An 80 year old woman suffering from hypothyroidism, which exacerbates sodium loss, so she has the same issue as people doing prolonged, heavy exercise. Your average healthy person needs to drink a fair bit more than that.
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Even if youâre drinking âdiureticsâ like coffee, which donât actually dehydrate you unless youâre unadapted to caffeine.
Doctors have repeated this to me, except for the one who became my GP back when I had health insurance. She knew better.
During prolonged, heavy exercise I know I lose a lot of sodium. After I go beyond 3-4 litres a day of fluid intake, I switch to PowerAid powder, mixed half strength, because otherwise I know Iâll spill too much salt. My rule of thumb is that I need it when the brackish taste starts actually tasting good, which is usually about a litre of fluid exchange before the muscle cramps start.
This is actually an area where individual physiology varies a fair amount. Some people sweat a lot more salt than others.
Those are my favorite flavors of water! They count right?
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Iâm cheap, so I mix table salt into diluted juice if Iâm going on fast cycle rides. As you say, it stops tasting all that salty after you start sweating a bit. When I worked on a ship, we used to have salt replacement tablets but Iâd often take these instead:
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This⌠seems appropriate to this thread for some odd reason.
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Hmm, I never thought of taking salmiaaki hiking! Might be a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion.
Did you read the article? Itâs about how that 2.5L requirement is not necessary, because we get much of that from food.
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Yes, I read the article. I donât make a specific effort to hit 2.5L, it just happens naturally if I have water available to me all day. I feel thirsty, I take a sip.
If I donât have water available to me all day I often end up with migraines and itchy skin.
My thirst is not a good indicator of my need for water. Go figure. I try to monitor other specific cues to maintain adequate hydration. To make my life easier I have a schedule for drinking water. It must be very different for different people, not âone-size-fits-allâ. For many years, if I wasnât thirsty I didnât drink, and there are consequences to be paid for that.
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well, yeah, maybe, if you want to live as long as possible and reduce already-low probabilities of rare disorders. evolution didnât really program us to live the way we apparently need to live now, so it wouldnât be surprising if we had to do some weird shit if we really wanted to maximize these probabilities.
maybe, or it could be a perfectly valid statistical average being over-literally interpreted. it could be [amount of water the average person on an average day needs]-[amount of water consumed in food by an average person on an average day].
Iâve had two, both rather small thank FSM. Dehydration is no longer an option 
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Please tell me that you mean two litres of alcoholic beverages and not two actual litres of alcohol.
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After the first litre Iâll tell you anything you want to hear.
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Whatâs more thirst is often mistaken for hunger. So someone can think theyâre satisfying their urges and not be.
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Its not really plausible so long as someone drinks when theyâre thirsty, though.
Yeah, I can be like that with water and food. When I get busy on practically any project, I tend not to notice my bodyâs needs until Iâm totally famished or dehydrated.
Man, this thread is making me thirstyâŚ
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Except that it wasnât, ever. Thereâs no need to retcon barely plausible scenarios in.
When I was a kid nothing was better after a hard day diggin postholes or harvesting in the Texas sun than a fresh watermelon and a shaker of salt. Mmmmhmmm
Cycling was similar, in the mid 90s this awful foul stuff called PowerFuel, it may still be around, I have no need of it now, could even taste good on a hard day, undiluted. But my fluid transfer rate was so high it occasionally freaked me out to realize how much water I would take on a 8-10 hour hot day. But so long as your also stuffing food & supplements in itâs all good.
That makes a lot of sense, actually. Iâd heard about having salt with watermelon/mango/pineapple and salt, but it didnât taste as good to me. I guess someone in a hotter climate might be experiencing a similar taste with a little salt added to what I was experiencing without it.
