How can drinking hot tea help me feel better when I have a cold?

If you managed to walk away from the holidays without your nephew’s, aunt’s or fellow plane-passenger’s cold, good for you. But if not, here’s a quick way to feel better.

Brew yourself a cup of hot tea. Sure, it's a psychological comfort. But studies show it might provide much more than that when it comes to soothing your symptoms.

In a small study, drinking a hot, fruit-flavored beverage seemed to offer wider-ranging cold and flu relief than sipping a room-temperature drink did. Specifically, sore throats were better soothed, and fatigue and chills were kept more effectively at bay. So follow doctor’s orders and keep the liquids coming -- just warm them up first.

Researchers suspect that it was the taste, smell and temperature of the drink that did the trick, with the heat being particularly helpful at stimulating the production of throat-soothing saliva and mucus, although it’s possible that there was also some placebo effect in drinking a warm, fruit-flavored beverage.

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