You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/upshot/no-you-do-not-have-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water-a-day.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

by tchalla • 11 years ago

141 125 11 years ago

mangeletti• 11 years ago

Without any disrespect to the author, why don't we all just start thinking for ourselves when it comes to our health, rather than being told contradictory information every 3 years by mainstream media?

One minute it's best to eat ice cream for breakfast; the next minute we shouldn't eat any carbs at all; then we should start drinking red wine every day; then more water; then less water, etc. It's as if we're just a big experiment or some sort of inside joke to the mainstream media.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

That is the beauty of science, no matter what I want to do I can find some study supporting it!

ska• 11 years ago

You often can, but they are not fungible.

atomical6• 11 years ago

The idea that you shouldn't eat any carbs is put out there by quacks like Peter Attia. There is plenty of evidence to suggest a plant-based diet high in carbohydrate is the best for health.

meowface• 11 years ago

Health aside, some people report cutting carbs entirely or almost entirely helps them lose weight. As for whether it's "healthy", who really knows, but it appears to be statistically significant when it comes to weight.

belorn2• 11 years ago

best health for whom? There is a lot of variance in metabolism between people, and even more ways the body can react to different diets. There are people whose digestion track that are too efficient and those that are too inefficient, and a high carbohydrate diet will have a radical different impact for each of those. Even for everyone else with a healthy metabolism we must ask what effect if any a high carbohydrate diet does and if there is any correlation in that group for improved health or not.

arpa4• 11 years ago

Well you shouldn't let mainstream media think for you ever and not only for matters regarding your health.

pdpi• 11 years ago

You can just remove "mainstream" from that post. It's of course fine to defer to experts on matters you know nothing about, but you really shouldn't let other people do your thinking for you at all, ever.

dekhn3• 11 years ago

Are we all experts who are capable of thinking for ourselves ("thinking for ourselves" seems to equal: inspecting the primary literature, or review literature, and coming to a conclusion)? No, we're not.

Thinking for yourself is untenable- we need scientists who are experts in analyzing data to provide specific suggestions, and disseminate those in the media. Unfortunately, there is little consequence to reporting false conclusions, or inaccurate health data, so I don't see any change forthcoming.

mdpopescu• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, do you realize that the same thing can be said about religion? You don't know enough about it - definitely not as much as the people who specialize in it - so you should listen to your priest on the subject. Or politics: just pick a party and follow its lead, politics is a complex subject and you can't know as much as the professionals.

5h2• 11 years ago

"Thinking for yourself is untenable"

Well, that's the best thing I've read all day.

ChrisArgyle• 11 years ago

Publishing misleading health studies wouldn't be so risk-free if your average American could easily distinguish a legitimate expert opinion from a media/commercial one.

Unfortunately most Americans don't have access to a quality health education necessary to make that distinction.

toyg2• 11 years ago

At the end of the day, the average not-athlete person who just wants to stay healthy should just remember that magic word: "moderation". Everything is good as long as you don't have too much of it, and for the basic necessities (water), just follow what your body tells you instead of ignoring/suppressing it. You won't get fat because you've had 7 glasses of water rather than $MAGIC_NUMBER$, so there is no point in obsessing about these.

If you are an athlete, of course, things are different; but in that case you should probably talk to professionals, not blindly trust mainstream magazines.

knodi123• 11 years ago

Of course, this advice should only be followed in moderation; for instance, there's no healthy amount of trans-fats.

makmanalp• 11 years ago

I mostly agree with this point of view, with the small caveat that what constitutes moderate is not always obvious - I remember coming to the US for the first time and being in awe as to how large portions were, for example.

TallGuyShort• 11 years ago

There was an article a few months ago, I think on HN, with a headline to the effect of "Scientists link <some chemical> to <some mental health issue>". Clicking through a few links to get to a more authoritative source, and it sounded more like "Our results show a correlation with a larger uncertainty than we'd like to see, and this contradicts a similar study done previously". People need to understand the statistical nature of these studies and what conclusions that should be drawing. IMO an understanding of correlation vs. causation, factors, levels and control groups, etc. should be part of any decent education (i.e. well before college). We can't expect mainstream media to help of it's own accord.

belorn2• 11 years ago

It does look like that the near future will have more individualized health advice rather than generic one-line suggestions regarding nutritions and diets. The problem looks from my personal point of view that we are lacking measuring tools which can help identify what status the body is in and how it reacts to changes, and from there having the medical expertise to understand the whole picture.

paulojreis6• 11 years ago

The problem here is your reliance on mainstream media for this kind of information.

