Drinking Water

[謝雅麗]

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89323934

I wonder what your opinions are about this? I've also heard that a great deal of water is consumed every day through eating and consumption of other liquids.

[SSC]

That article is really stupid. It tries to discredit "myths" about water, but instead ends up just being mindless speculation. I'm no nutritionist (yet,) but I can tell you that the average person, working out or not, ought to drink at LEAST 64 oz. of water a day, and that's bare-minimum.

[謝雅麗]

Are you sure you saw it as speculation? What lead you to that conclusion. I was under the assumption the myths were all addressed with a clear answer.

"One study published in 2007 on the cosmetic benefit of drinking water suggests that 500 ml of water increases capillary blood flow in the skin. "But it's unclear whether these changes are clinically significant," says Goldfarb."

I suppose there's your speculation. There must not be any clinical trials yet to determine whether or not this could or couldn't be true.

Many people also absorb water through food, what if they got at least 30 oz. from that, they wouldn't necessarily need to drink an additional 64 oz.

Well I find this article interesting.

[abrannan]

I'd be curious to see the actual studies the doctors are referencing in their quotes. Unfortunately, this article is typical of most health/science reporting. In order to get a good sound byte, complex findings are often over-simplified at best, and misinterpreted at worst. For instance, they reference "large" amounts of water and kidney function, but what is a large amount of water?

[SSC]

Apr 27, 2008 21:05:45 GMT -5 謝雅麗 said:

Are you sure you saw it as speculation? What lead you to that conclusion. I was under the assumption the myths were all addressed with a clear answer.

"One study published in 2007 on the cosmetic benefit of drinking water suggests that 500 ml of water increases capillary blood flow in the skin. "But it's unclear whether these changes are clinically significant," says Goldfarb."

I suppose there's your speculation. There must not be any clinical trials yet to determine whether or not this could or couldn't be true.

Many people also absorb water through food, what if they got at least 30 oz. from that, they wouldn't necessarily need to drink an additional 64 oz.

Well I find this article interesting.

Sorry, I hope I didn't come off as rude or anything, I've just seen so many articles that make broad generalizations, sort of like what Abrannan was saying, about recommendations for people. The biggest problem that I have is that most of these articles make gross oversimplifications. People, let's just say 'average Americans,' come from all sorts of walks of life. They have different lifestyles, activities, and interests. This equates to rapidly different food choices, exercise frequency, and physical aspirations.

Before I address the article itself, let me expound on what I was saying the previous paragraph a little bit. As a bodybuilder, there's one huge, important thing I've learned about nutrition and general guidelines for them: What works for someone may not work for someone else. This seems like a simple concept, but it's deeper than it looks. For instance, if two who were the same age, height, and weight decided to follow the same diet, one of them losing 10 lbs. in six weeks, the other two lbs., it wouldn't mean one person is doing it "better" than the other. Dieting advice is supposed to be used as a guideline, not really to a "T." People ought to try said recommended diet for a few weeks, and see how their body reacts. If it's not favorable, perhaps some tweaking to the diet should happen. Acheiving the optimal level of fitness should be as individualized as it can be.

That being said, articles like these give me a bit of a red flag because of its deep connotations. No, it's not advocating not drinking water, but it's triyng to discredit reasons for drinking water. I can't see why anyone would try to discourage or disprove any reasons for drinking something every person can probably have more of. Again, especially because this article was geared towards the "average person," it may not be concurrent with an individuals' needs.

Let me actually delve into the article now...

Myth 1

Scientists say there's no clear health benefit to chugging or even sipping water all day. So where does the standard advice of drinking eight glasses each day come from? "Nobody really knows," says Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a kidney expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Okay, well, is there any disbenefit to drinking eight glasses of water a day? Their answer is just as vague as their question concerning where the original recommendation came from.

Myth 2

"No," says Goldfarb. "In fact, drinking large amounts of water surprisingly tends to reduce the kidney's ability to function as a filter. It's a subtle decline, but definite."

