6 ms·

Milk, orange juice, pedialyte more hydrating than water

44 points by uptownfunk 10y ago

MrJagil 10y ago
Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well and, unlike Gatorade, natural. It's a shame they did not test it but the reasoning applied to milk should carry over: "Why is milk so efficient at rehydration? “Normally when you drink, it signals the kidneys to get rid of the extra water by producing more urine,” Dr. Maughan said. “However, when beverages contain nutrients and electrolytes like sodium and potassium, as milk does, the stomach empties more slowly with a less dramatic effect on the kidneys.”"
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Isn't it possible also, that a high "throughflow" is healthy for the kidneys? At the very least, to prevent buildup/concentration of Urea in the kidneys.
- Havoc 10y ago
  >Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well Is it? I like the stuff sure, but clever marketing and dubious blogs aside I've not seen anything supporting this.
  - mikecke 10y ago
    In these cases it's extremely easy to get a gist of the research behind a certain topic by searching PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640
Jabbles 10y ago
Did one of the experiments involve drinking a litre of coffee?
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Yeah, but not the test subjects.
bemmu 10y ago
I wonder if this means that a latte would have a better kick than black coffee, because it would stay in your body longer? Assuming same amount of caffeine per litre.
- JshWright 10y ago
  It stays in your stomach longer. That's not useful to your body... Fluid is useful in your circulatory system, where your body can move it where it needs to be, or get rid of it. The extra fat and sugar in the latte will stick around much longer...
aaron695 10y ago
This is surprising? No it reinforces what we've known for years. It also fucks up the base point, we don't need water. Exactly why do we need to be hydrated? Unlike we do seem to have issues with over consuming calories.
- tzs 10y ago
  > It also fucks up the base point, we don't need water. If you mean that as written, it is completely wrong. If, however, you mean that we do not need to drink water, then it is not so wrong. It might be possible to get all the water you need by eating enough foods with high water content, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce. I'm not sure how practical it would be to actually try to eliminate all water from drink and get it all from food.
ekzy 10y ago
Interesting to see that they use cow milk as an example while there are, I suppose, a lot of other drinks where this argument applies. What about plant milk, tea, coffee, other juices etc...?
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The article links to the study it was based on which tested more drinks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 > Total urine masses over 4 h were smaller than the still-water control after an oral rehydration solution (ORS), full-fat milk, and skimmed milk. > Cumulative urine output at 4 h after ingestion of cola, diet cola, hot tea, iced tea, coffee, lager, orange juice, sparkling water, and a sports drink were not different from the response to water ingestion. I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from.
  - hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
    >I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from. They didn't just read the abstract like you did. There is a link on the page you hyperlinked to for the full text
upofadown 10y ago
>A score higher than 1.0 indicated that more of the beverage remained in the body as compared to water, while a score lower than 1.0 indicated a higher excretion rate than water. Then solid foods that need to be digested to get out the water would score even higher on this index. Condoms full of water would have an infinite score as the water would never show up in the urine. What I am saying here is that this is a stupid way to measure "hydration". Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page?
- colechristensen 10y ago
  >Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page? People are really interested in their health. Lots of "hackers" would be super-interested in information that gave them conscious and definite ways to improve themselves. The problem is that there's very little real information out there. This study, if were framed properly, would have been at least mildly interesting. Stomach emptying of fluids depends on the type of fluid... urination frequency too. Thirsty but don't want to pee all the time on a road trip or hacking marathon? Drink milk! Hack your body! But instead they had to link it with "hydration" which is bollocks. It's not clear that anyone should care at all about hydration unless vigorous exercise or extreme heat is involved because your kidneys do a pretty good job, period.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    self hacking the ultimate hacking ?
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Body hacking, biohacking, neurohacking...
- ebbv 10y ago
  Tech folks as a general rule are extremely ignorant about nutrition and health and tend to believe anything that seems science-y. Unfortunately.
Bromskloss 10y ago
