Recommended amounts of daily fluid intake are so much mince

[Elen Sentier]

Apparantly the 'science' behind the 8 glasses a day, isn't. It's promoted and supported and advertised by the bottled water industry, and humans, who evolved in dry grasslands, are actually very, very good at managing water balances even when water is scarce. Too much water is actually bad for us.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24464774

cheers,
Toddy

why doesn't this surprise me ??? Agree with BMI comment below too. As a dancer I had to know about how bodies work and how impossible it is to move properly if carrying excess mass, let alone weight. My "correct" BMI on the scale makes me far too fat !!!

 

[Norton]

Modern day Servicemen and women in the desert are advised to try and pee clear once a day. This guarantees that you are fully hydrated once in every 24 hours.

 

[Toddy]

Good debate

Santaman, my Uncle (now 91) is one of those WW2 vets, I asked him this morning, and he said, "Och, we were fine, ye jist coorie doon and sit tight during the heat of the day. Only idiots don't pay attention to the Sun. The locals didn't drink anymore than we did; tea and coffee all day long in wee tiny glasses.
We were all young and fit though, and none of us were carrying any extra fat; well, it was war!". He did make comment that the pleasure of having enough water for a decent wash was much appreciated though and a life long addiction to Bovril drinks

I agree Elin, carrying too much water kills me I'm miserable when it happens and gym bunny friends insisting that I ought to drink litres more just haven't a clue until they suddenly bloat up when they stop exercising, and then realise that half the problem is their water intake. Cue the sudden magic resolution of every kind of natural diuretic

Both HWMBLT and I had grandparents who had pumps outdoors in the gardens. By the time we were born they had running water in the kitchens and indoor toilets, but they still made comment about how wasteful people were with clean water.
Older neighbours talked about carrying water from the 'wells'.....by that time these were outside taps at the end of the rows of miners cottages.........I'm pretty sure that no busy housewife carried between five and seven litres of water, per person, home; and I know that world wide the majority do not consume that amount of liquid a day.

I think the posts that talk about the individual need, the situation, and the on going health, are most likely the most relevant.

Stringmaker kind of sums it up for me

"Isn't the general message to be aware of what is normal for you and to be alert to any changes? (Assuming the same lifestyle/activity levels). "

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Harvestman]

Great debate. I was going to contribute but I seem to have developed a powerful thirst, so need to go get a drink instead...

 

[Hypnagog]

There is a similar "health chart" for the other end but this isn't the place to post it.

Isn't the general message to be aware of what is normal for you and to be alert to any changes? (Assuming the same lifestyle/activity levels).

I completely agree.

Re the other chart. It's the "Bristol Stool Chart" if anyone wants to Google it

 

[Stringmaker]

Relating back to the activity and the environment, a firend of mine is an alpine climber.

His doctor told him that his wee should be "copious and clear", I believe that it is the dry air at altitude which hoovers moisture from the body. Without wishing to bump my own thread, that book I mentioned yesterday covers this topic very well.

 

[mrcharly]

Both HWMBLT and I had grandparents who had pumps outdoors in the gardens. By the time we were born they had running water in the kitchens and indoor toilets, but they still made comment about how wasteful people were with clean water.
Older neighbours talked about carrying water from the 'wells'.....by that time these were outside taps at the end of the rows of miners cottages.........I'm pretty sure that no busy housewife carried between five and seven litres of water, per person, home; and I know that world wide the majority do not consume that amount of liquid a day.

We had an outdoor tap when I was a nipper. I used to bucket in the water for my mum to cook with and do the washing. Would have been about 1972 I guess.
This was halfway to the black stump in Australia, so a bit different to the UK I guess.

 

[Goatboy]

We had an outdoor tap when I was a nipper. I used to bucket in the water for my mum to cook with and do the washing. Would have been about 1972 I guess.
This was halfway to the black stump in Australia, so a bit different to the UK I guess.

No really, a lot of the tenements still had external/communal loos at that point over here. Folk didn't sit on the loo so long then as it was blinking freezing in those things.

 

[rik_uk3]

[video=youtube;0ULCTDOToP4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ULCTDOToP4[/video]

Go to 28m 20s into the video where the amount of water needed in the war is discussed in detail.

 

[santaman2000]

Relating back to the activity and the environment, a firend of mine is an alpine climber.

His doctor told him that his wee should be "copious and clear", I believe that it is the dry air at altitude which hoovers moisture from the body.......

High and ry altitude or the dry desert climate; it's not so much that it draws more moisture from you, but rather that since your sweat dries pretty much as soon as it happens, you just don't realize how much you're sweating.

 

[santaman2000]

Good debate

Santaman, my Uncle (now 91) is one of those WW2 vets, I asked him this morning, and he said, "Och, we were fine, ye jist coorie doon and sit tight during the heat of the day. Only idiots don't pay attention to the Sun. The locals didn't drink anymore than we did; tea and coffee all day long in wee tiny glasses.....

Yes many vets talk similarly. But far more (particularly the medics who treated them) remember the detrimental effects. And as your uncle said, "it was war" so just sitting out the heat of the day wasn't really an option. And even without a layer of fat, modern soldiers wear between 30 and 60 pounds of body armer more than the WWI vets.

 

[santaman2000]

.........I'm pretty sure that no busy housewife carried between five and seven litres of water, per person, home; and I know that world wide the majority do not consume that amount of liquid a day......

You're absolutely right. And the vast majority (worldwide) are undernourished and unhealthy as well.

 

[santaman2000]

I don't think there' a definite amount for the human race, it depends on so many factors: -

Environment; heat/humidity/shade/wind
Background health
Diet
Exertion level
Habits; smoking/mouth breather
Clothing
Altitude.....

