Why does alcohol make you feel warm?

📓 The short answer

Alcohol feels warming because ethanol lowers the activation threshold of heat-sensitive receptors, fooling your nervous system into thinking you’re overheating. Your body then attempts to cool itself by dilating blood vessels and sending warm blood to the skin’s surface.

📚 The long answer

Normally, a beverage needs to be warm to make you feel warm — but not alcohol. Whether it's a burning sensation from taking a shot or a more gentle feeling of heat as you sip a glass of wine, alcohol makes you feel warm. Why is that?

Reason #1: Alcohol alters the nerve receptors that detect heat.

Alcohol tricks our bodies into feeling warm. As you swallow ethanol, it binds with a specific protein in your sensory neurons called TRPV1.

TRPV1 is a heat-activated ion channel that usually only opens at temperatures above 109°F (43°C). But ethanol drops this heat threshold to roughly 93°F (34°C), or below your normal body temperature. In other words, alcohol causes your sensory neurons to start a false alarm that you're overheating.

Interestingly, TRPV1 is the same protein responsible for the burning sensation we feel when we eat hot peppers. In both cases, your body is tricked into thinking you're overheating and so you feel a burning sensation in your throat, esophagus, and stomach.

Reason #2: Alcohol causes more blood to flow to your skin.

When your body thinks it's overheating, it cools itself by widening blood vessels near the skin, in a process called vasodilation.

Vasodilation is the widening of blood vessels to allow more blood flow near the surface of your skin. The extra blood flow makes your skin feel warmer and causes you to look flushed when you've been drinking.

Does alcohol actually make you warmer?

So alcohol makes you feel warmer, but does it actually increase your body temperature?

No. Alcohol lowers your temperature by tricking your body into thinking it's overheating.

When you're cold, your body conserves heat by constricting blood vessels near the surface of your skin — this is why your fingers and toes often feel coldest first. But when alcohol triggers vasodilation to cool your "overheated" body, your core temperature drops.

Researchers have measured this effect with a 1995 cold-water immersion experiment. Two groups of healthy male volunteers were randomly assigned to drink either one liter of a 6.3% ABV alcoholic beverage or a non-alcoholic placebo. Then both groups were immersed in 68°F (20 °C) water for one hour. The group that drank alcohol experienced a -52% lower drop in average body temperature than the placebo group.

Besides causing heat loss through vasodilation, alcohol suppresses other natural responses to the cold, like shivering and feeling the need to put on warm clothes. Because of this temperature-reducing effect, alcohol is a well-known risk factor for hypothermia despite making you feel warm in the moment.

🧠 Bonus brain points

Did Saint Bernard rescue dogs used to carry brandy?

The idea of alpine rescue dogs carrying little barrels of brandy around their necks to warm up avalanche victims is more myth than fact. The rumor got started in 1820 after Edwin Landseer painted this image portraying two dogs, one with a brandy barrel, rescuing a man trapped in the snow.

While these rescue dogs often carried food and water for victims, the monks of the Great St. Bernard's Hospice (where the dogs historically served as rescue animals) have refuted the notion that the dogs carried alcohol.

--- Thanks for reading this week's newsletter! If you have any thoughts, questions, or favorite GIFs, my inbox is always open. Just hit reply to send me a note! :) ​ All my best, Caitlin ​Click here to read five facts about Caitlin​

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​Sources for this week's newsletter​

🌐 Wikipedia article of the week

​Ten-Cent Beer Night​

"Ten-Cent Beer Night was an ill-fated promotion held by Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians during a game against the Texas Rangers at Cleveland Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on June 4, 1974. The promotion was meant to improve attendance at the game by offering cups of beer for just 10 cents each (equivalent to $0.65 in 2025), a substantial discount on the regular price of 65 cents (equivalent to $4.24 in 2025), with a limit of six beers per purchase but no limit on the number of purchases made during the game.
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As the game proceeded, on-field incidents and massive alcohol consumption further agitated the crowd, many of whom threw lit firecrackers, streaked across the playing field and openly smoked marijuana. Most sober fans departed early, leaving an increasingly drunk and unruly mob behind. Continued degradation of the game culminated in a riot in the ninth inning when fans rushed the field."

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👀 Catch up on other curious questions

• ​How are speed limits determined?​​
• ​Why does getting hit while cold hurt more?​​
• ​How is non-alcoholic beer made?​​

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