Effects of Drinking Ice Cold Water on Metabolic Rate
Gabriel Gamo, Kim Maldonado, and Monica Vivar
Department of Biological Sciences
Saddleback College
Mission Viejo, CA 92692
Abstract
A healthy lifestyle has rapidly become a priority in modern culture and an easy jumpstart to that lifestyle is daily consumption of water. One of the important beneficiaries of regular consumption of water is an increase in metabolism since the body must burn calories to heat the water to the core temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius. The amount of energy utilized to compensate for the consumed water is dependent on the temperature of the water. Therefore, it was predicted that consuming ice-cold water would yield a higher increase in metabolic rate than the consumption of room-temperature water since more energy is required to heat up a cold water sample to the core temperature. Ten subjects fasted for 8-10 hours and a basal metabolic rate was taken. Subjects drank 500 mL of room-temperature water (20.0oC) and forty-five minutes later, a final reading was taken. The same procedure was repeated but with 500 mL of ice-cold water (3oC). The difference in metabolic rate between the ten subjects was averaged for room-temperature water (92.8 ± 17.3 mg/L/s) and ice-cold water (87.6± 40.8 mg/L/s). Ice-cold water does not increase metabolic rate more than room-temperature water (p = 0.4539, paired t-test for means).
Introduction
Water is the most important nutrient that every living creature requires in order to survive. To aid in a healthy lifestyle it is encouraged to drink water every day since consuming water has many benefits; for example, water has the ability to increase metabolic rate, and increase the systolic blood pressure of the consumer (1). The ability of water to increase metabolic rate, at room temperature (20°C) and ice cold water (3°C), is going to be analyzed in this experiment. It can be predicted that the consumption of ice cold water will increase metabolic rate significantly higher than the consumption of room-temperature water after forty-five minutes. This is because after drinking water, the core temperature of the body will decrease and undergo homeostasis to bring the temperature back to normal (37oC). It then can be predicted that consuming colder water will decrease the core temperature more and the body will then need to use more energy to return to homeostasis.
The optimal time to measure metabolic rate is forty-five minutes after consuming a food or drink item. When calculating an accurate metabolic rate, there are several factors that have to be taken into consideration such as muscle mass, age, and body size just to name a few are factors that affect metabolism in humans (2). Since there are so many factors affecting metabolism throughout the day the subjects were asked to fast the night before and to avoid any strenuous activity. Furthermore, to ensure consistency in a controlled environment, all testing was taken in the same room to avoid discrepancies in environments.
Materials and Methods
Ten adult subjects were used in this study. Subjects were students or staff at Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, California. All measurements were made on 11 through 18 November 2015. Subjects were approached and asked to participate in the study and after agreement was reached, a meeting date was set. Subjects were told to fast for 8-10 hours before testing on both days. Prior to testing a spirometer and Pascal device with CO2 concentration and temperature probes were setup. Each subject patiently waited for their turn without doing any vigorous activity. Once it was their turn, the subject exhaled 10 liters worth of air into the spirometer and was captured. From there the experimenters placed the CO2 and temperature probes into the source of air output and allowed the air to be released and passed through the probes. CO2 concentration and the temperature of the exhaled air was recorded on the Pascal device and data was transferred onto a USB drive. This data was saved under “Resting Metabolic Rate.” This procedure was repeated for each subject. After all subjects have been measured for their resting metabolic rate each subject drank 500 milliliters of room-temperature water. After thirty minutes of non-vigorous activity another air sample will be taken following the same procedure as the “Resting Metabolic Rate.” On the next day the same procedure was followed as the first day except instead of room-temperature water the subjects consumed 500 milliliters of ice-cold water. All observations and any data not collected on the Pascal device were recorded in a lab notebook. Data was transferred into Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington) where all further statistical manipulations were performed.
Results
The basal metabolic rate and the metabolic rate after the consumption of water collected in a spirometer were analyzed using Pasco GLX. The values projected by the Pasco GLX were run through statistical analysis to determine the mean differences in metabolic rate after the consumption of room temperature and ice cold water.
The statistical analysis performed on the values projected by the Pasco GLX revealed that the metabolic rate increased by 92.8 ± 17.3 mg/L/s after the consumption of room temperature water. The statistical analysis indicated that the metabolic rate also increased after the consumption of ice cold water by 87.6± 40.8 mg/L/s. A one-tailed, paired t-test was performed (p=0.4539) and it revealed that there is no significant difference in the increase of metabolic rate after the consumption of room temperature or ice water (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Mean difference in metabolic rate after the consumption of room temperature and ice cold water (n=10).The mean difference in metabolic rate after the consumption of room temperature water is 92.8 ± 17.3 mg/L/s. The mean difference in metabolic rate after the consumption of ice water is 87.6± 40.8 mg/L/s. Error bars are mean ± SEM.
