water retention, FP

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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Not really. The more water you drink, the less you'll retain. While I agree that it is counter productive to drink a lot of water or any other fluid at a meal, I think that good amounts of water daily will not only aid in health but in appearence as well. Without the excess layer of water retained under the skin, you will have better definition and a harder look. You will also never be dehydrated which is also a good thing as well.

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Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that by drinking more water you will lose weight, ceteris paribus?

Why Drinking Water Helps You Loose Weight

How much is a quart?

1 quart = 1/4 gallon = 2 pints ~ 1 litre

Becca

I may be wrong but I think i spotted a few flaws with the link you posted.

1/ they say that coffie is a dieretic and will make you lose water. Now this is true if you are new to coffie but if you are a regular coffie drinker then your body will use it like water with no ill effects (hell i know people who litteraly JUST drink coffie and nothing else and they are still going strong).


2/ The article said that when you increase the amount of water you drink you will need to urinate more frequently, this is to flush your system but you will retern to a more normal level (or frequency) of urination after your body has adjusted?

So what happend does your bladder grow to twice its size? Do you sweat more? Water in must = water out (plus a bit more as you are looking to lose storred water to lose weight).


Am i missing somthing here?

I think many people feel the urge to use the bathroom well before their bladder is full. This is supposedly a symptom of chronic dehydration. I drink between 2 and 3 litres of water a day and can attest that my experience is consistent with that article.

No. You just nitpicking. I am a regular coffee drinker. I switched to decaf two years ago. I noticed that it became easier to control my warter "leveles" if you will. I don't wake up borderline dehydrated anymore.:) By the way, one way I can tell when I'm starting to get dehydrated is my hands feel stiff and swolen but I didn't do any hand training the day before. Also, my ankles will feel stiff for no good reason.






Feel free to troll away.;)
This seems to be happening alot lately...

I drink between 5 and 6 quarts of water and decaf coffee or tea per day. I don't urinate anymore frequently than I did before. I don't get urinary tract infetions anymore, though. You need to reread the part that explains that not all of your water-loss is to urination. You also loose water sweating and some is even lost to just breathing, espesially in hot weather and in dry climates. Try the Auquasana hydration test that the autor recomended.

Becca


The thing about coffie is a fact not just my opinion. I read a paper on it a feww weeks age so gelive me unless u are a non regular coffie drinker then it wont dehidrate u.

And on the second point, unless you sweat or breath a hell of a lot more if you up your water intake levels then that water has to be going somewhere!! or am i wrong there?

I feel that I should at this point in theis thread point out that it can be very dangerouse to drink to much water. One of the most dangerouse aspects of drinking to much water is that the symptoms are similar to heat stroke ..... and if anyone thinks you have had to much sun or exersized in the sun then they are likely to get you to drink more water!!!

Your bodys thirst response is not a good way of judging weather you need water or not and haveing become thirsty your body may well ask for more water than it needs as it can take a long time for the thirst demand to switch off.

Drugs also have a major impact on your ability to balance the level of water in your body, as many people in this country get into trouble over doseing on drinking to much water while on extasy due to as over dose.

Hey Abobo,

You'll retain less water under your skin. You will obviously loose some weight, but not an amazing amount of weight. You may be thinking about how fighters cut "water weight" in order to make a weight class, which isn't the same thing. They have to severely dehydrate themselves to do this.

Yeah, my exercise science and nutrition classes were full of bunk too.

Cutting your hydration levels pre fight is a rewal bad thing to be doing.

One of the first areas to lose water(or fluid) is the protective buffer around the brain.

Liokaukt- I'm not saying your body can't adjust to the caffine; I'm saying it would do a better job with out it in the first place. Your argument is like that of a long-time smoker who also run marithons. He may think he is doing just fine. He may even be right. But that don't chang the fact the the smoking is bad for him or that he would do better if he quit.

As far as water being bad for you in excess; I've heared that, too. I have never found anything to suport this, though. Well, beyond drowning, of course.:p

The thing that Likault refers to is when people party and take ecstasy. It seriously raises their core temp and then they dance like idiots and sweat heaps and get even hotter so they continually drink. The body's signals get confused and they end up imbibing way too much water and "oversoak" brain tissue and organs.

I can't remember the exact details and can't be bothered looking it up. However, this is artifically induced due to the drug. In regular life, you'd be hard pressed to drink enough water to give you a problem. Ideally you want two or three litres per day.

I usually drink one or two coffees (cos I love the stuff!) and one or two cups of green tea a day. Otherwise I drink water pretty much continuously - usually at least 2 or 3 litres a day. I feel great for it. Sure, I tend to pee a lot, but it's worth it. I train hard too, so I sweat an awful lot. Takes a lot to replace that.

One of the main things that I was refering to was a soldier that died here a few years ago.


He was on a traininng endurance run on a very hot day. His instructors knew all about the dangers of running for to long in the heat with out water so they gave all the guys running water to carry, access to more water along the route and instructed them to drink lots of water.

