Dump the iced coffee or tea for a steaming hot cup of cooling off

Cool off with a hot coffee. That wasn’t a typo. I don’t make the switch from piping hot lattes to iced ones when summer temperatures swelter, even though my family and friends think the heat has gotten to my head. If I’m crazy, so are the billions of men and women in India and China who sip hot tea no matter how scorching the weather gets.

Science actually supports the hard-to-swallow belief that a steaming beverage can help lower your body temperature when it’s sizzling outside.

A 2012 research team from the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics studied cyclists who were given water that ranged from icy to hot. They found that those who drank hot water (122 degrees Fahrenheit) while pedaling stored less heat in their bodies than the others.

Their bodies cooled off faster because they sweat more, as counterintuitive as that sounds. As sweat evaporates, it draws heat away from your body. So when the receptors in our tongues and mouths register the heat from a hot tea or coffee, they warn the brain that it’s getting hot in here and we need to activate our internal cooling system. Namely, sweating.

That’s why many countries with hot climates cook with chili peppers. The spicy food also triggers sweating and other cooling mechanisms.

There’s a catch, of course: the sweat needs to be able to evaporate quickly for the cooling effect to kick in. So if it’s especially humid and sticky out, or you’re wearing layers of clothes that trap the sweat, you are probably going to feel more uncomfortable sipping something hot over something frosty. And wiping sweat away versus letting it evaporate naturally also nixes the cooling effect.

So the ideal scenario for chilling out with a steaming beverage would be a hot, dry day when you’re wearing light clothes that lets sweat escape.

But to complicate things even more, you want to avoid guzzling drinks that are dangerously hot. The World Health Organization reported last month that “very hot beverages” at or above 149 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius) can cause cancer to develop in the esophagus. They believe that the burns on your food pipe caused by the scalding liquid are to blame. So let your drink cool just a bit before sipping.