Beyond Hydration: Our Complex Relationship with Water
by Daniel Idfresne
Got water? Chances are, not enough.
Simply put, Americans need to drink more water per day. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggests that healthy adults drink between 11.5 and 15.5 cups daily (about a gallon), but we fall short of that goal by half.
We’ve all heard we should probably drink more water, but somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten why. Stay hydratedTM is a public mantra as ubiquitous as “brush your teeth twice a day,” but we acknowledge the benefits of brushing our teeth and the consequences if we refuse. Enter Andrew Huberman’s podcast on water: his deep dive into our symbiotic relationship with H2O will inspire you to drop whatever you’re sipping on right now (except if it’s Solid State coffee) for some good ol’ fashioned water.
Even slight dehydration causes substantial effects on our physical and cognitive functions. According to Huberman, falling 2% short of the suggested daily intake will result in tamer endurance feats, loss of strength, and impairments to cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, and creativity. To avoid the consequences of dehydration and instead reap the benefits of drinking fluids, Huberman suggests drinking the bulk of your daily water intake in the first 10 hours you are awake when at rest, meaning not asserting physical force or in hot environments, for baseline hydration. When exercising, he suggests using the Galpin equation—your body weight divided by 30 as the average amount of ounces to consume per 15-20 minutes of physical activity. For you coffee-lovers (we are assuming you are), when ingesting a caffeinated beverage, increase your non-caffeine fluid intake by twice the volume of caffeinated drink you are consuming. The good news is, a little milk in your coffee may offset these diuretic effects. (Link below!)
Huberman explores our bodies’ responses to water’s different properties induced by various pH levels and temperatures or when ingested at certain times of the day. “Harder” water—higher pH water due to high levels of magnesium and calcium—is correlated with lower cardiovascular mortality. Colder water takes longer for your body to absorb, though Huberman stresses that this shouldn’t deter you from enjoying that ice-cool water. Again, drinking the bulk of your daily water intake in the first 10 hours of the day is essential. This is because your kidney and bladder are heavily circadian dependent, meaning they are highly active during the day and slow down at night.
The quality of water matters too. Huberman notes that the research on tap water paints a “grim picture” because disinfection byproducts (DBPs), which are the result of disinfection products local governments utilize to clean tap water. DBPs severely disrupt the concentration of magnesium and calcium in the tap water you drink. Fluoride concentration in the liquid can affect your thyroid hormone, worsening mood and even causing depression.
In his podcast, Huberman also outlines why proper hydration enhances our neurological and skeletomuscular function and whether we should drink only when “naturally thirsty.” Listen to the entire podcast here.
What do you think? Do you consume enough water? Are the body’s diverse responses to H2O surprising to you? On the topic of water, some of these articles may interest you:
- Some milk with my coffee, please! It turns out milk is more hydrating than water. Read this CNN article to see why that is.
- Do Drink or Die: Think it’s hard to consume the recommended daily amount of water? How about having to drink 20 liters of it every day just to stay alive? This German man must constantly consume fluids, or death will consume him. Read here.