Water is a necessary ingredient for human survival
to say nothing of optimal physical and mental performance.
Now if you're watching this, it means that you are alive
which means that you are at least getting the bare minimum.
But are you drinking enough water?
For years we've been told from many many sources
that we are constantly dehydrated
and that if we want our bodies to work optimally,
we need to get our eight glasses a day.
And some people think that eight glasses
actually isn't enough.
They go further saying you need three or four liters.
And others say that the timing is crucial.
You need to spread out your water drinking
over each hour of the day, which come to think of it, oh no!
(suspense music)
(exhales forcefully) Okay, I'm not gonna die now.
But all jokes aside, do you really need
to be drinking eight glasses of water a day?
Or to ask the more general question
that you probably have in the back of your mind,
how do you really know if you're hydrated
and how do you make sure
that you stay hydrated on a daily basis?
Well, after far more time than I initially expected
to spend researching for this video,
I hope to answer those questions for you today.
Here is everything that you need to know about hydration.
Let's start with the common assertion
that you need to be drinking eight glasses of water per day.
This idea has been out in the wild for decades
with many believing the original source to be a 1945 notice
put out by the Food and Nutrition Board
which recommended that people get about
two and a half liters of water per day.
From there, the idea spread and entered
the general consciousness, becoming the mantra
of many a nutritional food blogger and gym teacher.
Unfortunately, what seems to have been left out
is the very next sentence in that recommendation.
Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.
This puts quite the damper on the idea
that you need to be gulping down
two and a half liters of water every single day.
And more importantly, no scientific evidence has come out
in defense of that idea in the intervening decades.
In 2002, an extensive research review published
in the American Journal of Physiology concluded as much.
And interestingly, it also noted that,
"This conclusion is supported by published studies
"showing that caffeinated drinks, and, to a lesser extent,
"alcoholic beverages like beer in moderation,
"may indeed be counted toward the daily total."
As that notice from 1945 points out,
solid food counts toward the total as well,
though the Mayo Clinic states that it's around
20% of the total rather than being most of it.
And of course, that amount's gonna vary based on your diet.
If you eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits,
which at the end of the day are mostly water,
then that total's gonna be a little bit higher.
But if you're like me and your breakfast consists
of a bowl of nails and 6,000 push-ups,
then you're probably gonna be leaning
a little bit heavier on the beverages.
So if you don't need eight glasses of water a day,
how much do you need?
Well, as you might expect, the answer is it depends.
Your body's individual hydration needs vary
based on different factors like age, weight, gender,
environmental factors like altitude, temperature,
your proximity to certain Dragonball Z villains,
and of course, your level of physical activity.
Luckily, your conscious brain doesn't have to worry about
meticulously tracking any of these factors because,
as it turns out, your body already has built-in mechanisms
for maintaining an optimal fluid balance automatically.
For instance, when your body detects
that it's a little bit low on fluids,
it releases an antidiuretic hormone called vasopressin
which increases water absorption in the kidneys
and returns it back to the bloodstream
to restore that balance.
When that isn't enough, you body brings the issue
to your attention by making you thirsty
to which you're almost certainly going to respond
by drinking something if you can.
There's no meticulous timing or spreadsheets or measurements
or rolling 20-sided die needed and this makes sense.
Until very recently, the human body,
and almost all land-dwelling animals for that matter,
have had to evolve and adapt in an environment
where there was no guarantee to regular access to water
so systems for maintaining a good fluid balance,
even in the dry times, were a necessity.
So to put things simply, yes, you need water to survive
and you need even more to perform at your peak
but your body will tell you how much and when to drink it.
So follow the thirst rule.
When your body tells you you're thirsty,
go and drink something to quench that thirst, very simple.
Now if you really want to double check your hydration,
one easy way to do it is by
checking the color of your urine.
If it's light yellow, then that means
you're hydrated, you're good to go.
Solid yellow or dark yellow means you're dehydrated,
you should probably drink some water.
And blue means you're an escaped government experiment.
Now at least in terms of hydration, the one other thing
you need to survive is a healthy balance of electrolytes.
What are electrolytes?
- It's what they use to make Brawndo!
- In general terms, an electrolyte is any substance
that conducts electricity when mixed with water.
But within the human body, electrolytes
are essentially rocks or minerals.
They do everything from regulating the function
of your nerves and muscles to balancing your blood pressure.
They're also essential for hydrating the body.
Without them, water would have no way
to get into your bloodstream and cells.
It would just pass through you like you were a tube slide.
A really dead tube slide.
Some of the most important electrolytes in your body
include sodium, potassium, calcium, adamantium, magnesium,
and guess what, that's right,
you don't have to meticulously track these either.
As long as you're eating enough
and you follow a relatively balanced diet
that consists of more than just chicken tenders
and Tinder rejections then you get
all the electrolytes you need from your normal meals.
And this means that even if you exercise regularly,
even if you're hitting the gym,
even if you're going for runs or fighting bears,
you have no need for the supposed
electrolyte benefits of sports drinks.
Sure, maybe chugging a quart of Brawndo before a workout
will make you feel more energetic
but that's mostly due to the buttload of sugar that's in it.
And I will remind you that buttload is a technical term.
