chances of maintaining a good health. We have plenty of studies to substantiate these claims.
Staying hydrated is the key to be in proper shape. If you are properly hydrated, you are most likely not to be overweight.
Improve Digestive Health
Staying hydrated has another benefit of keeping your digestive system in good condition. Drinking honey lemon water would help you ease out constipation. In fact, the flavored drink like honey lemon water would be helpful in keeping children hydrated instead of plain water.
Researches have indicated that honey lemon water helps grow friendly bacteria in your guts to improve digestion.
Disadvantages of Drinking Hot Water
Well, like hot water has benefits, too much of it can result in issues as well. Some of the negative impacts that hot water can cause would include the following.
More Contaminants can Make it Impure
Contrary to popular belief, hot water can mix the contaminants really well enough. This can enhance the complications caused by them. If you are consuming water from rusted taps, it can result in more bad effects than the cold water.
Burn Internal Organs
Hot water can be risky enough in many cases. It can destroy the inner lining of the internal organs. They can even cause a few minor ulcers if you are consuming too hot water. Exercising caution in those circumstances would be beneficial.
Sleep Disorders
If you are already facing sleep issues, consuming hot water may not be a good option. It may tend to disrupt your sleep patterns further and can cause further issues.
In any case, while drinking hot water can have beneficial effects, it cannot be considered to be a magical cure for all your issues. Too hot water can cause damage to the inner lining of the esophagus or even burn your taste buds. Hot water should be a big NO if you are exercising or live in a hot climate. Researches have indicated that drinking hot water can reduce the thirst levels, and thus you run the risk of getting dehydrated.
Parting Thoughts on Benefits of Drinking Hot Water
Well, they were a few benefits of drinking hot water. We assume we have covered most of the aspects, making it helpful for you to understand the concepts. Needless to say, hot water can also have detrimental effects if you are not careful enough.
Check out the benefits and make sure you are taking it in the right spirit.
HAPPY DRINKING! Here is a toast to hot water!
A mom to 2 kids, Sandhya has been passionate about cooking and home decor since her early twenties. She loves spends more than enough time researching & then buying useful home & kitchen appliances and trying out new recipes.
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