Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Why do so many people believe that drinking lots of water is healthy?

Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to suggest that drinking water is not healthy. Of course it is. But why should we believe that it is so very good for us to drink water when we are not thirsty? Why shouldn't we believe in our bodies' ability to tell us when we need more water?

Yes, I know. Some people do have certain sicknesses and conditions so that they don't notice when they are thirsty. Okay, but most of us don't. And yes, sometimes our bodies try to make us do things that are bad for us, or refrain from doing things that are good for us. Just because Ellen Lane of LnC had a body which told her to keep drinking a lot of alcohol doesn't mean that it was good for her to do so. And just because I'm lazy and have a body that tells me to refrain from doing any exercise doesn't mean it's good for me to take my body's advice on that score.

Okay. But we all know that it is bad to drink a lot of alcohol, and we all know that it is good to exercise.

How do we know this? I'd say we get our information from two sources, and one of these sources is more important to most of us than the other one. The first source is the information and input we get from those people we consider our peers. The second source is the informaiton and input we get from scientists, who conduct rigorous scientific studies to learn about the real world. We are sure to get information and input from our peers. We are much less sure to hear and understand what the scientific community is telling us. When it comes to alcohol and exercise, our peers and the scientists will tell us the same thing. It is bad to drink too much alcohol. It is good to exercise. People will tell us so, and there is a ton of scientific research which can prove it to us, too.

But what happens when our peers keep telling us something and science just doesn't back it up? Like when it comes to drinking more water than your body tells you that you need?

If you are a woman, chances are that at least one of your good female friends will keep swigging water from one of those ubiquitous plastic water bottles. (And if you ask her why she is drinking water all the time, she will look at you as if you were a little stupid and tell you that she does it because it is healthy. Hello? What planet are you from? You didn't know that??? :rolleyes: )

If you don't have a good female friend who keeps swigging from her water bottle, then maybe you have seen several female colleagues at work who do so. Maybe you have seen women at shopping malls carry around water bottles and drink from them. Maybe you have seen women drivers drink water while they drive.

Maybe you have heard a female celebrity being interviewed about how she keeps herself so fit. And maybe you heard her say that she drinks a lot of water every day. And maybe you sometimes read one of those "women's magazines" where you can read about fashion and recipes and diet tips and celebrities. Maybe, probably, you have seen articles in those magazines about how to stay healthy, and probably those magazines suggested to you that it is good for you to drink a lot of water.

So what if the scientific community does not chime in? What if scientists don't tell you that drinking a lot of water is healthy? Are you going to care what they say?

When I was in my early and mid twenties, in the late seventies and very early eighties, it was extremely fashionable among young women to fast. Fasting meant that you spent a few days eating no solid foods at all, but only drinking various fruit juices and vegetable decoctions. I'm not kidding you when I tell you that all my best friends fasted on one occasion or another - all my female friends, that is. It actually started in the last year of high school. You knew that a girl was fasting because she would show up all wan and tired-looking, and then she would inform you that she was so tired because she had just started fasting. And also, when the rest of us ate lunch in the school canteen, the girl who was fasting would just sip the strange vegetable brews that she had brought along in old-fashioned thermos flasks.

No boys I knew fasted, or if they did, they didn't tell anyone about it. But really, I don't think that any of them ever did, because they all had lunch in the school canteen every day.

All the girls I shared classes with fasted at least once while they were in the last year of high school. Everyone did it but me. I didn't want to do it, you see. I didn't want to make myself so tired, and I didn't want to give up the joy of eating real food and replace it with the torment of drinking cabbage and beetroot brews. But the idea that a girl would not fast seemed so strange that I felt a little defensive about it. I promised myself that if I ever read a serious-looking article in a serious newspaper which claimed that fasting had been scientifically proven to be really, really good for one's health, then I would fast too, at least once. Meanwhile, I would be able to tell those who wondered why I never fasted that I was waiting for scientific evidence that it was a splendid idea to do so.

