“How Much Water Do You Actually Need” Editorial
by Emma Risinger
While drinking your water is important, hydration needs vary by person. The general rule is eight glasses of water a day, but not everyone has the same activity level, height, weight, and everyone’s circumstances are different and everyone has different needs.
When someone overhydrates themself it can also have negative effects as much as dehydration can. The article, “How Much Water Do You Actually Need” by Christie Aschwanden, a writer for the New York Times, states, “If you drink at a rate beyond what your kidneys can excrete, the electrolytes in your blood can become too diluted and, in the mildest case, it could make you feel “off.”” This also brings electrolytes into the mix. Overhydrating can dilute these essential nutrients which we try so hard to maintain, sometimes unnecessarily. Our bodies can usually regulate themselves without us consuming drinks with added electrolytes. So if we throw this balance off, we will feel the effects. These effects may range from a headache to potential death in very extreme cases. So while it is crucial to maintain hydration, one shouldn’t go overboard and drink more than what they need.
Going off of this, the Aschwanden’s article also said, “A 200-pound person who just hiked 10 miles in the heat will obviously need to drink more water than a 120-pound office manager who spent the day in a temperature-controlled building.” This really highlights the fact that people have different needs. So many factors play into it, but our bodies keep track of this and will signal to us when we need to drink. The article also makes the point that the best way to know when you need to drink water is to pay attention to when you actually feel thirsty. To back this up, the article titled, “How Your Brain Tells You To Look For Water” by Michelle Frank, a Harvard University graduate student in the neuroscience program, says this, “Scientists are still trying to uncover how this process works, but research over the past several decades indicates that a highly specialized part of the brain called the lamina terminalis is responsible for guiding many of these thirst responses.” Here, Frank references how the body tells a person that they need to drink water. Frank also explains in the article that the brain can pick up on the changes in electrolyte concentration and pressure of the blood can trigger this response. Point being, the body has a system of regulating itself, so it is best to pay attention to what it is saying as opposed to guzzling water even when one is not thirsty.
As for a tie to the world as a whole, this all shows how certain areas of nutritional education can stand to improve. The rule about eight glasses of water a day and the common assumption sport’s drinks are necessary to maintain electrolyte balance is what most people think to be true, when it just isn’t. So if better information is made widely available to the public, this will have effects that can benefit everyone at the individual level.