It's a sad state of affairs, I know, but you simply cannot trust mainstream media for this. If a compound that - per chance - exists in beer is discovered to influence lipolysis in vitro , then mainstream media will tell you to drink a beer to get lean. And it's not only mainstream media fault; universities and research centres PR departments will probably report it in the same way, under the disguise of "making it friendly to the average Joe".

This doesn't mean, however, that you should strictly "think for yourself". Of course, you're not supposed to follow everything blindly, but if you're not an health expert (or even if you are!), It's better to trust authoritative sources and your physicians.

sdoering3• 11 years ago

but you simply cannot trust mainstream media for this.

Can you trust them for any real information? In my eyes mainstream media is there to tell stories. Oftentimes bedtime stories for sheepwalkers.

But the truth (TM) - well whatever that may be, I do not see it in media. At least not very often.

Regarding the "trust your physician"-part: I would even take their advice with a very big grain of salt. At least looking at my own experience and the experiences of my significant other in this regard. (And I know, anecdotes not evidence.)

CJefferson• 11 years ago

How do we "think for ourselves"? Come up with independant reasoning?

Lots of things are highly non-obvious. Vitamins weren't discovered until the 20th century. Many baby's lives are improved by their mothers taking folic acid. I would never guess how few calories there are in things like raspberries or strawberries without having been told about it.

Certainly there is lots of terrible health advice, and it's a major issue, telling people to "only read good advice" seems like the worst advice I've ever heard -- obviously we would all only read the good advice if we knew what that was!

koonsolo2• 11 years ago

I think most of it is actually obvious. Healthy foods: vegetables, fruits, fish, non processed meat. Unhealthy foods: candy, soda, deserts, alcohol, lots of butter, ... .

The biggest issue for most people is not that they don't know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. The problem is to eat the healty foods and stay away from the unhealty ones, which is quite a challenge.

whistlerbrk• 11 years ago

What you're saying is undoubtedly true but I think the commenter was also trying to state "what's right for some people isn't right for everybody" that is, every body is different.

mpclark• 11 years ago

It's not a joke to the media, but fundamentally their job is to report new things. Not to take a view on the things, or check them for truthiness or flawed methodology -- just to report them.

(Your choice of media will determine how much extra value in terms of checking, discrimination etc is added to the news you see reported)

But they like telling you to forget what you know and take on board $newfact because it is easy copy (scientists say so!) and it gets pageviews/sells papers.

andrepd4• 11 years ago

We shouldn't think for ourselves about our health (I wouldn't prescribe myself medicine, after all), nor should we listen to what mainstream media has to say. I thought it was common knowledge that for people actually interested in staying healthy the best thing to do is ignore the fads publicized on media.

Just listen to your doctor, or research medical papers yourself.

fooqux2• 11 years ago

Mainstream media? Sure, I agree. But listening to reports on actual science, I disagree.

Saying that people should "start thinking for themselves" is disingenuous I believe. For one, this is how we get shit like faith healing, homeopathy, healing crystals and so on. "Normal" people don't have the resources to test a hypothesis, nor the time in most cases. Say you have cancer. What's better? Thinking for yourself and eating a naked mole rat every day for dinner because "they don't get cancer"? Or read some reports and research that apply to your case, and go to a doctor armed with some extra information that will help you both make an informed decision about a treatment?

The problem lies entirely at the feet of the media. Lack of scientific training and a desire to create interesting, attention-grabbing headlines makes for situations exactly what you're complaining about. But this is no reason to eschew science. Science is doing what it does: conducting studies that only test for the smallest amount of variables as possible. It'll be a long time before science will be able to perfectly say "a human of type foo must live exactly like this to achieve maximum potential in life". This is a huge ever-changing puzzle, and while we might have the edges built (my grandma taught me you always put the edges together first) we don't even have all the pieces out of the box. Science finds a piece with a tiny flower on it and the media happily exclaims the puzzle is a picture of a garden.

jazzyk2• 11 years ago

"The problem lies entirely at the feet of the media."

