Cold COmfort

The error: Drinking alcohol warms you up

This is entirely untrue – yet it is still commonly seen as an antidote to coldness in movies, and people still believe the myth about the St Bernard dogs with casks of liquor around their necks! In fact, when you drink alcohol, your body temperature drops! This is because alcohol allows more blood to reach the surface of the body, and more heat is radiated or conducted away. Any feeling of warmth experienced after drinking alcohol is explained by the fact that this flow of blood to the surface warms the skin and the ends of the sensory nerves in the skin, and these convey to the brain a sensation of warmth. The fact that alcohol actually lowers the temperature of the body was first announced by Sir B. Ward Richardson in 1866 to the British Association. [Source]