I'm not sure what they really mean by 'toxins,' but this is one point of the article I have no real comment about. If they mean nutrients, an [extreme] abundance of water can help wash nutrients through the system without them being properly absorbed by the body, but I don't have much of a counterpoint to this.

Myth 3

One study published in 2007 on the cosmetic benefit of drinking water suggests that 500 ml of water increases capillary blood flow in the skin. "But it's unclear whether these changes are clinically significant," says Goldfarb.

Again, I have a large problem with this because of how vague it is. "It's unclear whether these changes are clinically significant." Well, then isn't it fairly unclear as to the resolve of the myth at hand? The answer is dodgy, and doesn't really address anything concerning how water helps the (what I assume they're talking about - elasticity) of skin.

Myth 4

A more accurate statement may be: Drinking water is a helpful tool for dieters.

Um, okay. They basically just regurgiated the "myth," and just made it a bit less specific.

But water is not magical, she adds. Other zero-calorie options such as diet sodas are fine, too.

Maybe, but if I'm just getting done doing wind sprints, I'm not going to rely on Diet Pepsi to help replenish my system. There's nothing of use in soda/pop, and with water at least you' be receiving a pure, [quasi-] unadultered beverage.

Finally, the big one...

Myth 5

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that athletes drink 16 ounces of fluids a couple of hours before starting sports practice.

This is fairly good advice, but again, depending on the individual and what they're about to take part in, this generalization may not be accurate for all people.

But for a stroll in the park, no water bottle is necessary. Goldfarb's advice: Just drink when you're thirsty.

I'll ignore their sentance structure beginning with 'but,' (now I'm just getting picky,) but this is the worst thing they could have said in the whole article. The mindset of drinking when you're thirsty is an incredible way to maintain constant dehydration. Most dehydration occurs from too little water the previous day, rather than the actual day of working out. With this advice, you'd basically be selling your body short and allowing it to 'scrape by' with the bare minimum for what the body needs.



Well, that's just my opinion about the subject, but I really hope this can spark some sort of debate, because these boards have been excrutiatingly slow lately. Let's have at it!

If nothing else, I'm sure the King of Explanation will have some things to chime in... hopefully.

[abrannan]

You rang?



Well, I'm not going to weigh in point-by-point as you did SSC. I myself am not wholly settled on the drinking water issue. I can only reference my history and experiences.

I tend to drink a lot of water. A *lot*. I've been known to down a gallon during a workday. But that comes from my upbringing. I had kidney problems as a child. Hydronephrosis, which is when the ureter, which carries urine from your kidney to your bladder, collapses, causing urine to back up into your kidney and inflate it like a water balloon. It's excruciatingly painful, and I've had surgery twice to correct it. About three years after my first surgery, I had a kidney stone in that same side, followed by another a year later.

I don't tell you that as a sob story, but as background.

After the kidney stone, I was taught to be extremely mindful to drink enough water, and to learn how to tell if I was drinking enough from the color and clarity of my urine. I was basically told, "you can never drink too much", which as we know, is medically false, but is the easiest way to tell a 7 year old to drink more.


So what's the end result of drinking all that water for all these years? My skin is average. I'm still lazy and overeat, which is why I'm overweight. My kidney function recovered from around 25% to normal between my two surgeries, probably as a function of growth more than anything else. I can still get dehydrated on hot days, even if I don't feel particularly thirsty. So clearly water isn't a magic bullet cure-all, but I can't say I've had any more problems because fo the water I drink.

[crazysilent029]

i dont know if this is a "water myth" or not . but i heard that if you drink too much water you can get over-hydrated .

not that i drink more than 8 cups of water/a day .

just curious .


is this considered to be true?

[abrannan]

The short answer is yes, it can happen. The longer answer is that it's rare, and usually only in instances when you have some other thing going on that screws with your body's ability to get rid of excess water. It would take more than 2 gallons of water a day for a long period of time to cause overhydration. Even then, it's not so much a problem of too much water, but of too little electrolytes and sodium. It can happen with long distance runners, for example, if they're only drinking water, and not some form of electrolyte drink like Gatorade.


But for typical, day to day activity, it's not much of a concern.