It's worth emphasizing, which they also do, that this primarily affects middle-aged to older people, and "extreme" conditions. There is no benefit to "stay hydrated" beyond not being dehydrated and in fact it can be somewhat harmful to drink too much water. If you are middle aged or above, if you are in an excessively warm or cold climate, if you do great physical exertion etc. you may need to be mindful of your water intake and make sure you drink enough (and not too much), but generally your body will regulate this through the sense of thirst. Obviously being too focused on your work can also mean you neglect said thirst, so frequent breaks are healthy for several reasons.
You would have to try harder to drink too little water, because your body regulates hydration by getting thirsty, under normal conditions. Overhydration can lead to significant consequences such as heart failure and urinary tract abnormalities. Excess water consumption can cause hyponatremia, which is an independent risk factor for bone fractures.
"Staying hydrated" means to match the body's needs, not more, not less. Like with all other silly hypes (antioxidants, electrolytes, vitamin supplements, etc. etc.), too much is potentially harmful. It is a hype, because it's so easy to say "stay hydrated" and it seems like an uncontroversial thing, but it can be just as harmful as dehydration. In fact, among e.g. long distance runners, severe complications from overhydration are more common than severe complications from dehydration.
If you can back that up with a source, please do so. In any case, my point isn't about margins. My point is that you get thirsty if you need to drink more water. With some exceptions, such as old age.
Drinking too much water is harmful. Drinking too little water is harmful. You want a proper hydration balance, and in most circumstances—with several exceptions—this is well regulated by thirst. All of this is well documented and none of this is should be controversial at all.
You’re writing with an authoritative tone, but I’m confused by what you’re trying to say. I drink a lot of water. I keep a 2 liter bottle on my desk and refill it 2-3 times over the course of a work day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I also drink tea and coffee, and sometimes beer in the evening.
I drink water because I want to? It’s not exactly being thirsty (I sometimes get thirsty when I’m out and about for extended periods; that feels different). It’s just wanting to drink water, and water being there. Should I be worried? Should I be limiting myself to only drinking water when I feel truly thirty?
I’m also an amateur marathon runner, and I reckon I probably drink much less liquid while running a marathon than in a comparable 3.5 hour block working (although I drink a lot of water and sports drink after finishing).
Edit: In case it matters, I don’t drink water because I’ve bought into “stay hydrated” hype. I’m well aware that I drink more than enough water to meet my body’s needs. I just like it.
Bad habit, sorry. I'm probably a lot more humble and open to being wrong than I seem, promise.
What I'm trying to say is that in most circumstances, with several notable exceptions, the body will self regulate these things perfectly fine, and most people in most cases don't have to actively "stay hydrated". Exceptions apply. Drinking ±6 liters throughout a work day sounds a lot to me, but I am in no way qualified to judge, authoritative tone or not :)
I do not know how big the margins are. What I do know is that two of my friends have needed medical attention (routine stuff) for urinary tract issues due to prolonged excessive water consumption, because they were trying to "stay hydrated". There's also been several medical professionals, i.e. doctors and researchers, warning about "stay hydrated" campaigns run by bottled water companies in my country. I don't know if it's as big a thing in other countries.
English is my third language, so sorry if the things I write are unclear.
Thanks heaps for coming back to clarify, that makes total sense. I just did a bit of research and it does seem like I’m drinking more water than medically recommended, although I don’t know how big the margins are either.
I constantly have to remind myself to drink water. I ignore all cues to drink and only notice when it's an emergency. I have to actively engage to remember to hydrate. It's a huge problem for me.
Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I have heard of very few over-hydration cases whereas medical dehydration seems pretty common.
Granted the pressures for dehydration are a lot more common (hiking with too little water, running competitions, maybe little access to water in a hot climate, etc). Once one has ample access to water, I doubt there is much pressure to keep drinking to over-hydration.
My experience is the opposite. I've never witnessed serious dehydration, i.e. with symptoms beyond cramps, but I've encountered various cases of serious spontaneous over-hydration, including a heli evac. It's worth pointing out that my background is infantry, so we're generally mindful of drinking enough during marches, in arctic conditions and so on, which are some of the exceptions I'm talking about. On the less serious side, two friends have had "urinary tract abnormalities" due to generally drinking too much water daily because they bought into the "stay hydrated" hype.
