Keep the Water Flowing for Health (and Coffee Counts)
Athletes who don’t replenish properly after strenuous workouts could be in danger of dehydrating and so could older folks, with the CDC saying that close to 30 percent of seniors are not properly hydrated. But the good news is most of the rest of us are getting our eight cups of water a day even if we’re not gulping it down by the glassful.
| 19 May 2023 | 12:43
While the government recommendation that we drink eight glasses of water a day has been around for 78 years, more recent studies say that most of us get a good deal of water from means other than guzzling bottles of H20. And good news, even coffee and tea count, some studies show. Photo: Flickr Editor B/Bart
Seventy-eight years ago, the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board said that as a rule you should drink 8 glasses of water a day.
Surprise #1: You probably already do.
Surprise #2: But not necessarily as water because there’s a second line to the rule: “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” For example, start your meal with a green salad (one ounce shredded lettuce, three ounces each celery and cucumbers), and you’re already ahead one glass of water. End the meal with five ounces of fresh strawberries and bananas plus four ounces of most ice creams, and your sundae is one ounce over one cup of water mark.
Surprise #3: Coffee and tea count. Caffeine is a diuretic, a chemical that promotes urination and therefore liquid loss, which is why many suggest it doesn’t count in the day’s liquids. Not so, says University of Alabama at Birmingham nutritionist Beth Kitchin whose news-you-can-use press release notes that your body “kind of adapts” to the caffeine in as little as three days so “you don’t necessarily lose all these extra fluids.”
Which is a deliciously good thing because when you step on the scale between 55 to 78 percent of the weight it measures is you own body’s natural water content. While there’s water, water everywhere, some parts are particularly liquid. Lungs lead at slightly more than 80 percent; kidneys, 79 percent; heart and brain about 75 percent. Your bones are down around a measly 30 percent but the tissues that support them and lubricate your joints are right up there with the winners.
Those numbers say a lot about what water does for you: Balance the chemicals that keep you going, send oxygen everywhere, regulate your temperature, make the saliva help digest food and move waste along. All of which becomes a problem when you’re dehydrated, four syllables defined as “the absence of a sufficient amount of water.” It doesn’t take much to produce early symptoms such as headache and dry mouth, that untreated can move on to dizziness, rapid heartbeat, confusion, chills, muscle cramps, fainting, and, if prolonged or untreated, an unpleasant end. To prevent this, the National Academy of Medicine suggest a general guide for adequate intake: About 13 8-ounce cups a day for men, 9 for women from all sources.
Ordinarily, those most at risk of missing the goal are older adults whose natural water content declines with age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says 28 percent of them do not get enough liquids. Ditto for athletes who fail to sufficiently replace the liquids lost while working out or running the fastest marathon ever run on the hottest day of the year. Their serious dehydration may require medical care up to and including a trip to the emergency room. But simple dehydration has a simple remedy: As soon as you’re thirsty, drink some water.
Do that before each meal, and you may discover water’s extra added benefit: It fills your belly and tells your brain you’re full. In 2010, data from a 12-week study at Virginia Tech’s Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise reported in The Journal Of Obesity showed that dieters who drank two cups of water before each of the day’s three meals lost about 15.5 pounds vs 11 pounds for the non-water drinkers. In short, says the study’s senior author Associate Professor Brenda Davy, “That’s a simple way to facilitate weight management.”
So, bottoms up.
Or, as the Virginia results suggest, down.