Why drinking cold water can shorten your life

Editor's note: Sarki Gadah, the NAIJ News partner blogger, explains why drinking cold water with meal is dangerous to health.

Gadah is the founder of Psychologist Magazine, which exists to help improve the standard of human experience in areas of health, parenting and relationship.

Food is an essential element necessary for healthy growth and maintenance of our body. Unfortunately, what most of us ingest ends up intoxicating us rather than nourishing us.

Washing down meals with cold drinks has become a norm in this generation; cafeterias are not helping the situation either – they serve chilled drinks with virtually every meal.

Drinking cold water or any kind of drink with meals or after meals is a craving for sure, but you should know that cold drinks between meals or immediately after meals can be harmful.

Ayurvedic doctors clearly describe drinking cold water with meals as a bad practice. 

To further portray their point, they asserted that cold drink extinguish body mechanisms and enzymes involved in digestion, and promote toxins that develop as the byproduct of poor digestion and metabolism.

Robert Chuckrow, in his article, “The Importance of Optimal Digestion” supported this assertion. He posited that liquids, with or following meals dilute digestive enzymes. Cold liquids are even worst because the digestive enzymes become very inefficient at lower temperature.

Fats do not dissolve in water. Drinking cold liquids during or after eating can actually harden the oil in the consumed food and form a big fat molecule that is not easily digested. When this happen, bile protrudes to prevent the molecule from sticking together thereby increasing digestion time; thus, yeast and bacteria have more time to multiply.

If harmful bacteria dominate the intestines, digestion suffers, candida yeast grows out of control, and essential vitamins and enzymes are not produced. This weakens the immune system, leading to an increased risk of serious diseases ranging from diabetes to cancer.

Experts recommend sipping hot water with meals. Hot water improves digestion and appears to help open the countless channels where toxins can collect. Another option is to stick with water at room temperature and avoid drinks like alcohol during meals.

Dr. Stephen Sinatra further recommends hot ginger tea. According to him, ginger enhances digestion and is a great remedy for nausea. Again, when you ingest another food before the last meal you took has been sufficiently digested, your stomach empties it prematurely, releasing partly digested food into the intestines.

This action results in the absorption of partly digested proteins which can cause degenerative disease (a disease characterised by progressive deterioration of tissues or organs of the body) e.g arteriosclerosis, diabetes mellifluous, or osteoarthritis. Other factors affecting digestion include: stress, physical activity immediately after meals, poor or insufficient chewing, over feeding etc.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of NAIJ NEWS.

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