Q & A Will a cold drink improve my performance during hot-weather competition?
Posted March 19th, 2007 at 12:29 PM by Martin Kennedy
Section: Nutrition, Hydration
It may. During hard exercise, particularly in hot weather, you sweat and lose a lot of water and salt. Your performance does not suffer until you lose a very large amount of fluid, about five percent of your body weight or more.
However, when you lose so much fluid that your performance suffers, you cannot catch up during that competition. That’s why you need to take in fluids during events that last more than 90 minutes. If your event lasts more than 2.5 hours, you also need to take in calories and salt.
According to a study from The University of Birmingham in England, cold drinks taste better so you will drink more (Experimental Physiology, September 2006). The researchers concluded that cold drinks also improve endurance during hot weather by acting as a heat sink, decreasing the rise in body temperature and therefore reducing the effects of heat stress.
This post is written by Dr. Gabe Mirkin, M.D. and used with permission. Dr. Mirkin is board certified in Sports Medicine and has practiced for over 40 years. He has completed more than 40 marathons and was a talk show host of a nationally-syndicated radio program for about 25 years. For more articles by Dr. Mirkin, please check out: www.DrMirkin.com
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Tags: body temperature, cold drink, fluids, heat sink, heat stress, hot weather, hydration, salt, sweat, water
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The Final Sprint
True. As much as possible I drink cold water after draining my water supply. It’s a lot refreshing when you drink cold drink. Also you’ll feel more revitilized compared to drinking drinks that are not cold, although you probably won’t care whether it’s cold or not if you are completely thirsty and dying for a drink
March 21st, 2007 at 6:04 am1. As with way too many exercise science papers, the subject pool is small (n=8).
2. The stats cited in the abstract (will have to get the full paper later) shows that the difference in core temperature was not statistically significant although it trended that way so I do not see how the authors can conclude that the cold drink acted as a heat sink. If you think about the volume of fluid consumed compared to the total volume of fluid in the body and its temperature I would be surprised if that leads to much of a change in temperature.
For the record, I prefer cold drinks and will tend to drink more of a cold fluid than a warm one in similar conditions and that seems to be pretty common. I just question the impact the temperature of the beverage on core temperature.
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March 24th, 2007 at 6:49 pm