Things you should know about cooling down with a beer

It is now summer in northern hemisphere and many of us like getting a cold beer on hot days. Beer tastes good and having a cold beer really feels nice when it’s boiling hot outside. Furthermore, alcohol increases peripheral blood flow, which might help you cool down a bit, although it might make you feel warmer for a while. There is one thing though, all the alcoholic beverages dehydrate your body.

According to Dr Karl from ABC any given amount of beer will make you produce 60% more urine than the amount you just drank. For example 200 ml beer will produce 320 ml of urine output. This urine comes from the water already present in your body. The same is true for any other alcoholic beverage. This happens because the alcohol decreases the production of a hormone called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) which has the effect of increasing the production of urine. Even if we would drink plenty of water together or after drinking alcohol we would still end up dehydrated.

I’m not trying to tell you to stop drinking beer, far from it. You should just keep in mind that alcohol makes you lose water and drinking large amounts of it during very hot days when your body needs plenty of sweat can lead to dangerous situations. Ideally, you should drink water during the day and save the beer for the evening.