Tea /coffee doesn’t hydrate you, but water does. What happens if you have a glass of water then straight after, a coffee, does this mean neither will hydrate? Surely they would mix in your system?

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Tea /coffee doesn’t hydrate you, but water does. What happens if you have a glass of water then straight after, a coffee, does this mean neither will hydrate? Surely they would mix in your system?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A very good overview of caffeine bio-chemistry can be found [here](https://chem.ku.edu/sites/chem.ku.edu/files/docs/CHEM190/caffeine.pdf)

Coffee is way more than caffeine, and has hundreds of different components, but a cup of coffee is still 99% water. It will hydrate you, and leave a small bit of other substances for your stomach and intestines to process.

Components in coffee stimulate the stomach and intestine muscles, and eventually the bladder muscles, causing many to notice the correlation between drinking coffee and defecation / urination.

NOTE – the body can only eject food & liguid that is already in the bladder or lower intestine, which has already been processed by the body.

The intestine ejects solid wastes that pass through the system (left over solids and bacterial mass AFTER nutrients have been removed into blood stream).

The bladder is filled from the kidneys which remove water soluble wastes [good overview here](https://www.thoughtco.com/the-chemical-composition-of-urine-603883) AFTER the water has moved from the digestive system, to the circulatory system, and out through the excretory system.

All this to say that the water in coffee and tea hydrates you well.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Both tea and coffee are over 98% water so your body gets hydration from drinking either. Caffeine is a mild diuretic, but you won’t lose more water than you took in so you’ll be fine.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Tea and coffee absolutely do hydrate you. However caffeine is a diuretic, so they also make you pee. But they do hydrate you more than they make you pee.