Okay, so now it's time to talk about the exceptions
because there are always exceptions.
So here's the thing.
For 99% of the people watching this video, the vast majority
of my audience, the thirst rule is all you need to follow.
And honestly, I probably don't even need to talk about
the 0.1%, it's probably gonna kill my YouTube watch time
but I want to be thorough, so who falls into that 0.1%?
First and most importantly, people with certain types
of illnesses are susceptible to dehydration.
For a particularly disgusting example, if you have diarrhea,
you could start losing a lot of fluid really really fast.
And other illnesses can cause rapid dehydration as well
which is why hospitals carry oral rehydration solutions
that are specifically formulated
to rehydrate you as quickly as possible.
So if you're sick and you are,
for lack of a better term, expelling a lot of fluids,
then listen to your doctor when it comes to hydration.
Don't listen to me because while I am from the internet
and I have heard that means I cannot tell any lies,
I'm not a doctor.
The other exception is a very specific group of athletes.
Now as the author Mark Sisson points out in his book,
"The Primal Blueprint", many athletes who train intensely
on a regular basis can often come into training sessions
slightly dehydrated and because they're working so hard,
they're thirst response can't really keep up
and that can lead to decreased performance.
That being said, most athletes tend to drink
a lot of water while they're training.
It's just something that's been
kind of drilled into our heads.
So that isn't really the risk here.
For a specific group of athletes, for marathoners,
for endurance athletes, triathletes, cyclists, people
who are out training for a really long period of time,
the risk is actually hyponatremia, or water intoxication,
which is a dangerous dilution
of the sodium concentration in your bloodstream.
This is a potentially deadly condition
that's caused by overhydration by drinking too much water
which is something that a lot endurance athletes
if they're out running for a long time
or out on the bike for a long time can do unconsciously.
In fact, an observation of the participants
in the 2002 Boston Marathon found that 13% of the runners
tested after the race had hyponatremia.
Now I'm not gonna go too far into this because, like I said,
99% of you are not gonna be at risk for this
and it's really only a factor if you're out training
for a really long period of time.
But if you do want to learn more about this problem,
Tim Noakes' book "Waterlogged" has lots more information
about it and I'm assured many charts and graphs
and data to sink your teeth into.
Alright, so we have all of our science bases covered
and with that, I want to move onto one little
anecdotal problem that I have observed in my own life,
which I'm gonna call flow state dehydration.
So we talked about the thirst rule but here's the thing.
I'm the kind of guy who gets really into the work
that I'm doing, like laser focused, in the zone,
in the flow state and when I'm researching for a video
or I'm editing something, I can work for hours and hours
without eating or drinking sometimes.
Now on occasion, I have noticed that this has resulted
in mild dehydration and I try to fix that.
But more often, when I actually come out of that flow state
and I realize that I'm thirsty, I'll typically want to reach
for something a little more novel and interesting
than plain old water, like coffee or orange juice.
Now as I mentioned in my previous video
about coffee and dehydration,
I don't think there's a problem
with having a single daily cup of coffee
or having a morning glass of orange juice.
But it becomes a problem when I get ultra-focused
on my work, I let my discipline slip
and then I go and drink three lattes
instead of switching to water after the first one.
As a result, I've got a single simple goal
for myself every single day.
I've got this 27-inch stainless steel
water bottle and once per day,
I need to drink this thing in its entirety.
That plus all the coffee and tea and orange juice I drink
keeps me well-hydrated and ensures
that a lot of that hydration is coming from water.
And on a related note, I always make sure
the backpacks I buy have a water bottle holder on the side
otherwise I don't really have a good way
of bringing my water bottle with me when I go work somewhere
and that, again, leads to more
lattes purchased than necessary.
So those couple of little hacks work perfectly for me
but if you do happen to want to track your water intake
for some reason, yes,
there are water tracking apps out there
but a lot of them adhere to that
eight glasses per day standard
which we've kind of refuted in this video
so I don't really feel the need to link to these.
And what I think would be more useful anyway
is to use a more general purpose habit tracker
like Habitica which is my favorite or maybe Momentum
each of which would allow you
to also track other goals in your life.
But to wrap this up, optimal good hydration
can be had by following three simple rules.
Number one, the thirst rule.
When you're thirsty, drink something hydrating.
Number two, make sure you're eating a balanced diet
with plenty of vegetable and fruits
and high quality protein sources
to ensure your body gets all the electrolytes it needs
and you don't turn into that really dead tube slide.
And finally, number three, be vigilant about noticing
when you're starting to replace your water consumption
with a lot of less healthy drinks and when that happens,
take action to change your habits.
That's it, seriously.
Now I will let you be the judge
about how smooth this final product came out
but I will tell you the research that went into this video
is far more complicated than I had initially anticipated
and there are a lot of sources to this.
So if you're curious to learn more or you want to check out
the sources that I used to make this video,
I highly recommend checking out the companion article
that I've written which I'll link in the description
down below or you can find the card on screen right now.
Otherwise, as always, thank you guys so much for watching.
You could subscribe right there
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right there to get one additional video on this channel
that is probably the most productive way
that you can smash your face into something
so definitely do that
and I will see you guys in the next video.