Where is the scientific evidence for drinking so much water?

[Michelle H]

I have to ask. Personally, I don't want to gulp down 2 litres a day when I am not thirsty. For one thing, I spend all day running to the bathroom! I once read that the "8 glasses of water a day" mantra has no basis in science. It has just been repeated so often no one questions it. If anyone can enlighten me I would be very grateful.

Michelle

[Qmass]

Good question! A year or two ago, I also saw in the media a report that no one could identify the scientific basis for 8 glasses of water a day and that it had just been repeated for decades.

With regard to doing Atkins, though, I know that Dr. Atkins recommends consuming a lot of water. He says that his diet causes the body to produce ketones, and a lot of water is needed to flush the ketones from your system.

As a personal observation, I notice that when I drink a lot of water, I feel better. I also feel more full, so I eat less. If I drink a lot of water one day, my weight will be on the lower side of my maintenance range the next morning. If I don't drink much water, my weight will be up the next day. The explanation I read is that being dehydrated causes the body to hold onto as much water as it can. When the body is well hydrated, it will let go of water it doesn't need. Strange, but appears to be true based on my experience.

This doesn't answer your question, I know! Hopefully someone else can answer it, because it's an interesting question.

[grandpa]

Very good thread on this at http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=257439

[Nancy LC]

There was a woman in the forums who was hospitalized for drinking too much water. It can really drain you of necessary minerals to keep your heart going and brain functioning.

More subjects on the topic:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=221424&highlight=kidney

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=245881&highlight=kidney

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=266535&highlight=hyponatremia

[Michelle H]

Hi,

thanks for the threads, which were interesting.

Michelle

[tom sawyer]

I think the idea that more water flushes out your system, is a load of crap. The kidneys do a fine job of removing stuff from your blood when you drink a normal amount of liquids. If drinking more water helped flush things out, you'd see the same color in your urine regardless of how much you drink. Which is not the case.

The idea that it makes you feel full, has some limited merit. It does little to satiate though, which I think is more important than filling one's belly. I used to do a low fat diet and I could eat until I was stuffed and still feel hungry. A stomach full of water, actually makes me feel queezy sometimes. Hardly a good way to go through life.

[Nancy LC]

I agree Tom but this idea is so firmly implanted in the current "lore" that everyone pretty much thinks it is true. And if everyone believes it... it must be true! The "health" industry makes a lot of money convincing everyone they need to be purged of impurities. It is funny but that is something very ritualistic in a lot of societies. Of course, in ours it translates into something psuedo-scientific that involves exchanging money for a nostrum instead of beating yourself with willow branches and sweating a lot. :p

I do drink a lot but it is because of the fullness factor. For instance, right now, I can either eat something or else drink something calorie free and try to hold out until lunchtime.

Actually, one of the signs that you're drinking too much is that you retain water. :p

[Brook]

There was a woman in the forums who was hospitalized for drinking too much water. It can really drain you of necessary minerals to keep your heart going and brain functioning.

More subjects on the topic:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=221424&highlight=kidney

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=245881&highlight=kidney

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=266535&highlight=hyponatremia

Becoming hyponatremic/hypokalemic because of too much water consumption is rare. Very rare. Water intoxication has a potential to be an issue for some, but those people are typically extreme/endurance athletes and/or military personnel.

The issue isn't a large amount of water. The isuee is a large amount of water in a very short period of time that throws off the body's electrolytes. Generally, this is tough to do.

I live with someone who is chronically hyponatremic, and these are things we deal with in our home every day. The presenting symptoms of hyponatremia/hypokalemia are ugly and tough, if not impossible, to ignore. To continue to drink enough to actually harm yourself, for most healthy people, is not an easy thing to do.

The person you linked to that discussed being treated for hyponatremia/hypokalemia admitted that she was experiencing cramps and whatnot and ignored them and continued to push fluids.

Bottom line? When our body's holler at us, we need to listen. More water/less water, etc is all fine and dandy - but to use this rare issue as a basis for avoiding large amounts of water is misleading.

Too much of anything is bad - including oxygen. :)

[foxgluvs]

I agree that if you look hard enough, you'll find 'evidence' to suggest that drinking too much water is bad...eating too much of this or that or the other is bad....driving your car is bad....walking in the park....you get the message.
I think you must find your own level. I for one have noted that in my 20 or so months on LC, if I drink at least 80 floz of water a day, I feel good, my skin is great, and most important of all I lose weight. If I drop to only a few glasses a day my weight loss stalls.
I think it's a matter of opinion....find out what workd for you.
I'm sure if you look hard enough you will find evidence to suggest that not drinking enough while on a LC diet can be damaging too.