No, not entirely. You assume scientists are objective and have no agenda. A lot of research is "sponsored" by corporate interests. The first paragraph one should read in a research report is the "source of funding" disclosure, then adjust for bias (or ignore entirely).

leonroy• 11 years ago

Didn't 'studies' proclaim the benefits of polyunsaturated fats like margarine over butter in the 70s and 80s and then go and reverse position recently?

Considering the amount of 'bad' science about (poor quality studies or those with an agenda) I think there's a lot to be said for common sense. Good quality food, as close to its natural form as possible, eat it in moderation and exercise accordingly.

yellowapple4• 11 years ago

Thinking for yourself and eating a naked mole rat every day for dinner because "they don't get cancer"?

I bet naked mole rats taste great. I wouldn't hold it against anyone.

That said, the problem runs even deeper than what you indicate: "mainstream media" (and even not-so-mainstream media) also tends toward things like faith healing and magic crystals and "a $GEOLOCATION_RESULT mom discovered this one stupid trick and doctors HATE her!" because humans are enamored by the extraordinary and tend to give extraordinary things undue attention. It's rare to find a news organization that doesn't fall victim to this for the simple reason that they are run by humans who - more often than not - have difficulty identifying and addressing such biases, and in turn inadvertently pass them on to their readers and viewers.

This is the same reason why Peter Popoff - despite having been uncovered as a fraud decades ago - is still in business, getting paid programming on the Discovery Channel while selling "Chernobyl water" that's probably from some tap in Odessa, TX. Humans crave the extraordinary, and when they don't, they crave wealth.

cellularmitosis2• 11 years ago

This complaint of "Why can't these scientists make up their minds?" is addressed well in the book "The China Study" ("Forks Over Knives" was the movie sequel to this book).

Before you are two conflicting research papers. One says eggs are bad, the other that they are good. One paper came from The American Poultry Society, and the other from The Poultry Research Institute (those are made up names for the sake of argument). One of those organizations is full of industry shills, and the other is actually doing legitimate research. Every few years, they release papers which contradict the another, in an endless arms race.

The problem which the consumer is faced with is: which is which?

cellularmitosis2• 11 years ago

I should mention that a modern antidote to this are the efforts of people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick (http://www.foundmyfitness.com/), who is on a mission to read research papers and distill them into digestible form for the public. Her appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast are all excellent (also available on youtube).

afarrell• 11 years ago

The problem is that ad-based revenue has an incentive to:

1) Publish whenever there is a single study.

2) Be overly dramatic in either direction.

What we need is for a Bayesian-oriented medical doctor to spend a bunch of time keeping up to date on the literature, especially meta-analysis of multiple randomized controlled trials and then give that information to us with appropriate context. Luckily, this exists:

A YouTube channel called Healthcare Triage: https://m.youtube.com/#/user/thehealthcaretriage

EDIT (thanks mmorris!) https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage

A psychiatry (among other things) blogger called Slate Star Codex: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-h...

The former depends on donations through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/healthcaretriage?ty=h

mmorris• 11 years ago

The YouTube link to Healthcare Triage didn't work for me on desktop. For convenience, here's what did work: https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage

discordianfish• 11 years ago

I think we should stop overthinking food. I think this is one of the single biggest problem we have regarding our health.

I'd argue that as long as someone has no eating disorder (lucky you), eat whatever you want whenever you want and I'm pretty sure you'll be fine.

The problem is rather that almost everyone seems to have some kind of eating disorder. If you can't stop eating or hate to eat (because of time, because of your self image or whatever), that's a different problem then the question what's healthy and what not. Eating healthy won't fix the eating disorder. But thinking too much about what you are suppose to eat, when you are suppose to eat and how much makes it arguably much more likely to develop a eating disorder.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

Because a lot of this stuff is hard to figure out with a sample size of one?

In the case of water, I don't know of anybody who has ever advocated drinking very small amounts of water; the dispute is over how much is enough. It's just a tricky bar to set. Not because we disagree on the benefits of good hydration, but because daily water needs are extremely variable and the color of your urine is about the only practical way to measure hydration.

It's also both simple & valuable to hydrate. At least for me, nothing has made a bigger difference in my condition.

weka• 11 years ago

I would think that not every human, regarding their weight/age/height, would not have to drink the same amount of water.

