Can alcohol keep you warm? No, alcohol can’t keep you warm. It might make you feel warm for a short period of time, but it will actually make you lose heat in the long term.
There is often a scene in a movie where someone comes in from the cold and has a quick shot of whisky to warm themselves up. There is also the legend of the St Bernard dog rescuing people stuck on mountains with a keg of brandy strapped it its collar. The idea that alcohol warms us up, though, is just in our heads.
– Incidentally, a keg and a cask are both containers for holding drinks, usually alcoholic, but they are slightly different. A keg is smaller, round, and usually made of metal. Casks are slightly more curved to keep sediment at the bottom and are usually made of wood. Casks are used to ferment drinks and kegs are often used to transport the finished, carbonated product. –
When you drink alcohol, it has five effects on our body temperature. The first is on our surface. We lose heat through our blood vessels into the air. When we are too hot, our blood vessels widen to let more blood flow close to the skin. This is called vasodilation. The blood flows close to the skin and the heat energy can either pass through the skin and into the air or pass into sweat and be carried away by evaporation. You can tell when this happens because the extra blood next to the skin makes a person turn red. Hot people are often red. Drunk people are also often red for the same reason. This happens because the liver can only metabolize roughly one unit of alcohol an hour out of the bloodstream. Until it has been removed, the alcohol can move around the blood, and alcohol encourages the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels to create nitric oxide. This nitric oxide is a relaxant and it makes the muscles around the blood vessels relax, which widens them. Because the blood vessels have dilated and heat is being transferred out of the body, the brain assumes we are hot. We have a lot of heat sensors in our skin and they react with the heat coming out of our own body, tricking our brain into believing we are hot, which is where the idea of an alcoholic drink warming us up comes from. In fact, we feel hot, but we are losing heat.
The second effect is to make us sweat. This is connected to the previous effect. The body thinks it is hot, so it goes into cool down mode. It produces sweat to remove more heat from the body. Although, of course, the body is not actually hot and it is trying to hard to remove heat that it needs to keep. The third effect is internal heat. When the liver works to metabolize the alcohol in the blood, it breaks down the molecules and one of the byproducts is heat. The heat coming from your liver causes your body to feel warmer, which tricks your brain into thinking it isn’t losing heat. Your overall core temperature will be falling, but the brain will think that it is warm and not do anything to reverse the situation.
The fourth thing that alcohol does, if you drink a lot of it, is that it reduces your ability to shiver. Shivering is a necessary response to a low body temperature and contracting the muscles produces warmth. If your body temperature is dropping, but you can’t shiver, it can be dangerous. And the last thing that alcohol does is it interferes with the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that regulates our body temperature. If we are too hot, it stimulates the blood vessels to relax and starts sweating. If we are too cold, it stimulates the blood vessels to contract and starts shivering. With alcohol, the hypothalamus doesn’t respond to the signals that the body is losing temperature and does nothing to stop it.
So, if you are drinking a lot and you are outside, it can be dangerous. If you are inside, then you will probably be fine. A further problem is that people who are drinking tend to overestimate their safety and their ability to do things. They might feel that they will be ok in the cold. They can also pass out or fall asleep in exposed places. A sober person might have difficulty staying warm in those locations, but a drunk person will have even more trouble. There are several hundred thousands of alcohol related deaths annually in the US alone, and a fair percentage of those are deaths from exposure. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://asanalodge.com/does-alcohol-keep-you-warm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/03/22/alcohol-warm-body-temperature
https://www.nature.com/articles/hr2009226
https://chatgpt.com/c/68881beb-8064-8321-a93b-928d82a50adc
https://www.livescience.com/55435-does-drinking-alcohol-warm-your-body.html
https://alcohol.org/health-effects/warm-flushed-skin
https://zinniahealth.com/substance-use/alcohol/feeling-hot-afterwards
Photo by Polina ⠀: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-glasses-of-alcoholic-beverages-7283410/