And lets not forget size. As a 250 pound man, I'm sure I require more than a 120 pound woman of similar age and activity level.

 

[Toddy]

You're absolutely right. And the vast majority (worldwide) are undernourished and unhealthy as well.

Ehm, no, they aren't. It's that those in the west are very much overnourished.

M

 

[santaman2000]

Ehm, no, they aren't. It's that those in the west are very much overnourished.

M

Really?

 

[Toddy]

Santaman you and I both know that that poor child isn't truly representative of world wide conditions. It is representative of certain areas and certain populations, but as a percentage of the whole, it is not either the median or demographically within the majority.

The graphic photos that are used to shock our sensibilities of the victims of war, social upheaval, and environmental disasters are not the long term realities of life for most.


Poverty is real, but people still eat, even if it's basic foodstuffs and not the horrendous sugar and fat drenched fast foods of the west.

The fact that the world's population is still growing is the clearest evidence of that.

M

 

[Swallow]

Gee guys, did you leave anything for me? LOL.

However, when scientific rigour is applied, the results disagree quite noticeably with those from the supposedly 'scientific' ones that were sponsored by the bottled water industry.

Yeah sure, you can't trust a preference towards the sponsor figures because there is a conflict of interests. But equally you can't have a preference against those figures because you are sick of hearing it or sick of no-one backing it up. They would still be state of "unproven" in either direction.

McCharly already covered the bit about the study quoted in the article in the OP by saying

That said, the article Toddy cited isn't a study into long term (or even medium term) health. It's about the effect on sporting performance over a period of a few hours. Fluid intake and health over a period of weeks is a different matter.

So far all we have is largely meaningless.

The fellow you quote is taking people out into the desert; in the first place that's a very different environment to ours, but clear urine isn't 'normal', and if one drinks that much liquid then the problems of potassium deprivation are already known and are an issue. If he's dealing with that, and clearly he must be doing something right since he and his students are alive, no?, then fine, in his desert environment.

That's why I would start to point my personal gamble of the right approach in his direction. It's based on his long term experience and also based around actual body feedback mechanisms rather than a theory in the head. It doesn't seem un-similar to the chart that Hypnagog posted and I've also noticed that when I pee (if I have been hydrating) then it looks clear coming out of me, but when I have finished, what is in the bowl does not look clear at all.

I've had that question about which one is to be clear lined up for some time for Cody and will ask it directly if both he and me make it to the Bushcraft Show next year.

(Hypnagog, how is that chart to be used?)

On the other hand I asked Lofty in the show just past and his take was if it goes orange then it was time to hydrate, so equally experienced but almost at the opposite end of the scale. The other thing I noticed from the thread was that (if I remember correctly) Lofty prefers hot drinks as being the way to rehydrate which is similar to your Uncle's stories of the locals.

I have a cousin who used to take a bottle of salty water to football, because if he took normal water he got sick.

It's all very personal so I'd go with some form of bio-feedback like pee colour than a prescribed quantity.

As I alluded to earlier, my previous personal gamble was based on a quantity, and that quantity was based on the NASA guy below at 12:09. My reasoning was that if a NASA guy was putting people in space then the supplies he would be sending would be better researched than just going with the current trendy figure. Or at least you would hope so.

[video=youtube;dN06tLRE4WE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN06tLRE4WE[/video]

 

[Swallow]

Santaman you and I both know that that poor child isn't truly representative of world wide conditions. It is representative of certain areas and certain populations, but as a percentage of the whole, it is not either the median or demographically within the majority.

The graphic photos that are used to shock our sensibilities of the victims of war, social upheaval, and environmental disasters are not the long term realities of life for most.


Poverty is real, but people still eat, even if it's basic foodstuffs and not the horrendous sugar and fat drenched fast foods of the west.

The fact that the world's population is still growing is the clearest evidence of that.

M

Perhaps, given we are talking about water a peruse of this would be worth a look

http://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/the-crisis/statistics

 

[santaman2000]

Santaman you and I both know that that poor child isn't truly representative of world wide conditions. It is representative of certain areas and certain populations, but as a percentage of the whole, it is not either the median or demographically within the majority.

The graphic photos that are used to shock our sensibilities of the victims of war, social upheaval, and environmental disasters are not the long term realities of life for most.


Poverty is real, but people still eat, even if it's basic foodstuffs and not the horrendous sugar and fat drenched fast foods of the west.

The fact that the world's population is still growing is the clearest evidence of that.

M

And here we couldn't disagree more.

 

[Toddy]

Different world views.


Swallow, I too think the individual and their needs differ enormously. I still think that the original link debunking the spurious fake science of the bottled water companies is of interest and worth attention.

The urine colour chart idea is unbalanced in that it gives no information on overhydration and the issues associated with it.
Peeing 'clear' or very light straw coloured once in 24 hours is one thing, but I suspect that to keep it to that level on a permanent basis is not a good idea.

The water issue concerns me; one son was hospitalised (as an adult I hasten to add) because he became severely dehydrated while suffering a kidney infection while already under the weather with a throat infection (it was a very bad week ) Basically he was feverish and couldn't drink because it hurt too much.
Then we got all the conflicting advice about how much water he 'should' be drinking ....everything up to and including 10 litres a day
The reality is that for most healthy folks such volumes are not only unrealistic but in themselves unhealthy, especially for those who do not live in hot or arrid areas......that's most of us in the UK.

He now drinks when he's thirsty, whether it hurts or not, and has not had a single problem since.

cheers,
Toddy