With all that said: Yes, dehydration is probably more common. My point is simply that the goal is a good balance, not to drink excessively to "stay hydrated".
Indeed it was! Three day day-and-night march/exercise with hot temperatures even during the night due to midnight sun. We ended up getting resupplied with salt that we added to our canteens to avoid any more incidents. We were more used to arctic conditions and not fully prepared for something like that.
Interesting. Many years ago when I was doing initial motorbike racing training, the instructors gave us salt tablets due to the amount of sweat each of us lost each day wearing leather race gear + drinking water all day to make up for it.
That is kind of a contradiction. Presumably you have felt thirsty many times and had something to drink, and if you didn't drink you would have become dehydrated. But you didn't become dehydrated because you had something to drink, and so it's excluded from your statistics.
> People's response to dehydration or over-hydration is not uniform.
Of course not, and I have hopefully stated clearly enough and frequently enough that I'm talking about a general rule to which there are many exceptions both ways.
> That is kind of a contradiction. Presumably you have felt thirsty many times and had something to drink, and if you didn't drink you would have become dehydrated. But you didn't become dehydrated because you had something to drink, and so it's excluded from your statistics.
Not OP but as someone who would regularly consume way too much water to the point it was causing me adverse effects, this is my experience:
When I was properly hydrated I'd still be mildly thirsty.
When I have been overhydrated I'd keep getting thirstier.
And when I was getting close to being on the dehydrated side I'd get mildly thirsty.
But when I would actually start getting dehydrated, the thirst stopped.
It sounds backwards and weird but it's a thing and it's really quite problematic (and it's not that uncommon). I think it technically falls under the name polydipsia but it's more a symptom of any number of different biological quirks or disorders than anything specific in of itself.
When it comes to how one notices they are dehydrated when they aren't feeling thirsty, you tend to get good at picking up on the signs (skin turgor test, headaches, dry mouth, etc) and you also tend to be pretty cognizant of how much water you consume in a day which makes it pretty easy to self correct early.
> Presumably you have felt thirsty many times and had something to drink
This is not the case. It is very rare that I have ever felt thirsty. It has been an issue my entire life, often with seriously negative outcomes. Every day I have to make a conscious effort to ensure I drink enough water. I can never rely on how I feel; I always have to depend on what intake I have measured.
Yes that part I don’t really care about, it’s pretty easy to point to misinformation on the internet. I think the part of your original comment that sticks out to everyone is your idea that generally, over hydration is more of a risk than dehydration.
As an otherwise independent third party, I'd like to gently suggest that you read the words again. Each case, either too much or too little, is given equal weight. I believe confusion may happen there because our brains fill in the blank and in reaching for that language it's typically done so to contrast the subject.
> You would have to try harder to drink too little water, because your body regulates hydration by getting thirsty
To the point of death? Sure. To the point of reduced functionality? I disagree. It's quite easy for me to feel thirsty, reach for my water bottle, realize it's empty, say ill get more water in a little bit, and then not get more water. Repeat 5 or so times and then a few hours go by and I start getting a headache.
That depends on where we draw the line for "reduced functionality", but I think we generally agree.
My point is that in normal circumstances you don't have to drink unless you're feeling thirsty. Ignoring thirst causes some discomfort, because you're thirsty, will get headaches, cramps and so on and those symptoms will probably prompt you to drink. On the other hand, drinking too much generally doesn't lead to that much discomfort (unless you're drinking way too much), but will still be linked with various health risks.
It's a good thing that the average person is a long distance runner then?
I'd love if someone has a source, but I distinctly remember that a significant proportion of adults are constantly slightly dehydrated. Ironically, that might have been improved in recent times due to the Stanley cup (and various other water bottle) fads. It won't kill you, but it will cause inhibited cognition, and an increased risk of kidney stones.
> You would have to try VERY hard to drink too much water.
On what do you base this claim? I think it's badly overstated. I'd say instead that it depends on circumstance. Seated in an air-conditioned office, you might be right. But if you are doing endurance athletics in a hot desert environment, it can be both easy and dangerous to drink too much plain water: https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/the-dangers-of-hyponatrem...