> The guiding principle behind the new hydration index is that some fluids last longer in your body than others Is that all there is to it? Could it not happen that some drink caused the water supply in the body to decay as normal, but then continuing to even lower levels than before, for example? > Lawrence Armstrong, a hydration expert One wonders how there can be such a thing as a hydration expert if not even these basic things have been known until now. > But don’t forget that milk has many more calories than water, so don’t overdo it, either. A bit beside the point, perhaps: What caloric content is there in water? Can it be said to have any at all? It makes you think about how to define it, really. On the one hand, we don't typically think of the energy as coming from the water, but in the other hand, water must be present for us to extract the energy from other molecules. In a situation where energetic molecules (but not water) are already present, then, it is the consumption of water that causes an increased amount of energy to be made available to our bodies. Similarly, a battery contains energy, but not until we add cables to connect it do we get access to it. In a sense, it is the addition of the cable that contributes the energy.
colechristensen 10y ago
This is a terrible article about a study with really poor conclusions. Are you more "hydrated" if your stomach is carrying around fluid for longer? They test how much healthy young men pee out 2 hours after consuming something. The problem is, it's a dumb test. That 2 hours is pretty short when it comes to how long it takes things to empty from your stomach. With a full meal, your stomach would be a little more than half full at that two hour mark. Just water gets dumped from your stomach really quickly, 50% in 10 minutes. Here's the rub... while it might not be sure based on the study design, it seems there's a real good chance that the only thing going on here is people carry milk and pedialyte around in their stomachs longer. That's it. No extra "hydration" no health benefits. It would be akin to saying drinking 1L of water right away is more hydrating than drinking it in small increments over 2 hours. Is it more hydrating? Or did your body just have less time to turn it into urine? The big assumption being made is equating "hydration" with how much fluid you didn't pee out after two hours. If it's not tied to some set of health metrics (and really if it isn't tied to a long term health study) it should say absolutely nothing about conclusions an average person should take.
- JshWright 10y ago
  Exactly... "hydration" is a vague term, and where that fluid is matters a great deal. It's even more subtle than 'in the stomach vs out of the stomach'. Is it in your circulatory system? Inside your cells? In the extracellular space? Your body is very good at leveraging osmosis to move water around. It's main goal is to maintain adequate volume in your circulatory system (low volume means low pressure, just like any pumping system, low pressure means not enough blood gets to your brain). It will shift fluid around from various places to keep enough in the blood. This effect is actually leveraged in traumatic injuries with significant blood loss. "Extra" salty water will be given via IV, and that will 'pull' water into the circulatory system, via osmotic pressure. If you're peeing out the water you drank within an hour or two, it's because your body didn't need it (or it needed to use it to carrying some stuff out with it). Urinating is a _good_ thing.
- the_duke 10y ago
  I was going to write a scathing comment about the study, but you pretty much said it all. This study is really quite pointless. What suprises me is that anyone with knowledge in physiology would call this study "brilliant". I would expect better of someone leading a laboratory and an education in biology. (http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong-ph-d/ http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong-ph-d/)
Havoc 10y ago
>After all, if you drink a cup of water and then immediately excrete half that amount in your urine, you haven’t added eight ounces to your water supply, but only four. Seems like pretty flawed reasoning to me. The aim isn't to keep the liquid inside of you as "water supply". Unless you're dehydrated in the serious sense (survival situation, diarrhea etc) there isn't really any need to drink something special. The body does an entire satisfactory job of balance electrolytes and getting rid of waste via urine if you just drink enough water.
- JshWright 10y ago
  Exactly... If you drink 8oz of water, and your kidneys got rid of 4oz, it's because you didn't need those 4oz (or because your kidneys needed to use that water to carry other stuff away with it).
the_duke 10y ago
Link to the actual study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 PDF: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html
miguelrochefort 10y ago
Milk and orange juice? That's the basis of Ray Peat's anti-inflammatory diet. He advocates drinking one liter of each every day (to which salt and sugar is added).
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Because that won't hurt your pancreas at all. /s
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    He doesn't seem to think that would. He says that polyunsaturated fatty acids are the cause of most diseases.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Wow. Whodathunkit? Humans have been walking around dehydrated for tens of thousands of years. Definitely sarcasm.