And you know what? That serious article in a serious newspaper which proved the great health benefits of fasting just never appeared. The scientific community never told me that I had better do some fasting. And because I didn't want to do it, and because I would only do it if scientists proved to me that I should, I never did do any fasting.

After a couple of years - it may have been as much as ten years, though - the fasting fad disappeared. The younger generation of girls just didn't do it, and my own generation of females fell slowly out of love with fasting. The whole thing just faded away and disappeared. And nobody seemed to wonder where it had gone. But I was mystified by the whole thing. Why had the fasting mania appeared so suddenly, and why had it just disappeared?

One day I heard a radio program about a medieval religion called Manichaeism, which apparently prescribed almost exactly the same kind of fasting that my friends had practised in the nineteen seventies! The Manichaeists apparently believed that you needed to fast to rid your body of various poisons, and the right way to do that was to give up eating for a couple of days each month. But when you abstained from eating, you needed to drink a lot of liquids like water and vegetable decoctions, because the poisons in your body would be effectively flushed out by those liquids. Do you know that my friends who fasted several hundred years later said exactly the same thing, namely, that fasting and drinking those weird liquids flushed out poisons from your body?

But do you know that science, to my knowledge, has never said or proved that fasting flushes out poisons from your body?

Can you imagine? These ideas from a medieval religon have been sort of floating around on the the edge of consciousness of the European mentality since the Middle Ages. And then, in 1970, those same ideas just exploded in Europe and possibly in the United States - but almost exclusively among females. Isn't it amazing?

Personally, I look at excessive water-drinking as a "lighter" version of fasting. Water-drinking doesn't make you suffer nearly as much as full-fledged fasting does. You don't have to give up or even cut down on eating, and instead of drinking weird vegetable brews you just drink water, but a lot of it. And somehow, I think that there is a vague idea behind it all that you flush out poisons from your body if you fill yourself up with H2O.

Ann

http://www.slate.com/id/2188159/

You don't need tons of water but drinking it has no ill effects. I drink a lot of water throughout the day because I'm thirsty - I don't force it down. During/after exercise I drink it to replace the water I've lost.

There's a lot of false information out there when it comes to health, exercise and nutrition, especially among women. Also, scientific findings are often inaccurately reported by the media and people don't usually go and read the studies themselves.

Many times people mistake thirst 'pains' for hunger pains and eat instead of drinking when they're bodies are telling them they need liquid, not solid. Everyone expects thirst pains to be when your mouth feels dry or whatever but it can also be when you feel 'hungry'. At least, that's what my husband learned in school. He majored in kineseology.

But besides that, I don't necessarily believe we have to drink as much water as everyone says. I only drink water because it has been the only thing that quenches my thirst. But I don't drink even close to the amounts that scientists say our bodies need. I usually drink 2 possibly 3 ozarka 1 pint (regular sized) bottles in a day and that's it. Nothing else. I don't usually drink when I don't feel thirsty.

However, I have on occasion noticed that if I do drink more in a day. Say I drink 3 bottles while I'm at work as opposed to 1. I will notice that I am more thirsty, and feel like I need more water. On those days, I will usually end up drinking about 5 or 6 bottles and still feel good at the end of the day.

I don't usually drink very much because I don't like to go to the bathroom. I'm just lazy and hate having to get up so often to go.

I don't lecture people who drink things besides water cause it's just from my personal experience that water is the ONLY thing that can quench my thirst.

I do think many women will drink a lot of water because of their body image or whatever. I don't think the fact that they're drinking a lot of water is an issue as much as the obsession of trying to be thin and beautiful.

I'm no scientist, but I'm compelled to reply to this since I had a little experience in this subject area a couple of years ago.

I am one of those people that almost never gets thirsty. It just doesn't happen. I can eat an entire meal without even taking a sip of a beverage. I can go from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed on just one regular sized bottle of water/can of soda/glass of juice. I simply never was one to drink much of anything at all.