Discussion
Based on the collected data, there is no significant difference in the metabolic rate (p=0.4539) of subjects after the consumption of room temperature water and ice cold water. The result do not support the initial hypothesis stating that metabolic rate will increase significantly after the consumption of ice cold water. One possible reason that leads to the rejection of the hypothesis is that the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of the ice cold water to a normal body temperature (37°C) is only eight calories more than the amount of energy required to process room temperature water (6).
A common assumption is that drinking ice cold water can be used as a significant source to increase metabolic activity; however, the degree of increase in metabolic activity differs from person to person. The reasons why the degree of increase in metabolic activity differs in each person is due to several factors such as age, gender, diet, body size, and lifestyle. As people age the metabolic rate generally slows down due to loss of muscle tissue, and hormonal changes as well as neurological changes. People with a larger body size tend to have a faster basal metabolic activity because they have more surface area to regulate and sustain at a constant temperature. Individuals with a larger mass tend to have larger organs and fluid volume. Gender plays a role because males tend to have a bigger body size than females. People with a healthy more active life style burn more calories at rest compared to individuals with a less active life style.
All data were collected and recorded from ten to eleven in the morning to keep a controlled experiment. Basal metabolic rate is best measured in the morning and after eight to ten hour fasting period. Due to the fact that the subjects were not undergoing any strenuous activity, basal metabolic rate was accurately measured. All subjects were students at Saddleback College and were enrolled in the same biology class. Data was collected during the lab portion of Biology 3B, General Biology. The day the readings for the consumption of room temperature were taken, a Dive Lab was taking place at the same time. Students were required to submerge a portion of their head into room temperature and warm water. The students were up and moving during the lab period. The day the readings for the consumption of ice water were taken, a lecture on plants was taking place. Each student was sitting in a chair and listening to the lecture. The amount of activity occurring on the first day of sample collection could have played a role in the skewness of the greater increase in metabolic rate for the consumption of room temperature water as opposed to ice water.
In order to continue this study, changes would have to be taken into consideration. A possible change can be to have the volunteers consume ice (0°C) and room temperature water (20°C), and increase the quantity of water consumed. Testing subjects with similar body size and mass can also impact the data to collect more comparable results. The removal of other affecting components, such as only testing one specific gender, can also have significant impact in the result. Other further studies ideas can be to follow the same procedure, but compare the differences in metabolic rate of the two genders of same age group.
References
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Sharma, Susanne Klaus, Friedrich C. Luft, Jens Jordan, 2003. Water-Induced Thermogenesis. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 88(12):6015-6019.
2. Brown, J.H., West, G.B., Savage, V.M., Charnov, E.L. 2001. Effects of Size and
Temperature on Metabolic Rate. University of New Mexico: Department if Biology. 2248-51.
3. Crawley, Peter, Nahush Mokadam, Brian Weiner. 2010. The Ice Diet. Annals of Internal
Medicine. Vol. 153 (4): 279.
4. Henry, CKJ. 2005. Basal Metabolic Rate Studies in Humans: Measurement and
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5. Roubenoff, Roenn, Virginia A. Hughes, Gerard E. Dallal, Mirium E. Nelson, et al. The
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Review Form
Department of Biological Sciences
Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, CA 92692
Author (s): Gabriel Gamo, Kim Maldonado, and Monica Vivar
Title: Effects of Drinking Ice Cold Water on Metabolic Rate __
Summary
Summarize the paper succinctly and dispassionately. Do not criticize here, just show that you understood the paper.
The researchers wanted to test to see if either drinking cold or room temperature water would affect the metabolic rate of their test subjects. Ten test subjects were asked to blow into a spirometer to calculate their initial basil metabolic rate and then asked to drink 500 ml of room temperature water. After 30 min, the subjects were asked to blow into the spirometer again to calculate their metabolic rates. The process, was then repeated again on a second day with the cold water. Statistical analysis were run and there was no significant difference between the cold water and the room temperature.
General Comments
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The researchers did their background research well and source citations were correct. I thought that the explanations on how they performed their calculations and statistical analysis. I think that their project is relevant today because so many people are trying to find new and more creative ways to burn calories and get healthy.
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