[Jonahsafta]

Great scientific evidence..???? the best I can do is when I drink my 2 litres of water, I feel so much better....though there are a few more bathroom stops.....so the evidence is narrative.

[2bthinner!]

If drinking more water helped flush things out, you'd see the same color in your urine regardless of how much you drink. Which is not the case.



You would see less color as it's diluted. The more water I drink, the less color my urine has. Also, as you get used to drinking more water, you need to go LESS. At least this is my experience. I used to be a person who would need a bathroom at least once an hour. Now I can go several hours easily. My H, who drinks a lot of coffee, but not much water is always looking for a bathroom.

[kyrasdad]

I never have bought into it. Drinking water in excess of what you need, in excess of your thirst, never made sense to me. I think it's better to drink water than juices, milk, sodas, of course, but that isn't to say you should down a few liters a day. Lots of people think that, and I never thought it made sense.

There was a New York Times article about it a few weeks back that essentially said it was a myth, but I'll bet it's already in their archives at this point.

[grandpa]

You would see less color as it's diluted. The more water I drink, the less color my urine has.

2bthinner, I think you are agreeing with Tom Sawyer. He said that if drinking more resulted in more waste being removed the concentration (color) would remain the same. (more volume > more waste = same concentration). Since the color or concentration is less with more consumption, the absolute amount of waste must remain nearly the same.

[FrizzyGirl]

I can only speak from my own anecdotal evidence, but I feel great if I drink lots of water, and my skin gets a lot better. But then again, I don't drink enough water generally.

Perhaps the issue is that people don't drink enough water to begin with, so if people drank the amount of water they SHOULD drink to keep them adequately hydrated, it would probably be a lot more than they are currently drinking, IYSWIM.

[Lisa N]

2bthinner, I think you are agreeing with Tom Sawyer. He said that if drinking more resulted in more waste being removed the concentration (color) would remain the same. (more volume > more waste = same concentration). Since the color or concentration is less with more consumption, the absolute amount of waste must remain nearly the same.


That would be an invalid assumption, however, since not all waste products removed from the body have coloration. :idea: What gives urine the yellow color is bile pigments being filtered from the bloodstream by the kidneys. B-vitamins can also produce an intense yellow color in the urine regardless of how dilute it is.
Also, not all waste products are produced at the same rate or are present in the bloodstream in the same concentrations all the time. In other words, the color of your urine doesn't always indicate how much waste product is being removed, it only indicates how concentrated the bile pigments (or B vitamins) in your urine are. ;)

[2bthinner!]

I worked in a bank and the security guy, who constantly drank coffee, was doing this experiment. I don't know why he was doing it. At any rate. He had this philodendrum in a vase. Now, those things grow REALLY well in just water. He put it in coffee. He did say something about coffee being 80% water or whatever. I think he thought it would be good for it. After all, you put coffee grounds and tea around plants. Well, this poor philodendrum got very pale. It was light yellow, very nearly white. Leaves falling off. He poured out the coffee and used water again and it recovered. He didn't put fertilizer in it or anything..

[Hybrid]

Since this is the war zone, I'm going to inject controversy, even if I myself think it's silly.

What if the 8-10 glasses a day is part of the Great Flouride Conspiracy (http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fluoride_index.html)?

[2bthinner!]

work if you had city water. Which I don't. We have a well.

And check your pipe thread in Everything else.

I didn't go read that link yet, but I actually did some researching on fluoride myself. In relation to thyroid and tea, as tea has it naturally. Natural being the key phrase. The stuff they're putting in our water to avoid expensive dumping costs would net them some hefty fines if they just dumped it out.. I guess people are the filters for that. Kinda like the thing a few years back where they were feeding cement dust to steers to get their weight up for auction. Gee, like I need a few pounds of cement in my meat.. :lol: :lol:

I have to get off here...good luck with pipes..

[boree]

Water is so good for the body and the brain. There is sooooo much positive research on the benefits of water for the body as a whole. Here is just one link out of hundreds. :)


http://www.watercure.com/

[csoar2004]

I drink lots of water daily - between 64-100 oz. Sure, I use the restroom more often than I used to (and this is problem why?) but I also have:
better skin & hair
no more cellulite
a highly functional lymphatic system (good hydration PLUS exercise) :thup:

Personally, I think many of us are so out of tune with our own bodies that we interpret "I'm thirsty" as "feed me!" :eek: :thdown:

[Samuel]

One reason for drinking more water as per Dr. Atkins is that toxics are stored with fat. So when you consume plenty of fat you have toxics into your body which need to be flushed away.