44 points by uptownfunk 10y ago

Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well and, unlike Gatorade, natural. It's a shame they did not test it but the reasoning applied to milk should carry over: "Why is milk so efficient at rehydration? “Normally when you drink, it signals the kidneys to get rid of the extra water by producing more urine,” Dr. Maughan said. “However, when beverages contain nutrients and electrolytes like sodium and potassium, as milk does, the stomach empties more slowly with a less dramatic effect on the kidneys.”"

Chris2048 10y ago
Isn't it possible also, that a high "throughflow" is healthy for the kidneys? At the very least, to prevent buildup/concentration of Urea in the kidneys.
Havoc 10y ago
>Coconut water is supposedly quite hydrating as well Is it? I like the stuff sure, but clever marketing and dubious blogs aside I've not seen anything supporting this.
- mikecke 10y ago
  In these cases it's extremely easy to get a gist of the research behind a certain topic by searching PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22257640

Jabbles 10y ago

Did one of the experiments involve drinking a litre of coffee?

Bromskloss 10y ago
Yeah, but not the test subjects.

bemmu 10y ago

I wonder if this means that a latte would have a better kick than black coffee, because it would stay in your body longer? Assuming same amount of caffeine per litre.

JshWright 10y ago
It stays in your stomach longer. That's not useful to your body... Fluid is useful in your circulatory system, where your body can move it where it needs to be, or get rid of it. The extra fat and sugar in the latte will stick around much longer...

aaron695 10y ago

This is surprising? No it reinforces what we've known for years. It also fucks up the base point, we don't need water. Exactly why do we need to be hydrated? Unlike we do seem to have issues with over consuming calories.

tzs 10y ago
> It also fucks up the base point, we don't need water. If you mean that as written, it is completely wrong. If, however, you mean that we do not need to drink water, then it is not so wrong. It might be possible to get all the water you need by eating enough foods with high water content, such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce. I'm not sure how practical it would be to actually try to eliminate all water from drink and get it all from food.

ekzy 10y ago

Interesting to see that they use cow milk as an example while there are, I suppose, a lot of other drinks where this argument applies. What about plant milk, tea, coffee, other juices etc...?

kalleboo 10y ago
The article links to the study it was based on which tested more drinks: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 > Total urine masses over 4 h were smaller than the still-water control after an oral rehydration solution (ORS), full-fat milk, and skimmed milk. > Cumulative urine output at 4 h after ingestion of cola, diet cola, hot tea, iced tea, coffee, lager, orange juice, sparkling water, and a sports drink were not different from the response to water ingestion. I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
  >I don't know where the Hacker News submission got "orange juice is more hydrating than water" from. They didn't just read the abstract like you did. There is a link on the page you hyperlinked to for the full text

upofadown 10y ago

>A score higher than 1.0 indicated that more of the beverage remained in the body as compared to water, while a score lower than 1.0 indicated a higher excretion rate than water. Then solid foods that need to be digested to get out the water would score even higher on this index. Condoms full of water would have an infinite score as the water would never show up in the urine. What I am saying here is that this is a stupid way to measure "hydration". Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page?

colechristensen 10y ago
>Speaking of stupid, why does HN have so many of these pointless diet things on the front page? People are really interested in their health. Lots of "hackers" would be super-interested in information that gave them conscious and definite ways to improve themselves. The problem is that there's very little real information out there. This study, if were framed properly, would have been at least mildly interesting. Stomach emptying of fluids depends on the type of fluid... urination frequency too. Thirsty but don't want to pee all the time on a road trip or hacking marathon? Drink milk! Hack your body! But instead they had to link it with "hydration" which is bollocks. It's not clear that anyone should care at all about hydration unless vigorous exercise or extreme heat is involved because your kidneys do a pretty good job, period.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  self hacking the ultimate hacking ?
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Body hacking, biohacking, neurohacking...
ebbv 10y ago
Tech folks as a general rule are extremely ignorant about nutrition and health and tend to believe anything that seems science-y. Unfortunately.

