sore throat-warm or cold water

annoymage

like the title, i've been reading some article say warm water treat by stretch the muscles in your throat and won't hurt as much when coughing. and some(http://www.ehow.com/how_9506_relieve-sore-throat.html) say drink ice cold beverages or ice cream, but i can't find the reason. anyone knows why?

and so is it both okay for treating sore throat?

p/s, sorry if my english terrible

zhermes

These two solutions are trying to solve the problem in two different ways:
1) warm water tries to actually help your throat by relaxing the muscles and tissues, facilitating better fluid exchange etc etc.
2) cold water numbs your throat, relieving some of the discomfort. Depending on the cause of the sore-throat, cold things (especially milk-based like ice cream) will worsen the problem.

If the cause of the sore-throat is bacterial, gargling warm/hot salt-water is the best way to go for solving the problem. Hot tea with honey is also good at relieving the discomfort.

Yanick

Warmth leads to vasodilation and cold leads to vasoconstriction. There is no real clear answer which is better when. Do you want to vasodilate when there is plenty of inflammation/blood flow already present or would you want to vasoconstrict to aid in resolving the inflammation but at the expense of some blood flow which may prolong the disease process? There is also the issue of whether these effects are really pronounced enough to effect the process in one way or another. My gut feeling is that these interventions are more about comfort rather than really having a physiological effect to alter the course of the disease.

In my own experiences I have typically used warm tea and such for mild sore throat. However, about 2 years ago I came down with the worst flu/cold type of bug I've ever experienced. I had a fever of over 104 F, which would go down to about 103 F after 1gram of Tylenol. My throat was so sore I could not swallow anything except some warm tea. I was desperately trying to avoid swallowing so much that, without even realizing it, my mouth would fill up with saliva every so often and I would go to the bathroom to spit it out. In that situation my diet consisted of ice cream because the cold numbed my throat on the way down and wasn't painful to swallow at all. Fluids consisted of copious amounts of tea with honey. I needed to eat to keep my calories up as much as possible but I just could not manage to eat anything other than ice cream and such.

In the end I doubt that the cold/warm helped or didn't but I was able to get my fluids and calories in by utilizing these interventions. In my opinion, the fact that I was able to actually get something in me (food, fluids) way overpowered any type of effect that the temperature of those foods/fluids would have locally on my throat.