I think it’s clear from context we are not talking about a desert endurance race. I would hope anyone engaged in such an endeavor would be working with a doctor to help set their own guidelines.
> Hyponatremia occurs in a substantial fraction of nonelite marathon runners and can be severe.
> As marathon running has surged in popularity during the past quarter-century, reports have emerged of serious illness and death from hyponatremia, as in the case of a 28-year-old woman who died after the 2002 Boston Marathon.
> Participants in the 2002 Boston Marathon were recruited … 488 runners (64 percent) provided a usable blood sample at the finish line. Thirteen percent had hyponatremia (a serum sodium concentration of 135 mmol per liter or less); 0.6 percent had critical hyponatremia (120 mmol per liter or less).
Also the Grand Canyon, which attracts much more people than the Boston Marathon:
However, a 6-year study reported that exercise-associated hyponatremia, dehydration, and heat exhaustion occurred at nearly the same rate, prompting re-examination of emergency protocols. Most exercise-associated hyponatremia cases at the Grand Canyon occur among summer hikers to the inner Canyon and are often misdiagnosed as exertional heat illness due to overlapping signs and symptoms.
Hyponatremia is especially dangerous because a common response is to drink even more water, which makes the condition even worse. The National Park Service changed all their hiking advice to explicitly recommend "salty snacks" and "sports drinks".
How representative of the overall population are marathon runners? Let's be honest here, this is not at all representative of the average person, who is at no risk of over-hydration.
Actually, this is completely false. It is extremely easy to over hydrate to a life threatening degree if you do physical activity. It is quite trivial in fact to become hyponitremic.
The point is that the 8 glasses of water a day thing is bullshit. I see people carrying giant jugs of water around all the time and people commenting on basically forcing this on themselves. Drink when you're thirsty. That's all you need to do.
8 glasses of water is pretty close to the suggested amount. Adequate average daily intake is 15.5 cups for men, and 11.5 cups for women. The saying doesn't say how large is a glass, but 16 cups is 8 16oz glasses, or with 20% from food, 8 12oz glasses.
I live a mile in elevation, if I wait till I am thirsty to drink, my hands turn to ash, my voice gets coarse, and my brain turns to mush. Not everyone has the same needs. Don’t worry about anyone else drinking too much water please.
The first time I visited Denver I walked around a lot and was very confused why I felt hungover when I hadn’t been drinking. I was living in Louisiana at the time, which is at sea level and very humid!
I notice very few effects of "under-drinking". So yeah, not everyone has the same needs.
On the flip side, I was working outdoors in the sun all day today, and probably ended up drinking about 2 gallons of water without needing to pee much. So not everyone has the same needs even on a day to day basis.
Your specific circumstances don't change the general rule, which is that for most people and under most conditions, hydration status is correctly balanced by thirst. There are indeed exceptions, such as when getting older, which I addressed in my initial comment.
There are also symptoms that turn out to be dehydration and not something you end up getting medicated for.
Making sure one’s hydrated, especially for the brain at least helps the brain and body be at its capable baseline before addressing further.
I recently started 1L of water first thing in the morning with a pack of electrolyte like a biosteel. The key is to drink at the pace that doesn’t make you pee, which seems possible in the morning. My understanding is most ppl wake up dehydrated after sleep.
It was noticeable after a few days and let me delay and eliminate the first caffeine and progressively push it to later in the morning.
Might not be for everyone but it would be surprising if more than a few people didn’t discover they might be a little dehydrated.
One of the best moves wrt nutrition, fitness, and productivity I've made the last couple years is adding electrolytes to my supplement stack.
I've always been deliberate about having sufficient water intake, but supplementing electrolytes on top of that made a small, but noticeable, difference. I take a small amount by pill w/each meal (along w/a multi-vitamin, etc.), and via powder form in my water or beverage once a day. I feel more refreshed and focused while at work or at the gym, and I no longer experience muscle cramps (I never had them frequently, but being deliberate about electrolyte intake has removed them entirely).
So, while the study focused on 'hydration', it's worth remembering that doesn't comprise of water intake alone. My performance and focus on sufficient water intake, while ok, felt inferior compared to sufficient water intake + electrolyte supplementation.
