12 ms·

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

141 points by denzil_correa 11y ago

neverminder 11y ago
No, You Do Not Have to Trust What Mainstream Media Says Every Day.
- lcswi 11y ago
  'Mainstream media'? I mostly hear nutrition tips like this via Facebook posts of dubious pseudoscience lifestyle sites.
mangeletti 11y 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 11y ago
  That is the beauty of science, no matter what I want to do I can find some study supporting it!
  - ska 11y ago
    You often can, but they are not fungible.
- atomical 11y 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 11y 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.
    - apl 11y ago
      A simple explanation for this: cutting carbs is tricky and requires a lot of careful planning etc., increasing the likelihood that people actually stay under their maintenance caloric intake. It doesn't really matter how you do it. As long as your expenditure is larger than your intake, you'll lose weight. In any case, your point doesn't say anything about the healthiness of carbohydrates.
      - atomical 11y ago
        Yes, but what about high LDL and heart disease risk with high fat diets? The paleo and keto folks completely dismiss this.
      - mindcrime 11y ago
        In any case, your point doesn't say anything about the healthiness of carbohydrates. There's evidence (sorry, I don't have the citations in front of me) to link carbohydrate intake to increased triglycerides, higher HDL, and more inflamation - pretty much the opposite of "healthy". OTOH, there's reason to think that a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet may improve lipid profiles, and reduce the risk of heart disease. Now, I can't say with certainty that a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet is better (or worse) than a high carb, low fat diet, or a high protein diet, etc. And I think part of the problem is simply that when you talk about human health and the connection between health and diet, there are just too many variables, and it's hard to control for them all. Hence the fact that you can find research endorsing a number of different diets, which appear diametrically opposed to each other.
        atomical 11y ago
- arpa 11y ago
  Well you shouldn't let mainstream media think for you ever and not only for matters regarding your health.
  - pdpi 11y 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.
- dekhn 11y 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 11y 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.
    - andrepd 11y ago
      It definitely is so. What authority do I have to talk about economics or law? Shouldn't I leave that to the people who do know what they are talking about? Kind of a central problem in democracy, if you think about it.
    - dubya 11y ago
      Protestants, at least, have the idea of the "priesthood of all believers", meaning roughly that each person can have authority in doctrinal matters. So you should listen to your priest, but you don't have to accept that he's correct if God is telling you something different. Thus the billion different protestant denominations.
      - zaphar 11y ago
        Protestants if you go back to their roots actually expected you to become an expert in scripture in order to recognize when your "priest" is wrong. But they didn't promote anything goes. It's more that you should learn and be able to apply scripture correctly. This didn't prevent the proliferation of denominations because of course different people would interpret a piece of scripture differently and get really worked up about it.
- toyg 11y 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 11y ago
    Of course, this advice should only be followed in moderation; for instance, there's no healthy amount of trans-fats.
    - toyg 11y ago
      Yeah, but eating a few grams once in a blue moon won't kill you. It's not Polonium.
    - gambiting 11y ago
      Just like there's no "healthy" amount of carbonated soda either, but having an occasional glass of coke won't have any result on your health whatsoever. That's also moderation.
      - exodust 11y ago
        There's definitely a negative effect on your health from one glass of coke. Small, but still an effect. For starters you're exceeding the recommended daily intake of added sugar with one can of coke. No big deal, but if your liver could talk, it wouldn't be happy. Your blood pressure rises, again no big deal, but still not good. The only good thing is the water in the coke.
  - makmanalp 11y 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.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TallGuyShort 11y 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.
- belorn 11y 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.
- paulojreis 11y 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.
  - sdoering 11y 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.)
    - paulojreis 11y ago
      > 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.) Thing is... "which" grain of salt? Physicians fail frequently, but what's the alternative? I wouldn't know what to question, and on which basis. I could read about it on the web, but why would I trust a strangers report instead of a flawed, but at least "certified", physician?
      - sdoering 11y ago
        Well you could try to, step by step, experiment with different diets and regularly have a look at your fitness-level, your blood work, your weight, the composition of your body (%of water/fat/and so on). Before that you could read a lot. Some studies, some literature. A lot will be on the strange to the bullshit-level. But the self-experimenting part will teach you, what is good for your body and what not. For example one of the problems we face in this field seems to me, that we do know so little about the bacteria (and so on), we have in our intestines. There is quite an active field of research and a lot is happening there. Maybe some day we will know more, coming from this part of science. Untill then, living with a significant other who had to listen to her body for 15+ years, I for example learned, that reducing my intake of carbohydrates (and esp. sugar and wheat) helps a lot in reducing my weight, while the reduction of fat does not help that much (Every time closely watching my caloric intake). But I would not recommend doing exactly this to everybody - it is something, that subjectively, anecdotally works for me.
- CJefferson 11y 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!
  - koonsolo 11y 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.
    - jasode 11y ago
