# 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
In the Army, during hot training, they enforce one quart an hour. The explanation is that any more and your body just sends it straight through and you end up urinating like crazy, and then it’s gone. It’s the same concept as not watering your garden and then overwatering it. You can’t bank up sleep or water.
Water does not have positive effects beyond being the most important thing for keeping you alive. If you’re not thirsty, there’s no benefit for people in normal health at normal activity levels “pushing” water on a schedule.
Humans obviously function just fine without hourly access to treated cold tap water.
Healthy kidneys can handle around 1 liter per hour. Beyond that starts to get unhealthy and chug challenges are potentially lethal.
You’re assuming it’s a good idea to drink that amount daily. That’s an invented notion. Drink when you’re thirsty. The only situation where you should be preemptively hydrating is in very hot weather or sweaty sports activities.
Drink however much water your body tells you to drink. You shouldn’t force yourself to drink water, there’s no benefit. Drink when you’re thirsty unless your pee looks really really yellow
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.
You should only drink when thirsty. The recommended 2 liters a day was never a thing: it was a misunderstood line by some doctor long time ago.
No. The 5 min explanation is two parts:
1) your body creates waste that gets dumped into your blood at a relatively constant rate throughout the day. Drinking water gives your kidneys (the organ that filters waste from your blood) more water to dilute and dissolve that waste into your urine.
2) your body loses a constant amount of water from breathing, a minimum constant amount of water from kidneys producing urine, plus whatever amount you are sweating. If you drink all your daily water at once, your kidneys will sense too much water and get rid of the excess. Then you continue losing that constant minimum water through the day and slowly get dehydrated.
One time in an aerobics class I got muscle cramps so bad I had to leave. Later when I saw the instructor she asked why I left. I told her “cramps.” I also told her I didn’t understand why because I’d been drinking water all day. She said I likely had flushed out my electrolytes and thus the cramps.
I have a hard time taking breaks to drink water. I find it helpful to bring a water bottle with me everywhere so I can easily take a sip whenever I might be thirsty.
You also don’t have to drink *water* to stay hydrated. You can hydrate with herbal teas, milk, broth/soup, or a variety of juicy fruits and vegetables (cucumber, celery, tomato, melons, grapes, etc). Just choose things that don’t have excessive sugar, salt, or caffeine, which can be dehydrating.
There are popular medical myths, regarding the need to drink a lot of water every day.
Generally, you should just drink water when you are thirsty. Trying to force yourself to drink a lot of water can actually cause harm, up to, and including death.
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