Why More People Are Starting Their Mornings With Warm Drinks
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Warm morning drinks can trigger parasympathetic response and may aid digestion indirectly.
- Green tea, broth and cacao can be lower‑stress alternatives to coffee for some people.
- Some swap iced coffee to lessen caffeine-driven stress and aid sleep in sensitive people.
The iced coffee era had a good run. Over the years, it’s practically become a personality type: the sweating cup on the morning commute (even in freezing winter temperatures), the Instagram flat lay, the reflex order at every coffee shop from 8am to 3pm. It still dominates menus and feeds all over the country, but something is shifting.
Quietly, a different category has begun showing up in the same spaces. Bone broth sipped from a mug. Matcha whisked slowly in a bowl. Ceremonial cacao stirred on the stove. Mushroom lattes brewed like tea. These aren’t niche wellness items anymore. The numbers behind them are growing fast and there’s a real cultural logic to why they’re landing now.
So why make the swap from cold to hot? What does science say, and how do you get started?
Warm drinks have been a staple for centuries
Before jumping into technical terms like cortisol and L-theanine, there’s a simpler observation worth making: the Western obsession with iced drinks is a genuine global outlier. Most cultures, across most of human history, have defaulted to warm ones as the gold standard.
In China, the preference for hot water predates modern medicine by millennia. Hot water dispensers are standard in schools, hospitals and offices. Restaurants default to hot tea, and the habit runs so deep it was reinforced during the Shanghai cholera epidemic in 1862, when boiling water became associated with safety and never really left. Traditional Chinese Medicine has long framed cold drinks as disruptive to the body’s natural balance.
India’s Ayurvedic tradition takes a similar view. The Ashtanga Hridayam, a classical Ayurvedic text written around the 7th century CE, explicitly describes warm water as deepana (stimulating hunger) and pachana (aiding digestion), framing cold drinks as disruptive to agni, the body’s digestive energy. Across much of Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, hot tea is simply what you drink. It’s offered to guests regardless of the season and signals care.
The iced coffee aesthetic, by contrast, is largely American in origin, born from drive-through culture and the equation of cold drinks with convenience and speed. That’s not wrong, exactly. But it’s worth noting that billions of people around the world have never made that trade.
Which raises an interesting question: is this trend actually something new or is it a slow correction back toward what most cultures never moved away from?
The caffeine tension nobody talks about
The appeal of iced coffee isn’t just habit. Caffeine is genuinely effective, and for most people most of the time, a daily coffee doesn’t present a serious problem. But there’s a specific dynamic worth understanding, particularly for people who are already stressed or sleeping poorly.
Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors, which signals the body to produce adrenaline and cortisol. Research by Lovallo et al. published in Psychosomatic Medicine found that caffeine increases cortisol secretion in people at rest and under stress, and while some tolerance develops in daily drinkers, the effect is never fully eliminated. A separate study by the same team found caffeine amplified stress responses throughout the day in habitual coffee drinkers, with effects lasting until bedtime.
For someone already dealing with high levels of stress, that matters. The warm functional drinks gaining traction either contain no caffeine at all, like bone broth and most mushroom blends, or they pair caffeine with compounds that can help take the edge off, like L-theanine in green tea and matcha. The appeal isn’t really anti-caffeine, it’s more about functional calibration.
There is something to the warmth itself
This is where it gets interesting. A 2008 scientific study by Williams and Bargh found that people who briefly held a hot coffee rated a stranger as having a warmer personality, without knowing the cup was influencing them. It’s a striking finding, though worth knowing that later attempts to replicate it have been mixed, so it’s best to hold this claim loosely.
What’s better established is the physical effect. Warmth hitting the mouth and throat activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the body’s rest-and-digest state. A 2018 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that people’s emotional responses to hot green tea were measurably more positive than to cold versions of the same drink. Cold drinks don’t trigger the same response, regardless of what’s in them. The warmth itself is doing something positive for you, before any ingredient even enters the picture.
What warm drinks do for digestion
The claim that cold drinks are hard on digestion has circulated long enough in wellness spaces to attract some deserved skepticism. The reality is more nuanced than either side tends to acknowledge.
There is some peer-reviewed evidence behind the idea that temperature affects digestion. A 1988 study published in Gut found that cold drinks measurably slowed the initial rate of gastric (stomach) emptying compared to body-temperature drinks, with the difference correlating directly to the drop in stomach temperature. Separate research suggests warm drinks may ease symptoms of dyspepsia (indigestion) and acid reflux in people who are prone to them.