Water is delicious, though.

neverminder• 11 years ago

No, You Do Not Have to Trust What Mainstream Media Says Every Day.

lcswi• 11 years ago

'Mainstream media'? I mostly hear nutrition tips like this via Facebook posts of dubious pseudoscience lifestyle sites.

branchless• 11 years ago

If I go for a pee and it's yellowish I have more water. Also I do it when I'm thirsty.

jbb555• 11 years ago

Yeah, there are number of people I know who are otherwise intelligent who seem to blame almost every minor ailment they have on being "dehydrated". And when I say I'm not dehydrated because I have 2 small glasses of water, 2 cups of tea and coffee almost gasp because "coffee dehydrates you".... No. Actually it doesn't. It's about 99% water...

forkandwait• 11 years ago

The forkandwait/ ancient Greek ideal diet: A bunch of whole grain bread, fish, olive oil, and all the random seasonal fruits and vegetables you can get your hands on, but don't eat until you are full. Every once in a while gorge on meat and dairy and honey. Get lots of exercise. Don't get killed in battle, get enslaved, or die in an epidemic.

There should be a special name and place in hell for all the diet bullshit that goes through the culture like this.

Not that i follow my own advice or anything...

sdoering3• 11 years ago

Even your advice has a special name: "Cretan Diet". But yeah - this diet-bs is actually quite unnerving.

sp3322• 11 years ago

And yet, there is no country in the world that has lower life expectancy now than 200 years ago. http://www.maxroser.com/everyone-is-better-off-life-expectan...

dkersten• 11 years ago

My completely uninformed made up argument: medicine, medical care and sanitation have improved a lot. ;-)

andrepd4• 11 years ago

Isn't that "Greek diet" a bullshit diet too, by the same logic?

jtolj2• 11 years ago

They mention this in the article, but bears repeating - if you don't want to get a kidney stone (and believe me, you don't) 8 glasses a day is probably not a bad idea.

inaccessible• 11 years ago

^ This. I have had kidney sand which bothered me a lot (because of stomach aching), until a doctor said that I should drink more water. I haven't had any problems since.

hga• 11 years ago

Bingo; in the middle of perhaps the highest stress period of my life I got sloppy about making sure I drank enough water and got a kidney stone or two as a reward. So I say:

No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day. You Also Don't Have to Get Kidney Stones.

jedberg• 11 years ago

if you don't want to get a kidney stone (and believe me, you don't)

To put some perspective on that, I recently had one and it was the worst pain in my life. I asked some women who have had both a stone and a natural childbirth which was worse, and they said the pain is about the same.

The difference is that at least you know +/- about a month when you're going to have a child and can prepare; with the stone, you're just suddenly in excruciating pain.

bkmartin2• 11 years ago

And, at the end of childbirth you get the joy of having a baby... no one has cake every year to celebrate the birth of their kidney stones.

jtolj2• 11 years ago

I had some warning. Mine had shown up in an x-ray and CT scan for an unrelated issue.

Every nurse I talked to seemed to take sadistic pleasure in describing how painful it would be when it came out.

Still nothing could have prepared me for that amount of pain. It was truly horrifying.

This is why when given the opportunity to tell people to drink more water, I do it. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone.

acomjean• 11 years ago

When I was treating water to drink while traveling I would 2 liters a day. That seemed to be right on the edge of being thirsty a lot while being fairly active

I drink more than that now. But it gives me an excuse at the office to get up and walk to bathroom then walk around. So its not just the staying hydrated. Plus its hard to drink too much water and better for you generally then other liquids.

sp3322• 11 years ago

Only 8 cups? My throat is uncomfortable if I drink less than that at work, and I drink a lot at home too.

traviswingo• 11 years ago

Aldo respect, this article is a waste of time. We're so obsessed with putting a number on everything - that's why the "8 glasses a day" rule exists. It's not literal. It means "drink a lot of water throughout the day and you'll feel better." Which is true. I drink tons of water and it's made a massive difference in every aspect of my life. I have no idea how much I drink daily, though. It doesn't matter. Because we're all different. Just drink more water, and stop trying to figure out that magic number by reading articles from the media that change every week.

speik• 11 years ago

*All due

fridek• 11 years ago

You see, your idea about how the water consumption works is invalid. Water is not vitamin C, there is such thing as drinking too much and it leads to lower sodium levels in blood. It is actually advised to not drink too much water immediately after exercise, when your electrolytes levels are already low and further dilution may affect your brain functions. Probably not in a fatal way, but still. The article is actually right that insisting on drinking more water is bullshit, and a dangerous one. You should drink when you are thirsty, it is really very simple. The only people advising otherwise are either selling bottled water or have drank enough kool-aid already.

