8 Reasons NOT to Drink 8 Glasses of Water A Day | Butter Believer

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8 Reasons NOT to Drink 8 Glasses of Water A Day

Written on April 3, 2013 by ButterBeliever in Myth Busting, Politically Incorrect Ranting, What Not to Eat

Everyone knows the old adage is true, right? Drink 8, 8 ounce glasses of water a day! Youve heard it from your doctor, your nutritionist, your mom, the governor of all your health decisions (obviously none other than the Great and Powerful Oz!), every health book youve ever read, and of course, plenty of info-graphics going viral on Facebook, so, it must be true. Because your body is 60% water, of course! (Or, was it 80%? Who cares! Youre basically nothing but water.) Your brain is made out of water! Water is the source of life! You need to drink more water to get rid of toxins! You need to drink more water to get pretty skin! You need to drink water to lose weight! If you think youre hungry, youre really actually thirsty! By the time you get thirsty, youre already dehydrated! Coffee makes you dehydrated! Taking a shower makes you dehydrated! Breathing makes you dehydrated! If you dont have clear pee, youre about to die!!!

DRINK WATER ALL DAY LONG ALL OF THE TIME!!! BECAUSE WATER!!! If this aint your first rodeo, and youve read this blog before (which isnt exactly keen on many a mainstream health doctrinal standard), I bet you might be able to venture a guess as to what Im about to say next. Basically everything youve ever been taught about how much water you should be drinking is a big load of crap. (Yup. You called it.)

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05-May-13

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Why You Should NOT Be Drinking 8 Glasses of Water a Day

My top 8 reasons why drinking all those glassesinstead of drinking according to your own bodys needsis a bad idea.

1.) Youre blindly following standardized health advice instead of listening to your own body.
I find it interesting that in spite of huge, gaping variations in the span of health and nutrition recommendationssuch as the polar opposite advice given by mainstream medicine (saturated fat will kill you, but polyunsaturated fats are heart-healthy etc.) to all the varying sects of alternative medicine and nutrition (eat all the saturated fat you possibly can, but polyunsaturated fats will kill you, etc.), one constant has remained throughout ALL angles of health and nutrition advice, even in our real-food realm: Drink more water! Whats weird is that the whole, All things in moderation, thing is fairly universal as well. Yet, thats not supposed to apply to water, according to everyones standards. The more water, the better! Drinking water has become somewhat of a health virtuekind of like exercise. Theres a lot of pressure out there to do it, and do it a lot more than you naturally would want to. Therein lies one of the biggest problems with the water recommendations of todaythe audacious contention that your own body really doesnt know whats good for it. That even though its not asking for water, you should force down 8 more ounces and ignore the unpleasant biological feedback provided. Forget the uncomfortable urges to pee, the brain fog, and freezing cold hands and feet youre experiencingjust listen to that health guru and make sure youve met his daily quota for your bodys water needs for the day. Why do we all think its so acceptable to disrespect our own bodies in this way? Thats really what it iscomplete and total ignorance of the biological signals your body is ingrained with to regulate itself. You dont have to calculate out how much air youre going to breathe in each day, or how many times you should blink, or the number of times you will visit the bathroom. Your body does all the thinking for you, and tells you to breathe, blink, or poop according to its needs. And generally, you react to each respectively without giving it a second thought. But, should you drink water to quench your thirst, and then wait til the next time you feel thirsty to do it again? Nah. Just do that all day long, regardless of what your body says. Think about this, the next time you reach for that water bottle, or go to chug down the last half of the glass you just poured. Are you drinking that because youre thirsty, and your body is telling you it needs water? Or are you drinking it because its healthy? Most of the time, when people are drinking to the point of overhydration, their real answer is the latter. Worse yet is when people are drinking to satisfy other physical needs their bodies are signalinghunger especially. How many times have you heard this oneWhen you feel hungry, try water first! Sometimes you think youre hungry, but youre really just thirsty! Wow. Im pretty sure my two-year-old niece has been able to tell the difference between hunger and thirst since before she could talk. It isnt exactly difficult. I can promise you, you havent forgotten how to do this yourself. The kind of disordered thinking thats behind the message of drinking to satisfy hunger is born of other messed-up behavior and cultural attitudes about health, diet, and body image. Guaranteed. Why else would you ever want to not feed your body when its asking for it? Gotta perpetuate that calorie fear, of course!

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Hunger and thirst cues are instinctive. Listen to them, and respond appropriately. Dont torture yourself via waterboarding your gullet every hour of the day.

2.) Youre already getting water in your food.

