Why does drinking a certain amount of water turn into SO much more urine?
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In addition to what others said about hydration and dehydration. Caffeine plays a role in making you pee.
You urinate roughly* the same amount as you drink. It just seems like more because you are sitting/standing there doing nothing else but urinating. Your stream isn’t like a faucet, you won’t fill a glass in 5 seconds. Fun fact, mammals above 6lbs all take about 21 to pee.
*roughly. Foods you eat with a lot of water, like grapes or jello, will increase your urine compared to liquid intake. Breathing/sweating release some water lowering your urine output compared to liquid intake.
There are a lot more processes creating urine. The water gets absorbed and used. Then the body makes urine from waste liquids. Filters it in kidneys and flows to bladder.
Water in equals water out. You can’t pee out more water than you consume. In fact, you lose less water as urine than what you take in, since you also lose water through your sweat and through breathing, and a small amount in your poop.
In principle, though, you *can* pee out more than you *drink*, because drinking isn’t the only way you consume water. You also get water from your food. Fresh fruit and veg can be more than 90% water, and even a cooked piece of meat is more than 50%. If you have a glass of water and eat a cucumber, your total water intake is a lot more than one glass. And so, if you’re not sweating much, you may subsequently pee out more than a glass’ worth of urine.
However, the more likely explanation is that you’re simply mistaken, because this is very hard to track. Even if you’re keeping meticulous track of how much fluid you drink, you’re likely not keeping track of how much urine you pee out. You’re just eyeballing it and thinking “gee, that sure seems like a lot”. Also, the water you consume (in drink or food) takes time to be reflected in your urine output – sometimes more, sometimes less. If you drink a glass of water, and then shortly after you have a pee, you shouldn’t expect that that pee equals the glass of water. You might have had something to eat or drink earlier that’s also now showing up in there (not literally as the same water molecules, but in terms of the amount of urine that your body produces).
Cool 5YO insight: If you go snorkeling or diving for a long time your blood gets pushed from your legs into your body and your body wants to get rid of that. That’s why you need to pee like a seahorse when snorkeling.
Your body can process so much water in a given amount of time. Let’s say 1 litre per hour ( I have no idea if that’s the right amount by the way)
If you consume more than that rate of water then a little alarm bell goes off in your body and your kidneys ( organs that filter the blood) go ‘oh no there’s too much water’ and begin to work faster to filter your blood and fill your bladder.
Lots of things other than excessive water can cause your kidneys to work faster (diabetes, urine infections, etc)
Generally you can guess your correct hydration level by the colour of your wee! Dark orange wee means drink more. Very clear wee means you’re drinking a bit fast. Light straw colour is perfect. Red wee is blood and you should see a doctor quite quickly.
Note if you drink hugely excessive amounts of water it upsets the chemical balance of your body and you can become very ill and die.
2nd note because I love biology is that there’s a strange length of time that most animals pee in, so a dog takes just as long to wee as an elephant does. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24425-universal-law-of-urination-found-in-mammals/#:~:text=Medium%2Dsized%20animals%20like%20dogs,the%20same%20time%20as%20elephants.
Because you don’t piss out straight water most of the time. The extra non-water things you remove from your body add to the volume of your waste-thus, you should expect amount of urine output to be higher by volume than amount of water input. Basically, some of our foods volume goes into it.
ELI5: Your body is like a sponge. It can absorb only so much water. Once it’s fully saturated, when you add more water it just runs off.
Your bladder is probably smaller than you think it is. Drinking a .5L bottle of water could turn into 2 bladder fulls.
We don’t have an organ to store excessive water for future consumption. In order to keep a balance, excessive water will be flushed out.
The amount of water you need depends on hundreds of factors.
Illnesses can mess your metabolism up and cause you to pee a lot while being thirsty all the time (hello, pre-diabetes).
In addition to your question: thirst is not only caused by lack of water but also lack of electrolytes. The reason is the quality of water we drink nowadays, but also the choice of food.
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