IkmoIkmo2• 11 years ago

If you read the article he's basically saying drinking 'tons' of water is completely unnecessary and not linked to any evidence of benefits to your health, contrary to what you're saying. He's a scientist, you're speaking from personal experience, which is as valid as people saying they feel much better after praying to their pet lizard every night (i.e. it may be valid, it may simply be a placebo, and it may simply be unrelated entirely).

moron4hire• 11 years ago

I generally think, if you feel off and can't figure out why, the first thing you should check is your water intake. A lot of people live with mild dehydration and don't know it. I know I did for a very long time. It's amazing the difference in how I feel when I'm drinking "enough" water and when I don't. There is always the possibility it could be something else, but check the water first.

I basically just fill up a 64oz beer growler with water in the morning and make sure I get through it by some point in the day. That's enough to get me feeling great and not like I just want to stay in bed all the time.

Oletros• 11 years ago

No, you don't have to drink 8 glasses of water, nor 2 nor 12, you have to drink what your body needs and asks for

tormeh• 11 years ago

The EFSA recommends[0] 2.0 litres of water for women and 2.5 litres of water for men, so there's that. The governmental organizations' advice is slow-changing and well-founded. Unless you want to flip-flop along with the freshest preliminary research I would say it's your best bet.

0: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/nda100326

air• 11 years ago

It's discussed in the article:

Many people believe that the source of this myth was a 1945 Food and Nutrition Board recommendation that said people need about 2.5 liters of water a day. But they ignored the sentence that followed closely behind. It read, “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.”

Indeed, from the references of your link:

The Panel has decided that the reference values for total water intake should include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture.

IkmoIkmo2• 11 years ago

Did you read his article and looked at what you're referencing?

From the website you're referencing:

Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed.

The article attacks exactly that line of reasoning:

I’m a pediatrician, and I can tell you that I have rarely, if ever, used urine osmolality as the means by which I decide if a child is dehydrated. When I asked colleagues, none thought 800 mOsm/kg was the value at which they’d be concerned.

More importantly, intake of water != drinking water.

95% of lettuce is water, on the extreme end, but it's not unique. 90% holds for carrots or beets, too. For potatoes it's about 70 to 80%. And when cooked, it soaks up even more water. That adds up quickly and severely reduces the amount of glasses of water you actually need to drink. After all, 2.5 litres of water would easily amount to (over) 8 cups/glasses of water. The article attacks exactly that notion.

suprgeek• 11 years ago

There are two main problems with science & especially health research "news". First is the urgent need of the Media to "sell more papers" (Or whatever the digital equivalent). Nothing sells more than vaguely alarmist news that is of concern to everybody. So "Drink 8 Glasses of Water every day or suffer the consequences" is an excellent hook to draw-in almost everybody.

Second the ability of companies to influence the research - If the research shows a slight problem with Milk (for example) you can bet that the dairy industry will promote another conflicting study that shows Milk is just GREAT!

Now the consumer is completely alarmed and confused by these two trends - so it always was and always will be.

jonlucc• 11 years ago

Even if you only have disinterested, non-partisan scientists performing very rigorous studies, the science on this stuff is hard and layperson takeaways are nearly non-existent.

denzil_correa• 11 years ago

If the research shows a slight problem with Milk (for example) you can bet that the dairy industry will promote another conflicting study that shows Milk is just GREAT!

The news headlines are a problem. News should be able to show the true aspect to a story. So, "Milk may have benefits" is a much milder statement than "MILK IS SO GOOOD!". The latter however catches people's eyes but the former is sombre and is a footnote.

bitsoda• 11 years ago

If you're thirsty, drink water until you're no longer thirsty. If you're not thirsty, don't drink water.

onion2k2• 11 years ago

How do you know you're thirsty? For a start, there are a lot of medical and neurological issues that can stop you feeling thirsty (diabetes etc). A large percentage of the population don't have the correct hormone response that tells them to drink. Secondly, especially in Western societies, there are social conventions that mean we always have a drink with food. That creates a conditioned response that means many people literally mistake thirst for hunger, so when they feel thirsty they eat something. (That also contributes to obesity.)