Then, two years ago (May 5, 2006), I came home from work and promptly fainted in the middle of my living room floor. I wasn't out for long, but I felt absolutely awful for the rest of the evening - cramping muscles, teeth-chattering chills, nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, aches and pains, my whole body was tremoring. I finally gave up on trying to fight whatever it was that was wrong with me, and went to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Diagnosis? Dehydration. They put two bags of fluids into me, and I was as good as new. For about two days. And then the symptoms started all over again, and back to the emergency room I went. This happened *five times* (three trips to the emergency room, two to the doctor) within a one-month span, before I finally got the message.

The last doctor I saw didn't just pump three bags of fluid into me; she also advised me to up my liquid consumption. She said I should be taking in twelve to fourteen 8-ounce glasses of water a day. It didn't have to be strictly water, but anything caffeinated didn't count, nor did juice with pulp. Milk, pulp-free juice, water, and decaf teas/coffees/sodas were fine.

I started paying more attention to my beverage consumption. It was sheer torture for me those first couple of weeks, as I simply wasn't thirsty. I'd have to look at the bottle of water sitting on my desk and force myself to take a sip every few minutes. However, I did force it down, and I have to confess that I have never felt better. I have not had any more spells like I did during this period of dehydration. I used to have muscle aches and spasms that went away after I started hydrating. I was prone to getting severe headaches every single day that also vanished after I started drinking more water.

So, I am now one of those annoying women you see carrying a bottle of water with her everywhere, constantly sipping on it. The way I felt when I went through that whole dehydration ordeal was the most ill I have ever felt in my entire life. It scared me half to death. I was so afraid that something was desperately, terribly wrong with me. All it turned out to be was a lack of water! The most shocking thing I learned from this experience was that thirst is a last resort warning for your body. By the time your body registers the fact that you are thirsty, you are already starting to dehydrate. Since I never drank much at all, it's no wonder my body finally turned against me.

Even two years later, I still drink large quantities of water, although not quite as much as the doctor recommended. I drink 8 glasses a day, bare minimum, and on some days I drink up to 12 or 14. If it is hot, or I've been exercising/sweating, I'm flying, or I'm going to be doing anything else that dehydrates the body such as consuming alcohol, I make sure I drink extra water. I actually completely gave up caffeine after this ordeal. After the first two weeks, I don't even miss it anymore. Nor do I miss feeling groggy in the morning without my jump-start can of Dr. Pepper. When I wake up now, I'm awake.

You're right that every person is different - just because my body needs this much water doesn't mean that someone else's body will. Some people may need more water than me. And it doesn't have to be just plain water that you have to consume to maintain a state of hydration. I do stick strictly to water, aside from one glass of orange juice every morning. The added perk to this is that I don't drink my calories, I can actually eat them and enjoy them (important to me since I'm getting married in two months and am trying to keep my weight exactly the same as it is right now to be sure my gown still fits on the big day). I don't think that drinking lots of water is exceptionally "healthy" but it is certainly better than all of the sodas and energy drinks most people consume these days, and since you do have to drink *something* it may as well be water. As for flushing toxins out of your body? It probably does help the kidneys with this some, although I have no idea how much. I don't drink all of the water I drink to "purify" by body, but simply to remain hydrated.

When you consider how much of your body is made up of water, doesn’t it make sense to stay hydrated? The body needs it to function. I didn’t have enough water, and my body quit functioning. One of the times I went into the hospital, my dehydration was so bad that my heart started skipping beats. Of course, there are also dangers of over-hydrating. You have to learn what your body needs, and listen to it.

I’ll get off my soapbox now. I just wanted to give my perspective on this.

Rona, I absolutely agree that some people drink too little water. Particularly if the climate where you live is generally hot, or if you exercise a lot. Clearly some people don't get enough to drink, and like your own experience shows, that can be downright dangerous. If your doctor told you that you weren't getting enough to drink, then you weren't getting enough to drink, and you needed to increase your intake of water.

My point is that there is no general recommendation about how much water each and every one of us needs to drink. Science does not tell us that we need to drink at least eight glasses of water a day, for example. But so many women seem to be convinced that there is such a recommendation.

