How Much Should We Drink Water

Let's Talk About The Number One Mistake That People Make, When    They're Drinking water.

If we average men and women and this is based on cups. But for my friends in Europe including Dennis one cup equals 236 grams, all right an average person consumes 4.3 cups of just plain water, yet they drink a lot more fluids. but only a little more than four cups of water that is definitely on the extreme low side all right now the other things they drink that's included in all these liquids soft drinks. 

1.7 cups coffee one and a half cups alcohol 1.1 cup tea a little less than one cup 0.9 0.8 cups diet soda milk is a half of a cup. And then juice is slightly less than a half of a cup 0.4 so, as you can know an average person consumes a lot of liquid but not a lot of water.

 

When you consume things that are caffeinated like the soft drink like the coffee some teas diet sodas possibly caffeine acts like a diuretic so, anything that's a diuretic is going to create more dehydration. it's going to get rid of fluid anything with glucose. 

Whether you're sweetening your alcoholic beverage your coffee, of course the soft drinks and the juice also is a powerful diuretic. as well as that glucose tends to lock up fluids as you drink them this is why people that drink a lot of sweets are retaining a lot of fluid. because this glucose is stored. 

As glycogen with a good amount of water so for every molecule of glucose you store roughly about three molecules of water locking this water up making. it unavailable to you, so anything with glucose anything with sugar really is dehydrating to your tissues. 

Now what about alcohol well what happens after a night of drinking. you wake up you're completely dehydrated, you're very thirsty your brain actually hurts because of the dehydration, so alcohol has a very potent diuretic effect so the big mistake is that thinking that you are hydrated because you're drinking a lot of fluids. and this big push to get everyone to drink more without really fixing. the reason why they might be dehydrated in the first place is another big mistake. becaus,if you're like the average American consuming over 60 percent of your calories being carbohydrate in the form of refined carbohydrates. 

You're worsening your hydration you're creating more dehydration. now will it help may beit'll help a little bit but it doesn't fix the underlying problem I mean this is the big problem that I have with medicine is that, even if you bring up the word cure right they basically interpret cure as being you know quackery non-scientific. 

When you think about it well cure is just resolving a problem. why can't we just cure something medicine has become more about managing the problem managing the symptoms. but as far as curing someone you're crossing the line so this does relate to this whole topic of dehydration. because if you really want to be hydrated you have to look at all the different pictures. 

It's not just about drinking more water let's just take for example, your sodium levels good. sodium is needed to create hydration so are other electrolytes like potassium and magnesium. and to be able to have sodium hold fluid correctly you also need a balance of potassium. 

You need this twice as much potassium as you have sodium and so, the amount of sodium is not nearly as important as these ratios so it is important to have a good amount of potassium and a good amount of sodium but the ratio should be like two to one and so, if we take this idea that just drink when you're thirsty that can be confusing too as. it relates to this mineral sodium so let's say for example you're a diabetic right and you're thirsty well the problem with diabeticsis. 

They're usually excessively thirsty and they're peeing a lot they're trying to compensate for the loss of fluid that goes through your body. because the more glucose they have in their blood the more they're going to pee and so, if you're diabetic and you keep drinking all this water you may neutralize the problem but you're not going to ever correct anything because the actual root cause of the problem is never corrected. and that is just they're consuming too many carbs. 

Now what about in the situation where you're not thirsty but you're craving salt. well you really want to understand what causes a salt craving um. it could be your adrenals are burnt out the worse off your adrenals are the more salt you're going to Crave. 

It could be you just worked out and you sweat a lot. and you lost a lot of salt or it could be it's hot out or you have a condition where you sweat a lot, even if you don't exercise and you lose all the sodium or let's say you're on a medication that you're taking diuretics right and that's pulling all the salt out. and you're craving salt it's also pulling potassium out too or let's say you consume a lot of potassium in electrolyte powder. but you don't have enough salt that can create an imbalance too, or let's say you're fasting. and you're not consuming anything. 

You're drinking all this water for example, yet you're not taking enough salt with that your body might then crave salt even, if you do keto for example the ketogenic diet you tend to lose a lot of fluid and with that you can lose your electrolytes including potassium the more water you drink the more salt you should crave because drinking just a lot of plain water will deplete your electrolytes to a certain degree. and so these people that are forcing themselves to drink like a gallon of water a day. 

Without any salt develop a condition called hyponatremia. that is a condition where you have a deficiency of sodium in your blood. where you have aand that's a very dangerous , so if we combine drinking.

So, if we combine drinking a lot of this water with exercise. and not taking the sodium a person can be very dehydrated, because what hydrates someone is not just water. 

It's the balance of these electrolytes that go in the cell that help you retain the fluid in the correct amount so to really correct the problem of dehydration yes you need to drink a good amount of fluids. but you also need a good amount of sea salt and other electrolytes. and I would say for the average person that does exercise to some degree should be consuming between two to three liters that's 8 to 12 cups on average of actual water not these other thingslike coffee,tea and alcohol.

 

I would especially recommend that if someone is prone to kidney stones, if they're on the ketogenic diet just by making sure that your urine is not supersaturated um you can prevent kidney stones even, if you're prone to kidney stones but with that fluid to be hydrated you want to add the sea salts maybe some other electrolytes maybe in the water you add some lemon apple cider vinegar but this way you'll have both the volume of fluid you'd need as well as the hydration you need because for example, if you're drinking too much water or not enough salt you end up with a deficiency of volume of fluid in your blood and that can create headaches that can create fatigue that can create low blood pressure that can create a situation, where you stand up and you feel dizzy.