I think drinking 2-3 liters of water per day (~100 ounces?) is seen as beneficial for the health. People usually don't drink that much because they don't feel thirsty, but they would like to.
I don't live in the US so I don't know what I'm talking about.
In 1945 there was a recommendation that a healthy adult should have about 2.5 liters of water intake a day, including water that is part of the food you eat.
Somehow the media managed to drop the last part, and recommended you drink at least 2l water a day. Or even more.
I disagree, you can get by on 2 litres of water per day. You're obviously not going to be having showers and brushing your teeth with it, but that's not the end of the world.
Hell, I go through only about 6 litres of water a day while climbing mountains in the summer.
Remember that food also contains water when looking at minimum intakes.
If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.
My reasoning is simple: Do you believe humans have been drinking 2-3 liters per day historically? If you don't think so, why are you drinking as much today?! Unless you have some condition, don't drink water when you're not thirsty!
The idea that you need to drink liters of water a day is a modern invention due to misreading of research. It completely depends on the weather, exertion, and how much water is in the food you eat.
When I was treating water to drink while traveling I would 2 liters a day. That seemed to be right on the edge of being thirsty a lot while being fairly active
I drink more than that now. But it gives me an excuse at the office to get up and walk to bathroom then walk around. So its not just the staying hydrated. Plus its hard to drink too much water and better for you generally then other liquids.
On an average day working my office desk job, my hydration goal is 2L and it's plenty. I often have to force myself over the finish line. (And I was a trained healthcare professional in a former life; I know how to judge hydration and I'm plenty well hydrated.) I cannot even remotely imagine drinking 4L of water in a day unless I was doing manual labor in warm weather for most of the day.
"Do you believe humans have been drinking 2-3 liters per day historically?"
Why not? Humans generally avoided arid climates until fairly recently, so I wouldn't consider the idea of drinking 2 liters per day as absurd on its face.
Also, one of our killer features is the ability to cool our bodies down by sweating. That makes us incredible endurance hunters, who can eventually exhaust even much larger and faster prey by simply following it around until it collapses from excess heat. But that requires drinking water.
Maybe if you drink it all at once. 5L/day is perfectly fine for everyone in the world. If you’re drinking more than 2L/hour, that’s a problem. So space it out and drink a liter an hour or two and you’ll be fine. In the US, that’s two gallons and is a ton of water.
It’s pretty common to see friends carrying a gallon jug around to make sure they drink their gallon a day.
The vast vast vast majority of people drink way too little water. I drink a little over a gallon a day in addition to the occasional coffee or soda and still occasionally feel the effects of dehydration. I know people who may only have 2-3 glasses of water in a day and nothing else. It's crazy they're still alive.
To be clear, 2 litres per day is the amount of water you are supposed to consume, including all the water in your food. Obviously anyone working out is going to need more to compensate for sweating.
Anyone drinking 2 or more litres of soft drink per day is going to need a lot of dentistry, for starters.
Well, no one said there is a downside - maybe there is, we simply don't know. Just like we do not know whether drinking two liters of water does have any benefit at all.
Recently, I have read an article which claimed that one should only drink water when their body demands it, you know, like becoming thirsty. The problem is, in most of the popular science circles these kinds of urban myths are propagated almost as if they were basic nutritional facts. I would personally think some mega-companies, such as Nestle, would be really interested in propagating the myth of the necessity of consuming at least two liters of water.
Maybe I cannot relate because I drink 4 to 6 liters of water per day but do people really need to be electronically prompted to drink enough water? (On the flip side, I also don’t need a watch to tell me to get up and walk around — because I drink 4 to 6 liters of water a day...)
Body weight (lb) divide by 2 seems to be the consensus general number of ounces I've seen from people like Dr Rhonda Patrick. And the more physically active you are, the more you should drink.
Eg: A 200lb person should drink 100oz+ of water a day.
I don't live in the US so I don't know what I'm talking about.
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