Addendum: I believe the basis for electrolytes is salt and water; the sugar is there for taste. You will find the WHO recipe has a similar Gatorade kind of taste. That’s the sugar and salt flavors mixed. Perhaps the sugar changes the water polarity? But you can do what ever you want after 1L of water + 1/2 tsp salt and some sort of sugars. 1/8 tsp (pinch) baking soda is another popular addition.
> An electrolyte is a medium containing ions that are electrically conductive through the movement of those ions, but not conducting electrons. This includes most soluble salts, acids, and bases dissolved in a polar solvent, such as water.[0]
You need to have the sugar because it is required to transport sodium across the cell membrane in the intestine. Without the sugar you will not absorb the salt, which is what helps maintain hydration and electrolyte balance. This discovery has possibly saved roughly as many lives as antibiotics.
I've recently started using REDMOND Re-Lyte Hydration Electrolyte Mix, and it has been working well for me. I know you can make your own electrolyte mix at home, but I find that the convenience makes it easier for me to adhere to some kind of hydration routine.
If it's one of those fizzy tablets you put into water then magnesium carbonate and potassium carbonate work too as long as they contain citric acid. They will react (the fizzing) and create the citrate.
Another source of potassium is "low sodium salt". This is often the cheapest form of potassium you can easily get.
This very much happens to me. What has been so odd about understanding it is that I don't detect the sustained attention problem as dehydration or thirst. I detect it as hunger or a general malaise, a need to be woken up, for which the answer can feel like- should consume caffeine. Neither food nor caffeine help.
If my system 2 is able to intercept this processing and logically hypothesize- try plain water first- after starting to drink water I then realize I am very thirsty, and will consume 24-32 oz very quickly. Afterwards I feel great, re-energized.
But my body/autonomous system 1 still hasn't learned this, and it has now been a few years since first making this realization. So odd.
Similar for me. It feels like hunger, or sleep deprivation. I think it's detected by system 2, from an awareness of cognition not being great, in general. It's like a touch of delirium.
Hunger as a response to mild dehydration makes sense though. We get a significant proportion of our water intake from food. That instinct doesn't work quite as well in our engineered era of potato chips, but that's a recent problem.
> Hunger as a response to mild dehydration makes sense though. We get a significant proportion of our water intake from food.
This is truer than I used to think. Our dogs are mostly on a raw diet - some days I don't even see the older one drink water, or just once (the younger one is still an idiot puppy so runs around and goes to the toilet a lot more and has to top up). When we look after dogs on a kibble diet, it's amazing how much they drink in comparison.
> I don't detect the sustained attention problem as dehydration or thirst. I detect it as hunger or a general malaise
So I have trouble differentiating these. The trick is to figure out which ones you're least susceptible to. For me it's hunger. So when I consciously feel that tired/hungry/thirsty feeling, I know it's sleep or thirst, and based on how you slept, you can usually deduce whether you need a nap or glass of water.
Anecdotally I've noticed adding electrolytes seems to help reduce the incidence of headaches and possibly migraines, at least according to what my family members say.
He cites more evidence showing that even moderate dehydration (when you aren’t thirsty) leads to lower performance (mental and physical). And talks about overhydration and hyponatremia. IIRC also discusses how hydrating at different times of day affects you, turns out your kidneys dump water quickly if you drink too late. So hydrate before six.
I had a kidney stone, and in the follow up with the doctor, it was obvious I was not getting enough fluid intake. After an additional follow up, there was a profound difference after following the doc's advice of increasing fluid intake. It wasn't specifically increase water or decrease anything else so it was easy to do after become aware of it.
Now, I can definitely tell when I haven't had enough. I used to think it was hangry, but I now can tell the difference.
The issue is that caffeine is a mild diuretic and depending on your caffeine sensitivity and other factors, that may have a more outsized effect on you in terms of fluid loss than the water you consumed with it.
So if you drink a dilute coffee (ex: weak iced milk base coffee drinks), you are probably fine but if you are drinking plain, hot coffee or low milk espresso drinks and you are sensitive to caffeine's diuretic properties, you are probably going to lose more than you gain.
> you are probably going to lose more than you gain.
There isn’t any science to support that. Feel free to only drink hot coffee for 3 days and see if you die of dehydration… Maybe you even think it's 2 days since hot coffee is even worse for hydration than nothing, apparently...
