In elementary school, most of us learn
the human body is 75% water and we
are supposed to drink eight glasses of water
every single day.
But that H2O knowledge, that's evaporated.
Hey, hydraters.
Trace here for D News.
Babies are wet.
Yeah, they are soaked in water.
A recent NPR blog post talked about how hydrated babies are.
They are 75% water when they're new.
Just for comparison, potatoes are about 80% water
and bananas, they're 74% water.
As we grow older, we dry out.
Adult men are only 60% water while women are 55% water.
The reason being men tend to have
higher amounts of muscle and women more fat, which
means muscle stores more water and fat cells
are bit drier on average.
But the fluid is actually stored all over our body.
Some is extracellular, stored in the liver, the kidneys,
stomach, bladder, spinal fluids, and so on.
But more than half is actually inside of your cells.
The bottom line is that water is vital to our health.
It helps lubricate joints.
It gives our waste something to dissolve into.
It keeps our tissues healthy and pliable.
But we lose it.
We lose it all day, every day, sweating, pooping, peeing.
Constantly, it's evaporating from our pores.
And if we don't replace it, we become dehydrated,
and our body suffers in a number of ways.
Which brings us to a very good question
that D News fan Vijanti Persad asked on our Facebook page.
What is the right or required amount
of water intake for a person?
That is an excellent question.
We've all heard that you're supposed
to drink eight glasses of water a day.
But where did that come from?
No one knows.
The debunking masters at snopes.com
couldn't even find original research on it.
They talked to Barbara Rolls, a nutrition researcher
at Penn State who's written a book about water,
and even she doesn't know where it came from.
The Mayo Clinic says the science is contested,
but it sure is easy to remember, so why not?
Honestly, a lot of our fluid intake comes from food.
The rules say that we need to drink fluid,
so if we eat a banana or an orange,
we consume their fluid, which is to say, we take their water.
Like fricking Dune, man, the spice must flow and all that.
An orange contains approximately eight ounces of fluid.
But if you drink a lot of diuretics, like soda,
your kidneys start to shed sodium, meaning you need more
to replace it, which is bad.
So while, yes, by drinking sodas you're drinking fluids,
you're doing it wrong.
Exactly how much water or fluid you're
supposed to drink every day depends
on things like body size and how much exercise you get,
how hot and dry the climate is and whether you're
sick or pregnant.
The truth is it probably wouldn't
hurt you to drink 8 to 12 8 ounce glasses of fluid per day,
but a really good way to test whether you're
drinking enough water is to look at your pee-- seriously.
When I was hiking in the desert, the guides
told us that it should be clear and copious.
If it's yellow, that means you're dehydrated.
So drink up and keep a BPA free water bottle around
to fill it up directly from your tap.
What do you do to stay hydrated?
Give us some strategies.
Let us know in the comments, and thanks a lot
for watching D News everybody.