Back away from the cold brew.
TikTok users are trading in their iced lattes for a new go-to drink to start the day, claiming a simple water hack has smoothed their digestion and even trimmed their waistlines.
The no-frills habit is part of the broader “Chinamaxxing” trend that has taken over the app in recent months, driven by Chinese American influencers spotlighting wellness practices rooted in East Asian culture that shape their daily routines.
“To all the Chinese baddies who said to drink a cup of hot water every morning, thank you, my stomach has not been this flat since I had the stomach bug Halloween 2016,” Blake Lynch (@nurseblake) said in a clip. “There is nothing in there.”
Others are extending the habit beyond the morning hours.
“I, too, am having hot water before I go to bed every night as my nightly wind down, because it helps with digestion,” RoRo (@roro_youraznbigsis) said in a video.
“As soon as you have the same hot water in the morning time, you will need to go to the bathroom immediately for your daily poop.”
So what’s behind the ritual — and does it actually work? That depends on who you ask.
“As a kid, my mom always started the day with warm lemon water or hot herbal teas, and she’d constantly tell me not to drink iced drinks first thing in the morning,” Lulu Ge, founder of Elix, a wellness brand inspired by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), previously told The Post.
She likens digestion to a “warm cooking pot.” Starting the day with warm liquids or cooked foods helps the system wake up and absorb nutrients.
“Cold drinks can dampen that digestive fire and leave you feeling bloated or sluggish,” Ge explained.
Western doctors say the reality is less clear-cut. Dr. Leybelis Padilla, a gastroenterologist, said there may be some truth to the claims, but the clinical research is limited.
“A few small studies have looked at this, especially in people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or functional dyspepsia,” she said.
Those conditions make the digestive system more sensitive, often triggering symptoms like gas, bloating, stomach discomfort, feeling full quickly or diarrhea.
“Most of these studies looked at whether drinking warm water versus cold water changed how people felt,” she said. “Overall, they found that cold water was more likely to trigger or worsen digestive symptoms.”
One study found that cold water slowed esophageal peristalsis — the muscle contractions that move food into the stomach — and delayed how quickly the stomach empties into the intestine.
Given that finding, it might seem logical that warm water would produce the opposite effect, but Padilla said those changes haven’t really translated in the limited research available on the topic.
“I take this all to mean that in certain people, cold water intake can possibly worsen symptoms especially in those with IBS or functional dyspepsia, but the opposite may not be true,” Padilla said.
The truth, she suspects, likely lies somewhere in the middle when it comes to digestive symptom improvement and drinking warm beverages.
“Most likely, by drinking enough volume of room temperature liquids, you can get the benefit you are looking for including that good morning bowel movement,” she said.
While bowel habits vary widely from person to person, experts generally consider a healthy range to be anywhere from three bowel movements a day to as few as one per week.
But if you’re thinking about swapping your morning cup of joe for a steaming mug of H2O, RoRo has a warning before you turn your kettle all the way up.
“Don’t go drinking boiling hot water, burning your insides, that’s not what we want,” the beauty and wellness influencer cautioned in a video.
“Drink whatever you’re comfortable with — warm, extra warm, if you can tolerate kind of hot, drink kind of hot water,” she advised, noting she prefers hers heated to around 120 to 140 degrees. “That might still be very hot to some people, but I’m made of Chinese steel, and that’s okay for me.”