Not necessarily. Just make sure that you aren't only drinking coffee. Things kind of differ for everyone but I find that matching my drinks helps. If I drink a mug of coffee, I drink a tall glass of plain water. That seems to be pretty effective.
Easily one of the nicest part of wfh is the frictionless bathroom experience. No long walks. No mess, no smells or grunts from others. No trying to find time to even do it at all, just up and go. As a heavy water drinker I could easily be going once an hour. The office was literal torture some days, stuck in ‘important’ meetings with what feels like a knife in your gut and practically running out before small talk ropes you in for another 20 minutes. It’s a certain kind of hell for sure.
A lot of dudes legitimately don't know that's what it's for, or they don't understand just how many little splashes happen, or are too grossed out to touch public toilets, therefore feed into the spiraling feedback of desecration.
Just lift the seat with your foot if you don't want to touch it.
And (at least in the mens room) leave the seat up unless you need it, and if you use it, put it up when you're done. That keeps it clean for the next person.
On the flip side, when you get up and go off camera or turn camera off in a small video call (few participants), it feels awkward to get up and leave and I usually hold it and suffer through it. In person for some reason it felt less awkward to excuse yourself for a few minutes.
Not to mention I always leave the airpods in when I go now and have to triple check I’m on mute :)
My old headset would disconnect at random. It had its own physical mute button. At some point, Teams decided to switch microphones for me without telling me. So when the headset came back online, Teams continued using the built in laptop mic. Fortunately I wasn't doing anything embarrassing.
Someone asked where some background noise was coming from. I said "not from me, I'm on mute". And several people said "no you're not!"
I mentioned this because of the ongoing anti-Samsung thread. I've always avoided Samsung but caved on the folding phones. I haven't really tried out any other phones lately, but I really like their buttons to disable the microphone and camera for this. Not sure if it's Samsung or stock Android at this point. Also I just got an update their adaptive battery protection is something I have been wanting.
I used to have a 1L water bottle and I asked my manager for a water cooler, which had a bunch of benefits, it was never as dramatic as you make it sound.
If you're drinking so much water that you urgently have to pee once an hour you might be over doing it. You can overhydrate. Your urine should be a light straw color. If it's totally clear you might be overhydrated. If it's darker yellow you are probably dehydrated.
On the plus side, it does force you to take the recommended breaks from sitting in front of a screen.
Not to start a tangent, but the problem here has less to do with WFH vs. RTO (I’ve been 100% WFH for 10 years, FWIW), and more to do with meetings.
People that have calendars packed with meetings will have a hard time with bio breaks regardless of where they work.
I’m fortunate enough to work for a company that has a culture of minimal meetings for ICs (I probably average 4-6 hours per week), so bio breaks aren’t an issue.
But I should still be better about hydrating. I do better than some, but could still do better (probably 80 oz. per day).
Since time immemorial we have been coming up with euphemisms for “I need to shit”.
I actually find this one minimally objectionable. I am a meat robot and I must attend to biological necessities. This is a convenient abstraction for my working relationships.
Nah, it's a gaming term that goes back to at least 2006 (first I'd seen it). When you're grinding 10 hours on some new raid in WoW it was common to say "brb bio" or "Everyone take a 5 min bio break" etc.
We said it in FFXI a few years before that. I thought maybe it was a pun since the game has a spell called Bio and people would highlight the word using the auto-translate function, but I just checked and this says the term dates back to the mid-90s:
Kind of? It is an unfortunate biological reality that we need to eat, sleep, pee, etc. I mean, we literally say "Excuse me" all the time as a matter of social etiquette; this is no different.
With wfh I could be in meeting and just mute and shut video off while I relieve myself. If someone asks me to chime in during the act I could pinch off and be on the mic in 30 seconds.
I agree with what you've said before, but I still usually wait for the meeting to be over when working from home. The fear of accidentally unmuting, or not having muted correctly to begin with, is too high. It's an expected value thing: The failure case is unlikely, but when it hits, it hits awkwardly. (While also not being the end of the world, which factors into me saying "usually".)
It is however unequivocally true that I much, much prefer going to the bathroom at home.
I’m using my phone, which would then be face down anyway, but I’m more worried about the mic being on inadvertently. It’s easier to accidentally unmute and not notice that.