I had an aunt who died fifteen years ago. About five years before she died, she started drinking a lot of water. Had she suddenly become very thirsty? Had she got diabetes, for example? Had her doctor told her that she needed to drink more water? Not at all. No, but my aunt was always full of folksy wisdom, and now she had become convinced that drinking lots of water was healthy. When I visited her, she would go out into the kitchen at regular intervals and pour herself a drink of water from the large jug she kept in her fridge. She had to drink up all that water in the jug before she went to bed, you see. She had never done that sort of thing before, but now she just "knew" that it was healthy. All that water-drinking did not improve her health, however, and she died about five years later.

I consider my own daily newspaper to be serious. I have subscribed to it for thirty years. I have never seen it report, even once, that scientists have issued a general recommendation that people should drink at least eight glasses of water a day. I read some general science magazines too, such as Scientific American, though not on a regular basis, and I have never seen it or any other science magazine report that we need to drink at least eight glasses of water every day. I have never read about a scientific study which shows that those who drink at least eight glasses of water a day are healthier than those who don't.

A week ago my daily newspaper reported that there is no scientific evidence that drinking water when you are not thirsty generally improves your health. A professor was interviewed in that article, and he said that it is a misconception that everyone needs the same amount of liquids, and it is not true that you generally need more water than your body seems to tell you that you need.

I remember another article, obviously from New York Times. In that article, a professor said that he himself had never come across a case where a healthy and moderately young person had died of dehydration, but he had indeed come across cases where people had drunk water until they died. He described a case of a female marathon runner, who kept drinking water throughout the race until she collapsed shortly before the finish. She was rushed to the hospital, where it was found that she had imbibed so much water that she had upset the chemical balance of her bodily fluids so severely that water either left of seeped into all her cells at fatal amounts. You know that your body liquids contain a certain amount of salt, don't you? I think our salt levels may be about 8%. This woman had drunk so much salt-free water that her body was unable to keep liquids flowing normally in and out of her cells, and she died. Some years ago I read about another young woman in her twenties, who had taken part in a water-drinking contest. She, too, suffered acute "water-poisoning" and died.

Some people drink too little water, and they need to drink more. But there is no general recommendation that we should all take care to drink at least eight glasses of water per day.

Ann

Lol, this thread is for me, water maven of the universe. Seriously, Sparkletts ought to make me their spokesperson as I drink a ton of H20.

During my high school years I was addicted to Pepsi. I did not then nor have I since, yes it's true, some critters my age truly don't, drink but I would label Pepsi as "my beer." Weird but true. Sometime during my first year of college I had a friend who would only drink orange juice and water and I'm not sure how it happened but eventually I gave up soda altogether.
No besides juice and chocolate milk, yes I am like Lois in that most things must contain chocolate, I only drink water and sometimes a milkshake for a treat.

Mona

Ann, I absolutely see your point. You're correct about the dangers of over-hydrating. You have to drink a *lot* of water to do it, but it does happen, more frequently than people realize. I always make sure I intake a good amount of salt, since I consume a lot of water. If you don't retain the water, it's pointless to keep consuming it.

I also have to agree with you whole-heartedly that there is no standard for how much water everyone needs to drink. It's going to vary from person to person. I read something somewhere that based water consumption recommendations off of weight (I can't remember where though, I read entirely too much), but I'm not even sure that is exactly right. There are still too many variables.

Like I said, I think each individual person needs to figure out what their body needs, and go by that. I think water is "healthy" in the sense that we have to drink something, and most other popular beverages are not healthy (aside from the obvious health benefits from beverages such as milk, juice, herbal teas). You raise a very valid point.

Add, I will add - this whole thing about water being good for your skin? I think that's a myth. I gave up sodas and drink only water, and my skin isn't any better than it was beforehand. The only perk I can see is that I don't tend to dry out as severly in the winters anymore (my hands used to crack and bleed from dryness by November, but they haven't done it since I started hydrating).

