I wondered this. I know drinking water is good for you but wouldn’t drinking it alot overwork your kidneys since you aren’t giving them a break?
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Kidneys filter waste from your system. More water generally helps the kidneys to do their job.
I only have one kidney and it’s very important for me to drink a lot of water.
Kidneys don’t “take a break”, they’re not designed to. They filter toxins and waste chemicals out of your blood all the time / continuously. Having enough water (goes from your stomach into your blood) makes the job of the kidneys easier, because filtering toxins out requires water (to dissolve the toxins and carry them away).
There is such a thing as an overdose of water, but we can handle quite a bit actually before reaching that point, so most of the time the advice is to “drink plenty”.
There is something called water intoxication. Drinking extreme amounts of water will make your cells swell. This is especially dangerous in your brain, which is contained in a tight space. In short, it can cause anything from headaches to death.
This is why water drinking contests are extremely dangerous.
Drinking too much water too quickly doesn’t cause a problem for your kidneys – they do what they do. The problem is the kidneys can’t speed up how fast they do their job, so all that extra water volume goes somewhere else and causes problems. In extreme cases, it can be deadly.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill/
They aren’t doing work, they’re just your body’s coffee filter. It doesn’t do anything bad to keep running water through them.
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