      >I think most of it is actually obvious. I somewhat disagree. It may be "obvious" to well-informed HN readers. However, I don't think food nutrition is obvious to a significant portion of the population. Proof of this is how the food industry advertises and labels their products to take advantage of buyers' ignorance: -- orange juice with labels saying that it's "fortified with extra vitamins and calcium". (Many people will associate oj with positive connotations of "fruit", and the vitamin supplement is a bonus. Result: unsophisticated buyers think of oj as "healthy" when it's really concentrated sugar water that will contribute to obesity and tooth decay.) -- lean cuisine "low-fat" microwave dinners with a "heart healthy" icon on the box. (Naive buyers see the "low fat" as a signal for "healthy" but don't realize that manufacturers have to amplify the taste by adding lots of salt. The heavy carbs in those meals are also controversial.) -- granola bars and "energy" bars. (The packaging has pictures of active hikers, bicycle riders, mountain climbers, etc. Some granola bars even prominently feature "fiber" as a benefit. The ignorant don't realize that these snacks are really glorified "candy bars" with clever marketing to lessen the guilt trip of eating a stick of sugar.) -- fat free yogurt. (They took out the fat but now the yogurt has lots of sugar, which is another form of calories, which most people won't burn off, which then gets stored as fat anyway.) -- photographs of celebrities with milk mustaches shown on billboards and magazine ads and associated slogans like "milk does a body good!". (Those ads are promoted by the dairy industry and it's questionable whether it's healthy for adults to drink milk.) -- USDA food pyramid. (The uneducated don't realize that the USDA (and hence the chart) is influenced and manipulated by the meat & dairy industries. Because the nutrition advice is officially published by the government and plastered all over school walls, it feels authoritative. Naive consumers don't realize that if the food pyramid was designed by nutritionists not financially linked to meat & dairy, they would place vegetables as highest priority.) For the consumers that get exposed to nutrition information in a passive way, they really don't know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. There's so much misinformation and manipulation that the American consumer is less knowledgeable about what's healthy than the African bushmen eating wild berries and hunting antelope.
- mpclark 11y 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.
- andrepd 11y 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.
- TheCraiggers 11y 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.
  - jazzyk 11y 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).
    - michaeltoth 11y ago
      Scientists are also incentivized by the publishing system to find noteworthy results, which often leads to finding evidence where there is none, especially in fields like nutrition where the signal to noise ratio is so low
      - 11y ago
- cellularmitosis 11y 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?
  - cellularmitosis 11y ago
    I should mention that a modern antidote to this are the efforts of people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick (http://www.foundmyfitness.com/ 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).
    - atomical 11y ago
      Why is she interviewing Tim Ferris? Is this good science or popular fad science? Dr. Michael Greger does this at http://nutritionfacts.org/ http://nutritionfacts.org/.
- afarrell 11y 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 https://m.youtube.com/#/user/thehealthcaretriage EDIT (thanks mmorris!) https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage 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-help-if-youre-depressed/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-h... The former depends on donations through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/healthcaretriage?ty=h https://www.patreon.com/healthcaretriage?ty=h
  - mmorris 11y 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 https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage
- discordianfish 11y 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.
- sliverstorm 11y 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 11y 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.
branchless 11y ago
If I go for a pee and it's yellowish I have more water. Also I do it when I'm thirsty.
sibizavic 11y ago
So many conflicting stories. What to trust these days? But I can understand that indeed it depends on the type of person.
jbb555 11y 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 11y 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...
- sdoering 11y ago
  Even your advice has a special name: "Cretan Diet". But yeah - this diet-bs is actually quite unnerving.
- sp332 11y 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-expectancy-increased/ http://www.maxroser.com/everyone-is-better-off-life-expectan...
  - dkersten 11y ago
    My completely uninformed made up argument: medicine, medical care and sanitation have improved a lot. ;-)
- andrepd 11y ago
  Isn't that "Greek diet" a bullshit diet too, by the same logic?
jtolj 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
  - bkmartin 11y 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.
  - jtolj 11y 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 11y 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.
sp332 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
  *All due :)
- fridek 11y 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.
- IkmoIkmo 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/nda100326
- air 11y 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.
- IkmoIkmo 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
If you're thirsty, drink water until you're no longer thirsty. If you're not thirsty, don't drink water.
- onion2k 11y 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.
  - bkmartin 11y 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.
    - onion2k 11y ago
      That was hyperbole on my part really. There are about 10% of people with some form of diabetes, and one or two percent for the other conditions. That's a 'large percentage' if you compare it with other unifying factors across the population (you can't say '12% percent of people have X condition' for many medical problems), but I guess it's not strictly a large percentage on it's own.
- sliverstorm 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
- yellowapple 11y 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.
- ilaksh 11y 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 11y ago
Somehow related, very rare but good to know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
Camillo 11y 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 11y 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 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.
- ilaksh 11y 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.