Even if you were supposed to be drinking 64 ounces of water every day, youd be getting a significant portion of that simply by eating food. Thats because, unless youre an astronaut, almost all of the food you eat contains water. Think about itwhat happens when you combine powdered milk and water? You get (nasty tasting) milk. Powdered eggs and water? You get (a really horrible excuse for) eggs. And how did they make the powdered stuff? They took the water out of it. Theres water in fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, dairyyou name it. Grains and nuts have a very low water content, but youre usually eating them with other foods that contain water. Like, oatstheyre bone-dry, but you cook them in water and add butter and cream (unless youre crazy or something). Breadyou start with waterless flour, but add all kinds of moisture in other ingredients. And straight-up fats dont really contain water, but again, youre not going to be consuming them without other foods. Unless you literally eat your butter by the spoonful, which, even Im not weird enough to do. Point is, you get water just about every time you eat. And no one seems to want to count this. And even more strangely, many people dont even want to count beverages that arent water, as going toward your arbitrary allotment of daily water consumption. K. Seriously? If you eat a spoonful of instant coffee powder, and drink a glass of wateryou did not just consume a different thing than coffee. The powder doesnt magically cancel out the water. Same thing goes with juice, milk, tea, sodaand healthy crunchy hippie drinks like kombucha, kvass, kefir, and all that. If youre drinking something, theres a lot of water in it. Thats just kind of the way that goes. If youre eating watery foods and drinking those things on top of drinking a bunch of water, you could very easily be overdoing it on the H2O.

3.) Youre missing out on nutrient-dense beverages

And speaking of all the things you could be drinking which are not plain water, but very much contain significant amounts of itwhy not drink those things instead? When youre drinking water, all youre getting is water. But if youre drinking fresh, raw milk, jam -packed with critical nutrients like vitamins A, D, E, and K, youre not just getting hydration, youre getting nutrition. Or how about one of those weird fermented drinks like kefir, kombucha, or kvass? Or homemade bone broth? Beneficial probiotics, vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrientsall things youre missing out on if youre meeting your water needs with water only. The Weston A. Price Foundation actually advises against drinking too much plain water for this reason. Sally Fallon says of lacto-fermented beverages, Both soft drinks and alcoholic beveragesand even plain waterare poor substitutes for these health-promoting beverages. Taken with meals they promote thorough and easy digestion of food; taken after physical labor they give a lift by replacing lost mineral ions in a way that renews rather than depletes the bodys reserves. (source)

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4.) Youre throwing off your electrolyte balance

Sally was right about those minerals, by the waytheyre important. Specifically, the balance between phosphorous and sodium. Inside your cells, a balance leaning toward the phosphorous side is preferable. But outside your cellsin your extracellular (sometimes called intersitial) fluid, is where you want the scale to tip toward sodium. Healthy, normal extracellular fluid likes to stay at what is called an isotonic solutionthat means, it has about 9 grams of salt per liter of water. If youre very dehydrated, and require an IV of fluids at the hospital, they arent pumping you full of straight waterit could kill you if they did that. Theyre giving you an isotonic solution that provide hydration while maintaining a healthy electrolyte balance, sodium being of particular importance for those extracellular fluids. Maybe youve heard the advice out there that says if youre properly hydrated, your urine should be near-colorless. And that if its yellow, youre dehydrated. Do you have a pet? A dog, cat, or a horse will do. If you donext time you see your vet, ask him or her what they would think if you told them that Fluffys pee is always completely clear or near-colorless. I can guarantee you your vet wouldnt be thrilled. Thats because the specific gravity of urine is something that the field of veterinary medicine pays attention to (as do most responsible physicians). Its a determinant in proper levels of both hydration and electrolyte balancethe number that determines the concentration of dissolved particles in the urine. If its too low, that indicates hyponatremia, or low salt levels in the blood. Thats bad. It causes the fluid outside of the cells to shift inside the cells through osmosis, causing them to swell. The swollen cells cause increased intracranial pressure in the brain, which leads to some of the first unpleasant symptoms of water intoxication (overhydration, see more on that below), such as headaches, drowsiness, irritability, and other changes in behavior. Hyponatremia is associated with bone fracture in the elderly, increased

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incidence of myocardial infarction, and more serious issues. If you become extremely hyponatremic, you dielike this guy did. Drinking water all day long to the point that youre peeing clear urine is a great way to get yourself into a hyponatremic state.

5.) Overhydration sucks

Like many systems of the body, extracellular fluids can be optimally-concentrated, suboptimally concentrated, or overly concentrated. You can think of this in terms of hydrationyes, you can be dehydrated. You can be optimally-hydrated. And you can most definitely be overhydrated. Heres another little pearl of mainstream wisdom Im sure youve head before to justify drinking water all the time: By the time you feel thirsty, youre already dehydrated. Thats like saying, Once you feel hungry, your body already needs food. Duh. Having a need for food or water is not a problem you need to preventits a normal part of being alive. Just listen to the signals your body gives youfeed when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep when tired. A huge key to health that most people seem to miss these days. Whats actually much more common than dehydration is overhydration. People are so paranoid about becoming dehydrated, yet almost no one is even considering the possibility that the pendulum could swing too far to the other side with this. It can, and it does, and its dangerous. I would even go so far as to say that its more dangerous than dehydration, because its not as easily detectable. Dehydration is far easier to recognize. But most dont really know what to look for with water intoxication, nor do they correlate the symptoms with the right problem so it can be addressed. How do you know when youre overly-hydrated? Heres a list of common symptoms of water intoxication: Cold extremities (hands, feet, and/or nose) Low body temperature Having to urinate frequently Peeing in the middle of the night Headaches Muscle spasms, twitching Brain fog/decreased mental clarity Impaired emotion regulation/irritability Insomnia and poor sleep quality Fatigue Dry mouth (ironically. Usually only in more severe cases) Whats happening when you become overhydrated, is that extracellular fluid is becoming too dilute. That signals a stress response in the body, meaning that hormones which are designed to deal with acute and immediate stressors are being activated continunously, and will continue to be activated, the more a person is in a stressed and hypometabolic state. And the more the person continues to perpetuate the problem by drinking more and more water. Not good.

