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QUIZ show contestants should refrain from taking nervous sips of water.
Simply drinking water at the wrong time can impair our mental performance, say
British researchers.

Experimental psychologist Peter Rogers and his colleagues from the University
of Bristol asked 60 volunteers to rate how thirsty they felt. They then tested
their reactions with a task that involved pressing buttons in response to
prompts on a screen. The volunteers either drank nothing before the test or had
a cupful (330 millilitres) of tap water, chilled to 10 掳C.

People who were thirsty at the beginning of the test and took a drink
performed 10 per cent better than those who drank nothing. But the 鈥渉it rate鈥� of
those who weren鈥檛 thirsty to start with dropped by 15 per cent after a
drink.

Drinking too much water might affect your ability to drive or perform
intellectually demanding tasks, says Rogers. 鈥淚f your performance is changing by
15 per cent, that鈥檚 quite a big effect,鈥� agrees psychologist Nick Neave of the
University of Northumbria in Newcastle.

Rogers thinks that the temperature of the drinks might explain part of the
effect. 鈥淲e like our drinks hot or cold. The body has to divert resources to
deal with the local cooling effect in the gut.鈥