141 points by denzil_correa 11y ago

neverminder 11y ago

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

lcswi 11y ago
'Mainstream media'? I mostly hear nutrition tips like this via Facebook posts of dubious pseudoscience lifestyle sites.

mangeletti 11y 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 11y ago
That is the beauty of science, no matter what I want to do I can find some study supporting it!
- ska 11y ago
  You often can, but they are not fungible.
atomical 11y 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 11y 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.
  - apl 11y ago
    A simple explanation for this: cutting carbs is tricky and requires a lot of careful planning etc., increasing the likelihood that people actually stay under their maintenance caloric intake. It doesn't really matter how you do it. As long as your expenditure is larger than your intake, you'll lose weight. In any case, your point doesn't say anything about the healthiness of carbohydrates.
    - atomical 11y ago
      Yes, but what about high LDL and heart disease risk with high fat diets? The paleo and keto folks completely dismiss this.
    - mindcrime 11y ago
      In any case, your point doesn't say anything about the healthiness of carbohydrates. There's evidence (sorry, I don't have the citations in front of me) to link carbohydrate intake to increased triglycerides, higher HDL, and more inflamation - pretty much the opposite of "healthy". OTOH, there's reason to think that a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet may improve lipid profiles, and reduce the risk of heart disease. Now, I can't say with certainty that a low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet is better (or worse) than a high carb, low fat diet, or a high protein diet, etc. And I think part of the problem is simply that when you talk about human health and the connection between health and diet, there are just too many variables, and it's hard to control for them all. Hence the fact that you can find research endorsing a number of different diets, which appear diametrically opposed to each other.
      - atomical 11y ago
arpa 11y ago
Well you shouldn't let mainstream media think for you ever and not only for matters regarding your health.
- pdpi 11y 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.
dekhn 11y 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 11y 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.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    It definitely is so. What authority do I have to talk about economics or law? Shouldn't I leave that to the people who do know what they are talking about? Kind of a central problem in democracy, if you think about it.
  - dubya 11y ago
    Protestants, at least, have the idea of the "priesthood of all believers", meaning roughly that each person can have authority in doctrinal matters. So you should listen to your priest, but you don't have to accept that he's correct if God is telling you something different. Thus the billion different protestant denominations.
    - zaphar 11y ago
      Protestants if you go back to their roots actually expected you to become an expert in scripture in order to recognize when your "priest" is wrong. But they didn't promote anything goes. It's more that you should learn and be able to apply scripture correctly. This didn't prevent the proliferation of denominations because of course different people would interpret a piece of scripture differently and get really worked up about it.
toyg 11y 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 11y ago
  Of course, this advice should only be followed in moderation; for instance, there's no healthy amount of trans-fats.
  - toyg 11y ago
    Yeah, but eating a few grams once in a blue moon won't kill you. It's not Polonium.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    Just like there's no "healthy" amount of carbonated soda either, but having an occasional glass of coke won't have any result on your health whatsoever. That's also moderation.
    - exodust 11y ago
      There's definitely a negative effect on your health from one glass of coke. Small, but still an effect. For starters you're exceeding the recommended daily intake of added sugar with one can of coke. No big deal, but if your liver could talk, it wouldn't be happy. Your blood pressure rises, again no big deal, but still not good. The only good thing is the water in the coke.
- makmanalp 11y 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.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
TallGuyShort 11y 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.
belorn 11y 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.
paulojreis 11y 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.
- sdoering 11y 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.)
  - paulojreis 11y ago
    > 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.) Thing is... "which" grain of salt? Physicians fail frequently, but what's the alternative? I wouldn't know what to question, and on which basis. I could read about it on the web, but why would I trust a strangers report instead of a flawed, but at least "certified", physician?
    - sdoering 11y ago
      Well you could try to, step by step, experiment with different diets and regularly have a look at your fitness-level, your blood work, your weight, the composition of your body (%of water/fat/and so on). Before that you could read a lot. Some studies, some literature. A lot will be on the strange to the bullshit-level. But the self-experimenting part will teach you, what is good for your body and what not. For example one of the problems we face in this field seems to me, that we do know so little about the bacteria (and so on), we have in our intestines. There is quite an active field of research and a lot is happening there. Maybe some day we will know more, coming from this part of science. Untill then, living with a significant other who had to listen to her body for 15+ years, I for example learned, that reducing my intake of carbohydrates (and esp. sugar and wheat) helps a lot in reducing my weight, while the reduction of fat does not help that much (Every time closely watching my caloric intake). But I would not recommend doing exactly this to everybody - it is something, that subjectively, anecdotally works for me.
CJefferson 11y 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!
- koonsolo 11y 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.
  - jasode 11y ago
    >I think most of it is actually obvious. I somewhat disagree. It may be "obvious" to well-informed HN readers. However, I don't think food nutrition is obvious to a significant portion of the population. Proof of this is how the food industry advertises and labels their products to take advantage of buyers' ignorance: -- orange juice with labels saying that it's "fortified with extra vitamins and calcium". (Many people will associate oj with positive connotations of "fruit", and the vitamin supplement is a bonus. Result: unsophisticated buyers think of oj as "healthy" when it's really concentrated sugar water that will contribute to obesity and tooth decay.) -- lean cuisine "low-fat" microwave dinners with a "heart healthy" icon on the box. (Naive buyers see the "low fat" as a signal for "healthy" but don't realize that manufacturers have to amplify the taste by adding lots of salt. The heavy carbs in those meals are also controversial.) -- granola bars and "energy" bars. (The packaging has pictures of active hikers, bicycle riders, mountain climbers, etc. Some granola bars even prominently feature "fiber" as a benefit. The ignorant don't realize that these snacks are really glorified "candy bars" with clever marketing to lessen the guilt trip of eating a stick of sugar.) -- fat free yogurt. (They took out the fat but now the yogurt has lots of sugar, which is another form of calories, which most people won't burn off, which then gets stored as fat anyway.) -- photographs of celebrities with milk mustaches shown on billboards and magazine ads and associated slogans like "milk does a body good!". (Those ads are promoted by the dairy industry and it's questionable whether it's healthy for adults to drink milk.) -- USDA food pyramid. (The uneducated don't realize that the USDA (and hence the chart) is influenced and manipulated by the meat & dairy industries. Because the nutrition advice is officially published by the government and plastered all over school walls, it feels authoritative. Naive consumers don't realize that if the food pyramid was designed by nutritionists not financially linked to meat & dairy, they would place vegetables as highest priority.) For the consumers that get exposed to nutrition information in a passive way, they really don't know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. There's so much misinformation and manipulation that the American consumer is less knowledgeable about what's healthy than the African bushmen eating wild berries and hunting antelope.
mpclark 11y 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.
andrepd 11y 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.
TheCraiggers 11y 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.
- jazzyk 11y 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).
  - michaeltoth 11y ago
    Scientists are also incentivized by the publishing system to find noteworthy results, which often leads to finding evidence where there is none, especially in fields like nutrition where the signal to noise ratio is so low
    - 11y ago
cellularmitosis 11y 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?
- cellularmitosis 11y ago
  I should mention that a modern antidote to this are the efforts of people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick (http://www.foundmyfitness.com/ 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).
  - atomical 11y ago
    Why is she interviewing Tim Ferris? Is this good science or popular fad science? Dr. Michael Greger does this at http://nutritionfacts.org/ http://nutritionfacts.org/.
afarrell 11y 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 https://m.youtube.com/#/user/thehealthcaretriage EDIT (thanks mmorris!) https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage 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-help-if-youre-depressed/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-h... The former depends on donations through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/healthcaretriage?ty=h https://www.patreon.com/healthcaretriage?ty=h
- mmorris 11y 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 https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage
discordianfish 11y 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.
sliverstorm 11y 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 11y 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.

