# I have a hard time making myself drink water, so sometimes I just try to get it all in within a couple hours. But it got me thinking, does it help my body the same way as it would should I drink small amounts throughout the day.
In: Biology
No it wouldn’t. Your kidneys filter out wastes and either keep or get rid of water based on the concentration/volume of blood at that moment in time (since it’s based on concentration gradients and diffusion). If you drank a lot of water at once, the concentration of electrolytes in your blood will go down drastically and the total blood volume will go up. Then your kidneys will retain those electrolytes and get rid of a bunch of water to restore those values to normal. All the extra water past what is necessary to be normally hydrated will be sent to the bladder pretty much immediately.
Now there are other things to consider. Your kidneys have a maximum filtration rate, so if you drink more water than your kidneys are physically capable of processing, then until it does excrete the extra water, you’ll have lower concentrations of electrolytes like sodium in your blood, which can be dangerous.
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