6.) Too much water inhibits digestion

To properly digest your food, you need appropriate levels of bile salts, hydrochloric acid, and other components of gastric acid. You also need a high-functioning metabolism. Drinking too much water can crash all of those things and cause digestion to suffer. In a way, the time that youre eating a plate of food is probably the best to be drinking straight water, if youre going to drink it. Thats because the straight water is no longer just thatit becomes water mixed with food in your belly. But on the other hand, its possible to overdo it and negate all the metabolism-stoking benefits of the food youre eating, if youre washing down your meal with a half gallon of water. However, that doesnt mean that you should stop listening to your body while youre eating, just cause youre worried about flushing out all your gastric juices. Eating the right kinds of foods to

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support metabolic health can make you quite thirstyand thats okay. Drinking to satisfy that thirst is fine, but downing a liter of water a half-hour before a meal can drown your stomach in fluids to the point where it has difficulty maintaining proper levels of digestive assimilants.

7.) Too much water adversely affects blood sugar.

Just like with salt and electrolytes, water flushes sugar out of the system. So if youre hypoglycemic, with too little sugar in the bloodstream, and are drinking a bunch of water, youre flushing out what little precious blood sugar youve got. If youre not hypoglycemic, and instead have a tendency to hyperglycemia, or blood sugar levels that are too high, guzzling water isnt the answer. Blood sugar stability is very closely correlated with metabolic rateand thats because the bodys metabolic rate affects how well your liver regulates glucose input and output, stored carbohydrates in the liver, fatty acids in your bloodstream, insulin sensitivity and more. These are all factors in glucose metabolism, which governs your blood sugar levels. When your extracellular fluids are concentrated appropriatelyand not diluted with water all day long it allows that metabolic system to do its job, which includes clearing sugar from the bloodstream and sending it into the cells, so that it can be used as fuel, or to be stored as glycogen. What it all comes down to, is this next reason not to drink 8 glasses of water a dayby far the most important one:

8.) Youre killing your metabolism

The bottom line on overhydration is that it diminishes optimal performance of your bodys systems, instead of improving them. And thats because overhydration inhibits metabolism. How important is your metabolism? Well, considering it supports the life of your body down to the cellular level and impacts every single physiological system within it, Id say its pretty key. When your fluids are filled with too much water, your cells become too flooded to produce energy the way theyre supposed to. Electrolytes and glucose are the cells source of energy kind of like little batteries for your mitochondria. So when this happens, your cellular metabolismthat process of taking in fuel and producing energyis shot. This triggers a stress response, with your body overproducing hormones like adrenaline, and just generally causing your body to freak out on the inside, without you even realizing it. Because your cells arent getting enough of what they need to produce energy, your body will try to conserve as much energy as it can. One of the first things your body will do to accomplish that is reduce circulation, because it wants to keep blood flow closer to vital organsinstead of your hands and feet, which is why they get cold. So, feeling cold hands and feet is a good sign that your stress response is being activated, and a damaging cascade of stress hormones has begun to flow. This is your body lowering its metabolism, just so its most basic functions can continue to work. Think of a low metabolism as being thrifty with your energy resources. And when that happens chronically, such as is the case with people who have a Nalgene permanently cemented to their hand, it becomes even more difficult for for cells to hold onto the salts and sugar they need to work. It gets increasingly easier to become water intoxicatedwith hyponatremia, low specific gravity of urine, and so forththe more your metabolism continues to decline. Drinking too much water, day in and day out, perpetuates this cycle and leads to all the problems associated with a lowered metabolism. And it can be so easily prevented if you just drink according to your bodys needs!

How much water should you drink?

Not half your body weight in ounces. Not 8, 8 ounce glasses per day.

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Not any standardized, sweeping generalization of a blanket statement thats not designed for your own specific needs which are far too variable for anyone to be giving you an exact prescription to follow. But I do have an answer to the question. Are you ready for this? My totally radical, revolutionary, earth-shattering advice on the amount of water you should be drinking? Drink when youre thirsty. The end. No, seriously. You dont have to drink water for any other reason than that. And if you do, you could run into some significant problems. Try to become more aware of how much fluid youre taking in, in proportion to the amount of energy (calories) you consume. If you throw that balance off, your metabolism is bound to suffer. Generally, what you want to look for to make sure youre not overdoing it, is that your urine has a nice yellow color to it, and that you only have to urinate once every few hours. 4-6 times per day is probably ideal, while being able to sleep through the night without having to go.

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