I haven't read all of the posts yet, but I'd like to chime in as to why I drink a lot of water. I get kidney stones. Very unpleasant, trust me. If you've ever had one, you know what I'm talking about. I'm supposed to drink more water to try to decrease my amount of kidney stones and help them pass. I also get UTI's because of kidney stones. In 2005/2006, when I was pregnant, I basically had a non-stop UTI that didn't go away until fall 2006 when I had a procedure called an lithotripsy to shatter a big stone that was causing problems. Not incredibly pleasant, and I hated waking up from anesthesia.

Anyway, I'm sure a lot of people drink tons of water because it's a fad, just not me. I don't like fads, they annoy me.

Tara

I think the water drinking contest was a year or so ago - at least the one I heard about Ann.

I don't drink enough fluids, I don't think, but I'm not horrid either. The only time I ended up in the ER was last Feb when I was 13 weeks pregnant and hadn't kept anything down for 36 hours. That was bad. I do try to 'chug' at least 2 glasses a day [fill a cup with 8oz from the fridge, drink immediately].

Tara - DH had his first kidney stone in Dec and had a lithotripsy done *shudder*. I don't envy you at all.

Carol

I eat ice. I hate drinking water, but I know it helps keep me from feeling hungry or cramping during various parts of the month, so I compromise and eat ice, which helps me feel like I'm eating something(an important feeling for me) and keeps me hydrated enough to keep off the cramps.

I've become an expert of sorts in regards to ice, appreciating the chew-ability of little air filled ones or the crunchy type you get from hospitals. I hate the solid chunks that are hard to bite down on, and so does my dentist.

TEEEEEEEJ

I'm with you Teej.

DH gets me the wrong kind at Sam's sometimes and it drives me nuts.

I actually bought a snowcone maker [called every Walmart in town to find one on clearance in September] when I started craving it during one pregnancy.

Carol

I'm actually the opposite. I used to drink one 20oz soda a day, and rarely dried out. I've decided to cut out most of the soda (mostly because of caffeine and sugar), and I've been drinking 1 bottle of water with a kool-aid drop-in at work. I've noticed the back of my hand has been drying out a lot more, to the point where I'm using a lot of lotion once or twice a month.

I guess my problem with waiting for our bodies to tell us we need water is that we rarely feel thirsty until we're really, really in need of water. I believe there's a study in the JH Journal of Medicine, but I don't have time to find and link to it.

Besides that, as mentioned by others above, there are those who don't ever feel thirsty and those who feel hungry when they're really thirsty.

I'm someone who needs to drink water all the time. I carry it with me wherever I go. If I don't drink enough water (and that means more than the 8 recommended during the summer in my case), I get really dizzy and nauseous. I don't get thirsty very easily, though. And it really does help my skin--because I can tell the difference. I wouldn't say that drinking the 8 is necessary for everyone, but I would say that there might be less of a problem with obesity in the US if more people put down the sugary drinks and started drinking plain water. You can imbibe three times the amount of calories/fat with shakes/fruit juice/alcohol than you would eating an entire meal--plus you're not full at the end. If you make yourself drink 8 glasses of water, you're almost certainly not going to have nearly as much room for other, less beneficial, substances. That, as they say, is why I'm never going to contradict the 8 glass dictum. Nobody died from drinking too much water under normal circumstances.

I found it. It is here. It says that elderly men, 65 to 75 years old, suffer from a reduced ability to feel thirst after they have been deprived of water for twenty-four hours.

This site, however, asks you to let thirst be your guide.

Here you can find an article disputing the health benefits of drinking eight glasses of water a day.

Let me say that I firmly believe that your body needs a regular intake of water. I believe, too, that it is not generally good for you to become really dehydrated. I tend to get very thirsty in the summer when it is hot, and if I can't get the liquids I need when I'm really thirsty, I find that it is hard to get rid of my thirst and feel as if I'm properly hydrated again.

Of course you should make sure that you get enough to drink every day! I just question the idea that there is a standard recommendation requiring everybody to drink at least eight glasses of water every day. It became so painfully obviously silly when my aunt filled that huge jug with water everyday and gave herself the task of drinking it all up before she went to bed. She had never done anything like that before, and it just seemed ridiculous.

You should eat and drink regularly though, that is what I firmly believe.

Ann