Katherine - posted on 06/06/2012 ( 9 moms have responded )
65,405
232
Besides coffee, water is just about the only thing I drink. And I drink a lot of it. Everyday. But I don’t drink eight glasses a day on most days. Sure, I’ve tried, but somewhere around ounce #50, that too-full, getting bloated feeling kicks in. Not to mention all the peeing. Who has time for that?
Still, I tried. After all, women’s magazines quoted experts who insisted that 8-ounces a day was key to a happy life. By not hitting the 64-ounces gold standard in a glass, I was prematurely aging my skin, hurting my sex drive, not living the life I deserved and unwittingly underfunding my retirement. More fluids and this whole Euro crisis could have been avoided!
Yet lately, some of the benefits of drinking eight glasses of water per day have come under scrutiny and a couple of studies have pretty much dismissed all the claims except for the one that says, you know, go ahead and a drink and eighth glass if you’re thirsty for it.
From TODAY’s diet and nutrition editor, who reviewed the literature:
Turns out, the whole “eight glasses a day” thing “really is no longer the recommendation; the recommendation is drinking to thirst,” explains Madelyn Fernstrom, a registered dietitian. Drink when you’re thirsty! What a novel idea.
The eight glasses a day myth is likely a holdover from a recommendation that was made back in the 1940s, an perpetuated by bottled water companies who have made a killing off of getting us to drink constantly, according to TODAY. But even that recommendation kept it real:
[The recommendation] likely comes from a 1940s recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which said that adults should ingest about 2.5 liters of water a day.
“But the often ignored second half of that statement pointed out that most of the water you need is in the foods you eat,” explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, associate professor of Pediatrics and the associate director of Children’s Health Services Research at Indiana University School.
http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/20...
Are you an eight-a-day drinker?
Drinking to thirst makes MUCH more sense IMO! Filling yourself needlessly with 8 glasses of water a day doesn't. I mean if you drink that much good, but too much water can throw your electrolytes off and cause serious problems.
9 Comments
View replies by