By Sola Adeyeye
The warning about drinking cold water has been going round for years now powered by the endless capacity of Internet circulation. It is a total hoax! It is an example of how many untruths and hoaxes are perpetuated via the Internet just like the recent silly warning about the Equinox heat wave.
A human being like all mammals is homeothermic, an animal with constant body temperature. Even when you drink very cold water or hot water, by the time it gets to your stomach, it would be at or very near body temperature. If you try to drink water whose temperature is dangerously cold or hot, your tongue will reflexively spit it! In any case, food does not get absorbed in the stomach. The stomach is a container for mixing food as it is churned by the rhythmic contractions of three sets of muscles of the stomach walls (the longitudinal muscles, the circular muscles and the oblique muscles all of which are named by their orientation).
Churning makes a soupy emulsion of ingested food which are then passed through the pylorus (the bottom end of the stomach) to the duodenum (the upper end of the small intestine). The stomach is extremely acidic because of the high concentration of hydrochloric acid. This inactivates most digestive enzymes. The exception is pepsin which acts maximally in an acidic environment. Regardless of the temperature of the water you drink, lipids (fats and their relatives) are NEVER absorbed in the stomach.
As food leaves the stomach for the intestine, it is mixed with secretions from the liver, pancreas and gall bladder before entering the small intestine. These secretions neutralize the acid with bicarbonates. They also include enzymes and soapy salts called bile which help to break fats up into smaller entities to increase the surface area through which enzymes can act. Now that the acids are gone, enzymes like trypsin and lipases coating the surface of the small intestine are free to act.
Most food absorption takes place in the small intestine which has three parts, the duodenum, the jejunum and the ileum. Each of these parts is a specialized region for absorbing particular food types. A common exam question in anatomy and also histology (study of tissues) is to ask students to identify the junction of each segment of the small intestine. Or to ask for what are absorbed in a segment to which the examiner has pointed. Suffice to say that the deposition of fats around particular junctions are diagnostic features.
If you are concerned about clogging your system, you should watch what you eat. The temperature of the water you drink has nothing to do with the temperature or digestive fate of your gastric (stomach) contents!
View Comments (1)
Thanks for this clarification.