'Drink X glasses of water a day' is a simple adage that mitigates all these problems with very little risk.

bkmartin2• 11 years ago

"A large percentage of the population don't have the correct hormone response that tells them to drink." Please define large percentage and offer a reference to this fact. The point made in the article was based around "otherwise healthy idividuals"... not people who have a health issue that would not let them know they are thirsty.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

For whatever reason that has just never worked all that well for me. I can be significantly dehydrated, and not really feel very thirsty.

I have the same problem with food though, I can be 3,000 calories under my daily BMR and not really feel all that hungry.

jqm• 11 years ago

It all depends..

I was a landscaper in Phoenix AZ for a few years. Over the summer. We usually got to work ~5:00 AM and went home about 1:30-2 but it was still extremely hot (regularly 113F or 45C) . I regularly drank over a gallon and half of liquid a day. And was still somewhat dehydrated. Drinking that much fluid a regular basis really starts washing salts out of your body... along with the sweat. You become very sensitive to amount of dissolved solids in liquid. Water starts being extremely unsatisfying at the days end but drinking salty stuff (Gatorade etc) at the wrong time (early morning before you really have drunk much) will really lay you out as it heats up.

mikhailt• 11 years ago

The human body is finely tuned to signal you to drink long before you are actually dehydrated.

Easily said than done. This is only true if the body is healthy in the first place, once you starts messing it up with unhealthy diet (especially high-in-sugar and salt diet) and so on, your body will confuse thirst with hunger. You have no idea how often people confuse both, the body will be happy to eat any food because most food has water in it.

The reality is that water is about the easiest and healthiest thing people can do and yet, in US, it's more common to see people drinking juices, soda, and any other sugar beverages with zero pure water drinks.

For people who can't think for their health, telling them to drink 8 cups of water and nothing else is the best thing we can do. Once they do, they are likely lose a lot of weight without any exercise. Unfortunately, it is more likely they won't follow through because sugar is an addiction that is not easily given up by the body.

yellowapple4• 11 years ago

Not to mention that such a signal doesn't always come early enough to consume water before dehydration sets in, particularly during long-term physical activity (i.e. running long distances every day); if you slack off on water intake because "well I'm not thirsty right now", by the time you start feeling thirsty again, it's pretty likely that you're already dehydrated.

Really, the whole "8 bottles of water a day" thing depends on physical activity levels. A sedentary person might just need one or two glasses of water, tops. A person who's running for hours a day might easily go through several gallons.

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

Ok so this 8 glasses of water thing is to trick us into eating less and so being less fat? Lol. No its not. People say that because they think its true.

Hey everybody we just discovered an amazing new diet called Pee-A-Lot. You will lose 2 pounds a week! All you have to do is drink a gallon of water every day!

lazyant• 11 years ago

Somehow related, very rare but good to know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

Camillo• 11 years ago

Yes, your body will let you know when you are thirsty. But I think it's still important to remind people to drink when they are thirsty (you'd be surprised at how often people try to hydrate by eating instead), and to drink water when they are thirsty (not soda or fruit juice or coffee).

dingaling• 11 years ago

Why is this still a 'thing' capable of causing contradictory advice?

Over the past three decades most Western armies have developed water-replenishment rates based on environmental conditions and activity. They based these on actual empirical studies of performance and illness ( and fatality ) rates. Not dietary fads.

Here's the US Army tables. The British Army ones are similar and are even more stringently applied, due to several incidents of soldiers dying because they tried to preserve their water. The squad now stops and drinks its water en masse.

http://www.evans.amedd.army.mil/PM/WorkRestTable.pdf

I only wore blue but even then if I showed-up on exercise with the wrong quantity of water loaded for the conditions it was a charge.

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

That says if you are doing 'easy work' you should drink 1/2 qt. per hour +/- 1/4 qt/h +/-1/4 qt per hour = 0-1 qts per hour depending on the person and conditions.

In other words it doesn't really say a lot especially for people who aren't soldiers marching in the sun.

You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day

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