So, it should be more necessary for people who are on "weight loss" phases of the diet than it is for the ones who are on maintenance.

[Lisa N]

Personally, I don't understand why this debate over drinking water keeps surfacing with demands for scientific proof that we need a certain amount. If you don't want to drink water, don't. If you feel that it's helpful to get at least 8 glasses of water a day, please do! If you don't like the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water a day, feel free to ignore it whenever you happen to come upon it. That amount of water has not been shown to be harmful to normal individuals (ie those without kidney disease or congestive heart failure), so why the flap if someone recommends that amount? Even if it's not a 'cure-all', it certainly can't hurt and I personally would rather be in the position of recommending that someone get slightly more fluid than they actually need than not enough. ;) Check out the rates of kidney/bladder infections, kidney stones and kidney disease and convince me that people routinely get enough fluids just by listening to their thirst cues (if, in fact, they recognize them for what they are).

Nobody has to justify drinking water or not to anyone.
Personally, I look better and feel better when I'm getting 2 liters of water a day.
Pssst...there are no 'water police'...if you don't want to drink water, nobody is going to show up on your doorstep and force you to. :lol:

[csoar2004]

Ok Lisa, BE the voice of reason why don'tcha? :lol:

[potatofree]

There's NO Water Police? NExt thing you know, you'll be trying to tell me there's not Frankenfood Police, or even teh Easter Bunny! :o

[Nancy LC]

Since this is the war zone, I'm going to inject controversy, even if I myself think it's silly.

What if the 8-10 glasses a day is part of the Great Flouride Conspiracy (http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fluoride_index.html)?

Well, I'm sure that MIT will get around to debunking that one, just like they did with the Tin Foil hats. (http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/)

(PS. The tin foil hat thing is a joke for everyone except the extremely paranoid who are poking holes into this "research").

[potatofree]

Great... and here I thought I found a use for the foil since I can't wrap potatoes in it anymore. <Sigh>

[vmay]

You guys are a riot! Thanks for the good laugh. (BTW, I drink about 240oz of water daily.)

[csoar2004]

Great... and here I thought I found a use for the foil since I can't wrap potatoes in it anymore. <Sigh>Hey P! You could build your own tinfoil alien... http://ufocasebook.com/tinfoil.html :lol:

[jande2211]

Tin foil is great for bookcovers!


OK, not great since they tear too easily.


But they're shining and pretty!

[grandpa]

tin foil hats are the only protection there is to keep major league baseball satellites from reading your thoughts.

-- From the Simpsons

[Nancy LC]

Ha! Scientific evidence that tin foil hats HELP major league baseball satellites read your thoughts... its a conspiracy!

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

;)

[jande2211]

HA! Indeed! I KNEW it! Lemme just let my books go nekked for a while!

[tom sawyer]

Let the real take-home message of this thread, be that philodendrons don't take cream and sugar in their coffee.

[jande2211]

Maybe it's just the sugar?? Maybe they're Atkinized??

[dstartz]

I hope y'all don't mind if I take this thread on a tangent back to the original question, just for a moment. ;)

Although I have no scientific eveidence at my fingertips I will share something that I learned in my 'Feeds and Feeding' course in college. One of the by-products of burning protein is uric acid which can be extremely hard on the kidneys. (Think kidney stones (http://www.hollywoodurology.com/pages/uricacid.html) for one thing.) It can also cause gout.

Since we use protein for our NRG as well as for building muscle, etc. we have higher levels of uric acid in our systems than the average Joe. By drinking copious quantities of water you 'buy an insurance policy' against the damages uric acid can do to the body.

You will now be returned to your regular broadcast.... :p

[GunaB130]

Well this may not be considered science BUT, I'm 32 years old and started Atkins this past September and, before that I RARELY drank water. I can honestly say maybe 8 glasses a week if that!( I had no desire to drink water ) I have to tell ya the thought of trying to drink 2 a day let alone 8 almost made me sick. I also want to say that I didn't try to start the water until about a month into being on the diet ....... SO...... I just wanted to state that about 2 weeks later at 64oz's per day I had these physical changes;

I had increased weight loss.
My skin, which has always been bad ( face ) stared to look clear and pretty
I started to crave the water
Also my lips, which were always dry have not been since

So anyway I don't know if we need it or not???? But, belive me I'm going to keep on drinking ;)

S

[Kristine]

Yes, but there's a difference between getting enough water, and forcing yourself to drink beyond your thirst. I reject the "drink 'till you float" concept, except for people in heavy ketosis.

[dstartz]

Why just people in heavy ketosis?