DO YOU WAIT TILL YOU ARE THIRSTY BEFORE DRINKING WATER?

Water is an essential nutrient that the body can’t live without. Merely denying your body of water for about three days can cause your system to crash, the blood to thicken and your enzymatic process to falter. Water plays an important role in the human body system; from controlling the body’s thermostat to regulating blood pressure and excretion, water plays a part.

There have been various schools of thought about how many glasses of water one really ought to drink daily. Not every health expert goes with the traditional advice of ‘drink 8 glasses of water daily’. To some health experts, the quantity of water to be consumed by an individual depends on that individual, and the individual’s age, body size and activities as well as environmental factors like high temperature and humidity levels go on to determine how much water that should actually be taken.

Another one that’s rocked the health department is: Should you wait till you’re thirsty before drinking water?

There are also two schools of thought to this argument. The first school of thought believes that it’s unhealthy to wait till you are thirsty before drinking water as you might already be slightly dehydrated.

There are claims from a medical perspective that waiting till you thirst means the body is already dehydrated, and it would take about 2 hours for the body to become hydrated after drinking water. Another medical perspective to this same school of thought believes that it is risky to wait till you thirst before drinking water, because, as you age,  sending thirst signals to your brain when you’re dehydrated becomes irregular and not too reliable.

On the off side, health experts warn against hyponatremia, a medical condition that happens when you drink way too much water for the body to handle. However, this is a rare medical condition and only athletes stand the risk of drinking water up till this condition, as they could overestimate how much water their body really needs when dehydrated — and it’s a rare condition all the same.

The second schools of thought trashes out the beliefs of the first and labels it as pure guess-work. To this school of thought, thirst is a sufficient indicator of when to drink water. To them, dehydration is defined as a 5% increase in the concentration of solutes in your blood, whereas thirst sets in at 2%, thereby squashing claims that being thirsty means you are already dehydrated.

Both schools of thought however don’t deny the fact that adequate water intake is imperative. So, drink when you’re thirsty and also drink after meals. You can also tell if you’re not drinking enough water by your urine colour. The key thing is; your body needs adequate water, and I’ve seen people who don’t really have the urge to drink water; that is doing yourself more harm than good.