Eight glasses of water a day excessive for most people, study suggests

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/24/eight-glasses-of-water-a-day-excessive-for-most-people-study-suggests

by mr_toad • 4 years ago

24 45 4 years ago

theguardian.com

Ralfp• 4 years ago

„Adam Ruins Everything” did a video on this:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwdqFHBaPwY

TL;DW: marketing by drink producers invented a problem to sell people who pursue healthy habits bottled water.

egberts1• 4 years ago

Not to mention corporations getting state permits to emptying reservoirs for free.

fasthands92• 4 years ago

Many people only require about 1.5 to 1.8 litres a day, lower than the two litres typically recommended, the research suggests.

Of all the overzealous health advice we give this one seems pretty minor. The article is saying that we "require" six glasses. The article also says there is no downside to your health for drinking more.

chrisseaton3• 4 years ago

The article also says there is no downside to your health for drinking more.

You can poison yourself by drinking too much water. Can happen amongst very fit people doing a lot of exercise who think this means they have to down 10 litres of water in half an hour.

tbihl• 4 years ago

I don't know how anyone can do this without feeling intensely ill. I drank a gallon in about 40 minutes once, and it was readily apparent that nothing about it could be healthy, pleasant, or in almost any way a good idea.

fasthands92• 4 years ago

Yes. You can. But that is 5x the "eight glasses a day" rec.

I'd also wager the amount of people with health related issues due to too much water consumption is very little compared to too little water consumption.

nradov6• 4 years ago

Hyponatremia is indeed a risk for endurance athletes, and can occur even with drinking less than 10 liters of water. People have somehow got this idea that they need to be constantly drinking water during any exercise, but the reality is there is no health or performance impact to being a little dehydrated for a few hours.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa043901

https://wwnorton.com/books/Good-to-Go/

ericra• 4 years ago

A bit tangential but..

A couple of years ago, I researched and wrote up an article on the effects of drinking additional water and weight loss. I was just curious because I was dieting and consistently read advice to drink lots of water to help aid dieting.

tldr: "thermogenic" (calorie-burning) effects of additional water intake are mostly negligible and based on old, non-replicated research. There may be very modest benefits for obese people during dieting, but the research is unclear. No other clear benefits that have a solid backing of research (that I could find).

https://ericra.com/writing/water_energy.html

smabie• 4 years ago

I feel like drinking more water will make you feel more full which will cause you to consume more calories.

zach_garwood• 4 years ago

As I understand it, the advice is not meant to promote a specific amount of water (what unit of measurement is a "glass"?), but that one should drink water consistently throughout the day, as in a glass of water every couple hours that you're awake.

unixhero• 4 years ago

1 glass = 200ml 8 glasses = 1.6 metric liters

bradwood• 4 years ago

Not to be confused with imperial litres.

nikolay5• 4 years ago

My reasoning is simple: Do you believe humans have been drinking 2-3 liters per day historically? If you don't think so, why are you drinking as much today?! Unless you have some condition, don't drink water when you're not thirsty!

dorkwood• 4 years ago

People tend to have a really strong reaction if you tell them they only need to drink when they're thirsty. I've stopped bringing it up in public since it's such a divisive topic.

nikolay5• 4 years ago

Maybe if you tell them, "Well, then go to the bathroom every 30 minutes - it's healthier for you." then they will get the simple wisdom that we've survived so far following our internal signaling about our needs.

stjohnswarts• 4 years ago

yeah outside of meat, a lot of what we eat is like 50-70% water as well. Most people get plenty of water. I guess I'm not an r/hydrohomies :) . I drink plenty between coffee, water, veggies, and occasional soda. I have had long arguments with people that while you will tend to pee a bit more with coffee/tea/soda, it's still a -net- source of water rather a dehydrator. It's a hard sell to people

heavyset_go2• 4 years ago

This is the naturalistic fallacy. Historically, people also lived in near starvation conditions, average lifespans were much shorter and a broken leg could be a death sentence.

If you apply the same logic to hunger, for example, even more people would be obese if they ate when they felt hungry, or if they followed their ancestors' instincts to gorge until full whenever the opportunity arose.

It's possible that we've historically survived in a local maxima of resource scarcity, and that "optimal" metabolic performance exists in a place beyond that, where resources are less scarce.

fullmoon• 4 years ago

This is the fallacy fallacy.

How does infant mortality help us to reason that we should drink beyond thirst?

nradov6• 4 years ago

It's not a fallacy. There is no proven health benefit to drinking water beyond your level of thirst.

throwaway2903• 4 years ago

I typically tell people like nikolai that they should also never eat fruit in winter because historically people didn't if it doesn't naturally grow where you live. After all, if we are imitating history then seasonal scurvy is a must (also seeing your teeth fall out will quickly cure you of this worldview).

throwaway2903• 4 years ago

Thirst is "drop everything and drink or you'll die soon", not "it would be good for you will being to have some water". In modern world with various soft drinks and soups you can drink no water at all and not feel thirsty once. See the problem?

colechristensen• 4 years ago

It’s really not. Almost everybody is a couple of days away from serious dehydration health risks. You are not near death every time you’re thirsty.

inglor_cz2• 4 years ago

"Do you believe humans have been drinking 2-3 liters per day historically?"

Why not? Humans generally avoided arid climates until fairly recently, so I wouldn't consider the idea of drinking 2 liters per day as absurd on its face.

Also, one of our killer features is the ability to cool our bodies down by sweating. That makes us incredible endurance hunters, who can eventually exhaust even much larger and faster prey by simply following it around until it collapses from excess heat. But that requires drinking water.

nikolay5• 4 years ago

So, hunters carried 2-3 liters of water during hunting? Have you seen in the museums the water pouches made from leather? They barely hold a liter to a liter and a half. Even the ones I've seen made from wood barely hold more than a liter. I doubt people always hunted close to streams so that they didn't need to carry water with them.

reducesuffering• 4 years ago

Drink water until your pee is mostly clear. Any exact X amount of recommendation is inaccurate because diets vary in the water content of your food and other drinks.

nradov6• 4 years ago

That's a myth. Unless it's really dark, urine color is not a useful indicator of hydration state. There is no reliable clinical evidence that having mostly clear urine produces better health outcomes.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10230169/

deafpolygon• 4 years ago

8 glasses advice is sensible if you weren't also consuming liquid in other form (such as food, etc). If you are, then 8 might end up being too much. Think: soup/stew, cereal, certain forms of salad, yogurt, ice cream and so on. All contain water.

If your pee is clear, then you're probably hydrated just fine.

nradov6• 4 years ago

That's a myth. Unless it's really dark, urine color is not a useful indicator of hydration state.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10230169/

There's no sense in any particular quantity. If you're thirsty then drink some water. That's it.

pleb_nz• 4 years ago

I believe 8 glasses came from a study that said we need approx. 8 glasses of water per day from all source, e.g. including food. But media outlets spread this as we should drink 8 glasses day and it stuck ever since.

Eight glasses of water a day excessive for most people, study suggests

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