A mulled wine helps against the winter cold at the Christmas market – this myth persists at least. However, you can find out here why you should avoid mulled wine when you are cold.
Mulled wine is one of the classic hot drinks at Christmas time. Many people also find the warm wine to be an effective protection against the cold. After all, a sip immediately creates a pleasantly warm feeling in the body. However, this is a fallacy. Whether grog, mulled wine or cocoa with a shot – alcohol causes our body to cool down even more.
That’s why alcohol doesn’t warm you up in winter
According to the Federal Center for Health Education (BzgA), the fact that we perceive alcoholic beverages as warming is due to the fact that alcohol dilates the blood vessels in the skin. As a result, more blood flows to the surface of the body. We feel so warmer for a moment. But actually, our body only transports heat from the inside to the outside. It extracts heat from the internal organs and transfers it to the surface of the skin instead. From there we quickly release them into the air. As a result, our body temperature drops, we cool down and are more susceptible to colds.
The cooling effect of alcohol is of course particularly great when we consume alcoholic beverages outdoors and at low temperatures. So mulled wine is a particularly bad idea at the Christmas market.
It becomes particularly dangerous when heavily drunk people are outside in winter. Because of the alcohol, they no longer feel the loss of heat and cool down more and more unnoticed. In the worst case, they can freeze to death.
This is how you get really warm: mulled wine alternatives
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / kaheig)
If you want to warm up with a drink, you should better use non-alcoholic hot drinks. Many Christmas markets offer warm apple or pear juice with cinnamon or ginger as an alternative to mulled wine. The spices also warm you up with their sharp aromas. Because according to the BzgA, hot spices stimulate the blood circulation in your organs and thus ensure more heat inside the body.
You can find recipes for aromatic and warming hot drinks in winter here, for example:
- apple punch
- children Tea
- hot toddy
- chai tea
- Make ginger tea yourself
- rosemary tea
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