Why you don't need 8 glasses of water a day

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/01/why-you-dont-need-8-glasses.html

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“It’s called thirst.”

I’m drinking right now.

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More importantly, you do need to consume a sufficient amount of potassium such that you don’t excrete an excessive amount of water, thus increasing your blood pressure and putting you at risk for dehydration.

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In other words, the practice of drinking water is utter bullshit!

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I’ll drink to that

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I eat a healthy diet, mostly fruits, vegs, and grains. I need two liters of water a day to keep me regular. It’s more than I would drink based just on thirst levels, but if I don’t drink that much, I’m very unhappy the next day. YMMV. Someone who eats a typical American diet that’s high in fat probably doesn’t need that much water.

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Don’t forget to take Magnesium, it will help with the gut/intestine issues, REALLY.

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Thanks to BoingBoing, I no longer shower, wash my hair, floss, use deodorant, or drink water.

I have so much free time now, especially since nobody will come near my stinky, greasy, plaque-ridden, dehydrated body. Thanks, BoingBoing!

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I can smell your rotting corpse through the internet.

[note attempt at humor]

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I mostly don’t take (or need) supplements, though I do take a daily multivitamin as a good example for the kids. Gummi-vites all around at breakfast!

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Yeah, sorry about that, I know it spreads. One of the side effects of HTML5.

I couldn’t remember if there was an article about not wiping your butt, so I figured I should play it safe and stop that, too.

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“It’s to kill the pain”

“But this is painless.”

“You should have told me sooner”

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And some forms of magnesium (particularly citrate) can help out a LOT. Sometimes a bit too much. The glycinate form is more restrained in this respect.

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Wait, I thought it was eight glasses of gin. No?

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I’ve had friends completely look down on me as an idiot because I questioned this “8 glasses a day” idea for years. One acquaintance preached at me how I should cut down sugar in my diet, meanwhile he was drinking quarts of Gatorade every day and justifying it with the “8 glasses a day” theory.

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One aspect of the suggested “8 glasses a day” rule that was overlooked is that we do indeed (on average) need to intake that much water daily. But a significant portion of that is already contained in the food we eat. 8 glasses a day doesn’t mean drinking 8 glasses solely, it was meant as a total volume suggested for intake through all ingestion methods.

(This may have been covered by Adam in the video, didn’t have time to watch it now)

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