Bromskloss 10y ago

> The guiding principle behind the new hydration index is that some fluids last longer in your body than others Is that all there is to it? Could it not happen that some drink caused the water supply in the body to decay as normal, but then continuing to even lower levels than before, for example? > Lawrence Armstrong, a hydration expert One wonders how there can be such a thing as a hydration expert if not even these basic things have been known until now. > But don’t forget that milk has many more calories than water, so don’t overdo it, either. A bit beside the point, perhaps: What caloric content is there in water? Can it be said to have any at all? It makes you think about how to define it, really. On the one hand, we don't typically think of the energy as coming from the water, but in the other hand, water must be present for us to extract the energy from other molecules. In a situation where energetic molecules (but not water) are already present, then, it is the consumption of water that causes an increased amount of energy to be made available to our bodies. Similarly, a battery contains energy, but not until we add cables to connect it do we get access to it. In a sense, it is the addition of the cable that contributes the energy.

colechristensen 10y ago

This is a terrible article about a study with really poor conclusions. Are you more "hydrated" if your stomach is carrying around fluid for longer? They test how much healthy young men pee out 2 hours after consuming something. The problem is, it's a dumb test. That 2 hours is pretty short when it comes to how long it takes things to empty from your stomach. With a full meal, your stomach would be a little more than half full at that two hour mark. Just water gets dumped from your stomach really quickly, 50% in 10 minutes. Here's the rub... while it might not be sure based on the study design, it seems there's a real good chance that the only thing going on here is people carry milk and pedialyte around in their stomachs longer. That's it. No extra "hydration" no health benefits. It would be akin to saying drinking 1L of water right away is more hydrating than drinking it in small increments over 2 hours. Is it more hydrating? Or did your body just have less time to turn it into urine? The big assumption being made is equating "hydration" with how much fluid you didn't pee out after two hours. If it's not tied to some set of health metrics (and really if it isn't tied to a long term health study) it should say absolutely nothing about conclusions an average person should take.

JshWright 10y ago
Exactly... "hydration" is a vague term, and where that fluid is matters a great deal. It's even more subtle than 'in the stomach vs out of the stomach'. Is it in your circulatory system? Inside your cells? In the extracellular space? Your body is very good at leveraging osmosis to move water around. It's main goal is to maintain adequate volume in your circulatory system (low volume means low pressure, just like any pumping system, low pressure means not enough blood gets to your brain). It will shift fluid around from various places to keep enough in the blood. This effect is actually leveraged in traumatic injuries with significant blood loss. "Extra" salty water will be given via IV, and that will 'pull' water into the circulatory system, via osmotic pressure. If you're peeing out the water you drank within an hour or two, it's because your body didn't need it (or it needed to use it to carrying some stuff out with it). Urinating is a _good_ thing.
the_duke 10y ago
I was going to write a scathing comment about the study, but you pretty much said it all. This study is really quite pointless. What suprises me is that anyone with knowledge in physiology would call this study "brilliant". I would expect better of someone leading a laboratory and an education in biology. (http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong-ph-d/ http://kins.uconn.edu/lawrence-e-armstrong-ph-d/)

Havoc 10y ago

>After all, if you drink a cup of water and then immediately excrete half that amount in your urine, you haven’t added eight ounces to your water supply, but only four. Seems like pretty flawed reasoning to me. The aim isn't to keep the liquid inside of you as "water supply". Unless you're dehydrated in the serious sense (survival situation, diarrhea etc) there isn't really any need to drink something special. The body does an entire satisfactory job of balance electrolytes and getting rid of waste via urine if you just drink enough water.

JshWright 10y ago
Exactly... If you drink 8oz of water, and your kidneys got rid of 4oz, it's because you didn't need those 4oz (or because your kidneys needed to use that water to carry other stuff away with it).

the_duke 10y ago

Link to the actual study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26702122 PDF: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/3/717.full.pdf+html

miguelrochefort 10y ago

Milk and orange juice? That's the basis of Ray Peat's anti-inflammatory diet. He advocates drinking one liter of each every day (to which salt and sugar is added).

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Because that won't hurt your pancreas at all. /s
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  He doesn't seem to think that would. He says that polyunsaturated fatty acids are the cause of most diseases.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Wow. Whodathunkit? Humans have been walking around dehydrated for tens of thousands of years. Definitely sarcasm.