This Water Habit Could Send You to the Hospital

How much water should you drink each day? Discover the truth behind the 8 glasses a day myth, the side effects of drinking too much water, and proper hydration tips to keep you hydrated and support overall health.

the great water lie. That’s what we’re going to get into. This is one of those topics that everyone knows is true. I used to push it on people when I was in my clinic. You need to drink eight glasses of water a day.

Today, we’re going to get into the background of where that actually came from, and somehow we completely neglected our bodies communication to us, which is called thirst. But, what I’m going to tell you out loud is this. There has never been even one single clinical trial that has established how much water we need to drink to be healthy. That number, eight glasses of water that we keep repeating our entire life, came from a footnote someone misread from 1945. People were asked on the street, “How much liquid do you drink per day?

” And, based on that one survey, it came out to eight glasses of water, and that has become our mantra. In 1945, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council published a set of dietary guidelines. And buried in this document was one short paragraph about water. It said this, “A suitable allowance of water for adults is 2. 5 L per day.

” So, if you stopped reading right there, you probably think, “Okay, well, it’s roughly about eight glasses of water. Case closed. ” But, the very next sentence said, “Most of the quantity is contained in prepared foods. ” Apparently, no one really read that next sentence, and that changes everything. Because if we do the math on that, an average person gets roughly between 700 ml to 1 L of fluid from their daily food.

And of course, if you’re eating more fruits or vegetables, you’re going to get more liquid. An apple, by the way, is 86% water. A steak is 60% water. A cucumber is 95% water. And on top of that, your body actually can make a certain amount of water, it’s called metabolic water.

We’re possibly generating over a liter of fluid every single day. And of course, there’s a lot of other variables that are never calculated in that. For example, how much someone weighs. So, does a person of 300 lb versus 100 lb consume the same amount of liquid? Does a person that exercises 2 hours a day versus sedentary, do they consume the same amount of liquid?

What about a person that consumes a bit more caffeinated beverages, which tends to create more of a diuretic effect? Do they consume the same amount? So, this entire eight glasses of water a day came from one key figure, Dr. Frederick Stare, who is the founding chairman of nutrition at Harvard University. And he did say you can include coffee and tea and milk and even beer.

Then in 2002, a kidney specialist named Dr. Heinz Valtin did something nobody has ever bothered to do. He went looking for the actual clinical evidence, and he published a thorough review, and it was this, “No scientific studies were found to support the eight glasses per day rule. ” What he found was the surveys. I mean, it’s really bizarre to me that the entire world is following this without really even knowing where it came from.

And this happens with many different areas of health. I remember long ago doing a live show, and a nutritionist called in, and I was talking about this topic, and she just let me have it. She’s like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You are harming people, telling people that they don’t need eight glasses of water a day. ” And I never actually said that.

But, it was just amazing how programmed people are on this eight glasses of water a day. Because what this eight glasses of water a day turned into is you need to drink before you’re thirsty. Because by the time you are dehydrated, it’s too late. And there’s a lot of nutritionists and even dietitians that’ll tell you to drink a lot more than this a day, just to make sure you never get dehydrated. Even saying to drink a gallon of water a day, and I’m not kidding.

When you get into this, well, everyone knows it’s true. But, then you can’t really find out where this information came from. The bigger point I want to communicate is that our bodies have a built-in system to tell us when to drink, and it’s called thirst. But, apparently, somewhere down the line, this whole thirst thing is kind of like, just ignore that. Don’t even worry about that.

You want to drink before you’re thirsty. As soon as you start losing just a little bit of fluid, there is a hormone, it’s called vasopressin, that will start telling your kidney to hold fluid. Our bodies are designed to adapt to situations where we don’t have water. I mean, if you just take a look at our past environments, famine, drought, lack of food, lack of water, our bodies have adapted to that. And now, it’s such a mismatch because we can drink just constantly all day long.

The reason I don’t like that is you’re bypassing your body’s sensation for thirst. Should we eat when we’re not hungry to prevent starvation? Well, look where that’s gotten us. The drink more industry, the global bottled water market is now worth over $290 billion a year. Americans consume nearly 16 billion gallons of bottled water every single year.

Then you have the sports drink industry, right? 1965, Gatorade came on the scene, created at a time when there wasn’t much public evidence that Gatorade actually worked. But, following that was a national campaign to convince you that exercise causes dangerous dehydration, and that the thirst is unreliable, and their product is the cure. So, in 1992, Gatorade paid the American College of Sports Medicine $250,000. A year later, they co-hosted a round table, exercise and fluid replacement, and the key message that came out of that partnership, drink before you are thirsty.

Now, think about that for a second. The industry that sells beverages funded the guidelines that told you your own thirst can’t be trusted. Researchers tracked down something called a water turnover, which basically means the total amount of water cycling through a body per day. And they did this on 5,640 people, okay, across 26 countries, ages 8 to 96 years old, okay? Using a very specific technology to detect water loss from your body.

What was the result of water loss from urination, humidity, it ranged from 1 L loss per day to a 6 L loss of fluid per day. This is a massive range of water exiting your body. And 1 L is like four or five cups of water, okay? And 6 L is six times that. So, the liquids people need are really dependent on your age, your body size, your climate, your physical activity, how much manual labor you’re doing.

Your body also gives you other clues that you need more water. If your urine is a little bit darker, that means it’s too concentrated. You should probably drink some more water. If your urine is completely clear, okay, that means you’re drinking too much water. And if it’s clear, you’re also losing and flushing out your electrolytes.

You really need your urine to be a pale straw color. Now, I know some people are going to say, “What about kidney stones? Shouldn’t we drink a lot of water to prevent kidney stones? ” The best way to prevent kidney stones is to have enough magnesium in your body. That’s the antidote to kidney stones.

And of course, if you drink 2. 5 L a day, if you’re prone to kidney stones, you’ll keep your urine diluted enough to prevent kidney stones, but that’s a whole different topic. So, a lot of people ask me, “What supplements do I recommend? ” Now, of course, I’m not biased of my own high-quality supplement line. But, if you go to Amazon and type Dr.

Berg supplements, you’ll find more information. But, here’s my bigger point about this whole topic. It’s a condition called hyponatremia. What is that? Low sodium in your blood.

And this is way more dangerous than any type of dehydration situation. I