The honest counterpoint is that results across studies are inconsistent, and by the time any drink reaches the intestines it has already returned to body temperature. For most healthy people, the practical difference is modest. Where warm drinks may have a clearer edge is through the indirect route: the parasympathetic activation that warmth triggers is the same state in which digestion functions best.
The more compelling connection is indirect. The parasympathetic state that warmth helps trigger is, literally, the state in which digestion works best. “Rest and digest” isn’t just a phrase. A warm drink before or during a meal may support digestion less through temperature mechanics and more through its effect on your nervous system.
Drinks worth knowing about
Green tea and matcha are where the ingredient evidence is strongest. L-theanine, an amino acid unique to the tea plant, promotes relaxed alertness without drowsiness. Multiple randomized controlled trials support its effect on stress and anxiety and a 2024 systematic review describes green tea consumption as an evidence-based approach to mental health.
One caveat most coverage skips: a typical cup of green tea contains 8 to 30mg of L-theanine, while trials tend to use 200mg or more. A single cup is not a therapeutic dose. But a daily tea habit still contributes to calm through warmth, ritual and lower caffeine than coffee. Even if green tea and matcha aren’t your thing, there’s near endless blends to choose from, including caffeinated brews like black teas or Yerba maté and more gentle herbal options like hibiscus, lemon balm or peppermint. The choice is yours.
Bone broth is all over the place recently, so it’s worth knowing what it actually delivers. The gut health case is the most credible: a 2024 review found its components support intestinal barrier function and reduce gut inflammation, particularly in those with inflammatory bowel conditions. Glycine, which is abundant in broth, also has solid evidence for improving sleep quality. What it won’t do is completely rebuild your joints or reverse skin aging.
While bone broth does contain more collagen than regular chicken or beef broth, a 2019 study found broth unlikely to provide enough collagen precursors to support synthesis in the body. You may consider adding a high-quality supplement if that’s your goal. For gut health and a genuinely nourishing warm drink, broth certainly earns its place. You may even try making a batch in your own kitchen to have on hand for the mornings.
Ceremonial cacao is the most interesting swap for anyone who likes the ritual of coffee but wants to get off the cortisol carousel. Cacao’s primary active compound is theobromine, which unlike caffeine, acts on the cardiovascular system rather than the central nervous system. The lift is slower, lasts longer and doesn’t drop you as harshly.
Multiple clinical trials have found meaningful reductions in negative affect from daily dark chocolate consumption, and a 2022 meta-analysis broadly supports those findings. The caveat: the studies used solid dark chocolate, not the hot drink format. The compounds are the same, but ceremonial cacao as a drink hasn’t been tested directly in trials. If you’d like to try out using cacao, you can add a tablespoon to your hot coffee for a lovely chocolatey boost or heat it on the stove with water or milk as a base to create a mineral-rich hot chocolate.
Adaptogenic mushroom drinks, including mushroom coffee, are where the hot drink trend runs furthest ahead of the evidence. Lion’s Mane has the most credible human data, with a 2009 randomized trial finding cognitive improvements in older adults over sixteen weeks, though the sample was small. Reishi is the bestseller but a Cochrane-adjacent review found insufficient evidence to recommend it for any specific condition. These are worth treating as exploratory. The traditional use across Chinese and Japanese medicine stretches back centuries and the research may catch up in time but isn’t quite there yet.
The thing the ingredient lists don’t capture
There’s a dimension to this trend that no amount of theobromine content or L-theanine milligrams can explain. These drinks require you to slow down. You can’t speed-whisk matcha while checking your phone. Warming bone broth takes a few deliberate minutes. Even measuring out a mushroom blend and waiting for the kettle is a small act of paying attention to your actions.
That pause is worth taking. The parasympathetic activation from warmth starts before the first sip, during the making of the drink itself. Cold coffee from a drive-through is designed for speed. These drinks are, structurally, for the opposite. And across China, India, Japan and most of the world, that’s always been part of the point.
What’s actually worth trying and how to start
Start with what has the best evidence floor. Green tea or matcha for the L-theanine plus lower caffeine. Bone broth if you want something savory and filling with real gut health backing. Cacao if you want a genuine coffee alternative with mood-supporting compounds and a completely different energy curve. Mushroom drinks if you’re curious and want to explore a bit further, with realistic expectations about what the research currently supports.
Pay attention to what you’re replacing, not just what you’re adding. If afternoon iced coffee is followed by jitteriness, a 6pm crash and disrupted sleep, the swap itself may produce noticeable changes before any specific ingredient does anything at all. Happy sipping.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
*This article contains general health information and is intended for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider if you have medical questions and before making any decisions or changes related to your health
This story was originally published February 18, 2026 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Why More People Are Starting Their Mornings With Warm Drinks."
