Think you drink enough water? The typical figure of how much you should drink works out to eight cups a day. Those eight cups—a half gallon a day or 64 oz.—is thought by many to be good for your health. And if a little is good, more must be better, right? Researchers at UC San Francisco have taken a close look at the available evidence on drinking water and your health. They concluded that drinking enough water can help with weight loss and prevent kidney stones, as well as migraines, urinary tract infections, and low blood pressure.
Drinking water and your health—from blood pressure to kidney stones
For some of us, drinking eight cups of water a day probably translates to multiple trips to the restroom. Depending on how long the trip is, that in itself might burn off some calories. But we’re not doctors, nor do we play them on TV, so use this information at your discretion.
Getting back to the information provided by the study, besides aiding in weight loss, drinking water can help:
- prevent kidney stones
- prevent migraines and recurring headaches
- avoid urinary tract infections
- control diabetes and blood glucose levels
- control low blood pressure
“The amount of rigorous research turned out to be limited, but in some specific areas, there was a statistically significant benefit,” said Benjamin Breyer, MD, MAS, the Taube Family Distinguished Professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Urology. He’s the senior author of the study. “To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the benefits of water consumption on clinical outcomes broadly.”
Water better than a treadmill for weight loss?
The researchers found the most evidence in favor of drinking water to prevent kidney stones and to help people lose weight. Drinking eight cups of water a day significantly decreased the likelihood of getting another kidney stone.
Several studies found that drinking about six cups of water a day helped adults lose weight. Some of the studies showed some rather impressive results. In three of these studies, adults who drank a little more than six cups of water per day before meals every day for 12 weeks to 12 months lost more weight compared to those who didn’t drink extra water. They lost about 100%, 87%, and 44% more weight than the control groups. However, a study that included adolescents found that drinking a little more than eight cups of water a day had no effect.
Still, the authors said that encouraging people to drink water before meals would be a simple and cheap intervention that could have huge benefits, given the increased prevalence of obesity.
“Good for what ails ya'”
Other studies indicated that drinking water and your health are related. It can help prevent migraines, control diabetes and low blood pressure, and prevent urinary tract infections. Adults with recurrent headaches felt better after three months of drinking more water.
Drinking about four more cups of water a day helped diabetic patients whose blood glucose levels were elevated. Drinking an additional six cups of water a day also helped women with recurrent urinary tract infections. It reduced the number of infections and increased the amount of time between them.
And drinking more water helped young adults with low blood pressure.
“We know that dehydration is detrimental, particularly in someone with a history of kidney stones or urinary infections,” Breyer said. “On the other hand, someone who suffers from frequent urination at times may benefit from drinking less. There isn’t a one size fits all approach for water consumption.”
We ran the math—Just how much is eight cups a day?
Does drinking eight cups of water a day sound like a lot? Well, we ran the math. If you poured that much water into an average-sized backyard pool each day, it would take over 98 years’ worth of your daily drinking allotment to fill it up—provided you could stop evaporation. Then again, imagine the calories you could burn, running back and forth from the kitchen faucet to the pool.
And if you want to keep track of how much of that supposed-to-drink water you’re actually drinking, you can buy this highly rated 64 oz. water bottle and see how much you can drink in a day.
Want to read the study for yourself? Click here.
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Most elderly persons in Florida do not drink enough water & live in borderline dehydration. It is difficult to find bathrooms away from home. OTH there is a disorder called water intoxication, where you drink so much H2O your electrolytes wash out of your body & can inflict a cardiac infarction A lot of young athletes, chugging H2O before a run, wound up becoming organ donors Personally I love H2O & drink a little over the suggested 64 oz daily
There have been water drinking contests and a police officer running a marathon where they drank so much water their brain swelled absorbing water until they suffered fatal brain damage. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/radio-contest-death-sparks-sackings-investigation-idUSN17215243/
I’d love to know who funded their study. Could it be the bottled water industry who originally came up with the 8 glasses of water a day theory?
Allways a conspiracy theory.
No, it wasn’t.
“The actual notion of 8 glasses a day originates from a 1945 US Food and Nutrition Board which recommended 2.5 liters of daily water intake. But what is generally forgotten from this recommendation is, firstly, that it was not based on any research and that secondly the recommendation stated that most of the water intake could come from food sources.” https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-nutrition/water-myth
PLEASE check your sources before you post, makes your credibility not so credible.
Your link mentions and points to another link at the end and that study was funded by Danone… who bottles water amongst other things.
Funding/Support: This study was funded by Danone Research and the Program of Experimental Medicine
So the bottled water industry did come up with the 8 glasses a day myth? The point I was answering was that the “eight glasses a day theory” did not come from bottled water industry, but may have come from a 1945 US Food and Nutrition Board recommendation–which was misunderstood. I have found no information on this myth coming from the bottled water industry. Here’s some more sources: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-you-must-drink-8-glasses-of-water-daily/ and here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/water-works-2/
An interesting poll would be to see how much water people actually drink in a day. For me I do not drink 8 cups a day. Might be 4 or 5 at the most. I’ve heard it stated that once you feel thirsty then you’re past due for water, but why drink water if you’re not thirsty? Does your body not know what it needs when it needs it?
I haven’t had a glass of water in years
Water mixed with coffee and sparkling water( around 6-17 oz bottles a day sugar free of course .
Morning starts with a pot of decaf.
Look at your urine. If it’s deep yellow, drink some water. If it’s pale yellow, you’re okay.
I probably drink about double the daily amount. I love water, but yes bathroom visits are more frequent!
Agreed. Water is by far my favorite beverage.
Too bad those folks are drinking out of plastic. The water is Much more expensive than filtered water and sometimes of lower quality than tap water. Also, more and more research discusses the microparticles in plastic bottle water.
When I am thirsty – my go to drink is water. My body is the best predictor of what it needs…. i.e., when I am hungry, I eat and you know the rest of the story…. So, I do not drink that much water, I’d be waterlogged like a piece of driftwood! (Now beer is a different story – and yes it is dehydrating too – so I drink more water following beer!) Goes around in circle. HA!
Something to think about: everyone who drinks water, dies. Everyone.
😉
Same goes for breathing…
For a medical test, the MDs office gave me a measured 3 liter urine container that I filled in 24 hours, which is the limit human kidneys can filter out in a day. You can also lose moisture in your breath, sweating especially during exercise or physical work or outdoors in high temps, and feces, so 1 gallon a day can be a good rule.