branchless 11y ago

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

sibizavic 11y ago

So many conflicting stories. What to trust these days? But I can understand that indeed it depends on the type of person.

jbb555 11y 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 11y 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...

sdoering 11y ago
Even your advice has a special name: "Cretan Diet". But yeah - this diet-bs is actually quite unnerving.
sp332 11y 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-expectancy-increased/ http://www.maxroser.com/everyone-is-better-off-life-expectan...
- dkersten 11y ago
  My completely uninformed made up argument: medicine, medical care and sanitation have improved a lot. ;-)
andrepd 11y ago
Isn't that "Greek diet" a bullshit diet too, by the same logic?

jtolj 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.
- bkmartin 11y 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.
- jtolj 11y 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 11y 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.

sp332 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
*All due :)
fridek 11y 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.
IkmoIkmo 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/nda100326

air 11y 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.
IkmoIkmo 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago

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

onion2k 11y 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.
- bkmartin 11y 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.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    That was hyperbole on my part really. There are about 10% of people with some form of diabetes, and one or two percent for the other conditions. That's a 'large percentage' if you compare it with other unifying factors across the population (you can't say '12% percent of people have X condition' for many medical problems), but I guess it's not strictly a large percentage on it's own.
sliverstorm 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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.

yellowapple 11y 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.
ilaksh 11y 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 11y ago

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

Camillo 11y 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 11y 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 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.

ilaksh 11y 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.