Now when this guy colapsed the imidiate response was to more or less force feed him water till he got to hospital....where he died.

Now what really happend was that he drank to much water....so colapsed.....then was force feed water till he died.

Drinking to much water can be very bad for you and your body is very bad at knowing how much you need.

Right. You have to pretty much be a moron to overhydrate though. Why did only one guy in that run do it? Because they others were smart enough not to force themselves to drink that much water. And you do have to force yourself yourself to do it. There is a reason why it's a rare occurence. Saying not to drink a good amount of water because of overhydration is like saying not to obey traffic lights at an intersection because there is a chance a tractor-trailer is running the red light at 100 mph.

FP- I wouldn't go as far as calling the guy a moron. Never under-estemate the ability of the military to take a good idea, corrupt it, then force someone to follow the corruption to death.

Serp and Liokault- Those are good examples of extreme situations. Thanx. Do you know of any normal situations, though?

I know it is a bad idea to drink too much when your body temp is hot or when in moderate to sever dehydration. Your body will think it needs more, but it could put a person into shock. They should get no more then a sip every few minuts of warm water untill EMT getts there.

This point was made very trajicly two days ago at work.:( One of our drivers collapsed from the heat and the other drivers who got there first called 911 then force-fed him COLD WATER. He died that night.:( And it was the 911 operator who told them to do it!:mad: He'd collapsed from heat stroke and dehydration.

Becca,

I was talking about overhydration. You have to be pretty dumb to keep stuffing water into your body to the point where negative side effects will occur. It's a testament of will to even get close. It takes A LOT of water.

True. In a normal situation, your body will make you pass out or you'll be too lethargic and week to drink any more. It's pretty much the extreme situations you have to look out for.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Becca
Serp and Liokault- Those are good examples of extreme situations. Thanx. Do you know of any normal situations, though?

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No. No one dies over overhydration in normal circumstances. Only the extreme.

Taken from the TIMESONLINE




Drinking pints of water can be bad for you
By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor



ADVICE to athletes to drink lots of water can be dangerous and should be ignored, according to a sports scientist.

Excessive drinking of water can lead to hyponatraemia, a condition in which salt levels become unnaturally diluted. The actor Anthony Andrews, who is appearing in My Fair Lady in the West End of London, recently suffered the condition after drinking 17 pints of water a day in hot weather.

He is recovering but others have not been so lucky. At least seven deaths and more than 250 cases of the condition have been reported since the maxim “drink as much as can be tolerated” became fashionable, Timothy Noakes says in the British Medical Journal.

Professor Noakes, from the University of Cape Town and the Sports Science Institute of South Africa, says the drinking fad was started by an article in a medical journal in 1969 which gave no real evidence.

Since then a series of studies, many funded by sports drinks manufacturers, have fostered the idea that athletes should replace all the fluid they lose. It has also been claimed that during exercise the sense of thirst cannot be trusted, so athletes should drink fixed amounts — up to, or more than, a litre an hour — rather than simply satisfying their thirst.

None of those claims is soundly based, he says. Those most at risk from overdrinking are women marathon runners who run slowly and may drink up to 15 litres in a five-hour race. A woman died in the 2002 Boston marathon after following that regime.Professor Noakes says that drinking should follow “the personal dictates of thirst” — typically half a pint to a pint of fluid an hour in most forms of exercise.

The recent adoption of such guidelines by USA Track and Field, the governing sports body in America, “provides a hope that this sad scientific aberration has finally run its tragic course”, he concludes

lol @ 17 pints and 15 liters! See. You have to be an idiot.

not necessarily an idiot. just ignorance will do. :(

Here's a link to the original article by Noakes.

http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7407/113

Liokault- I didn't think you could produce something that sound to support your point of view. It's still extreme, though, not normal.

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".... a condition in which salt levels become unnaturally diluted"

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That's what I call taking a good idea and making it very wrong. I'd bet most of those who suffer from that condition are on very specialized diets that they think will help them achieve their goals. Many of them probably didn't consult a dietition before starting it. And not all dietitions know how to formulate an athlete's nutritional needs.

A normal, well ballenced diet provides all the salt and electrolites a body needs. Drinking enough to keep yourself hydrated (not two to three times that amount) will provide just the right amount of water your body needs.

Ok we are talking about taking in huge amounts to effect your health in a big negative way but how much would u need to effect your performance in a sport?

The problem is not in people on special diets, but in people who follow guidelines that have been pushed for the last 20 years even though there's no evidence to support those guidelines.

From the article:
"These guidelines make four assumptions. Firstly, that all the weight lost during exercise must be replaced if health is to be protected and performance is to be optimised, since, as the guidelines state, the greatest threat to health and wellbeing during prolonged exercise, especially when performed in the heat, is dehydration.6 Secondly, that the sensations of thirst underestimate the real fluid requirements during exercise. Thus athletes must be told how much to drink during exercise. Thirdly, that the fluid requirements of all athletes are always similar so that a universal guideline is possible. Fourthly, high rates of fluid intake can do no harm. Thus athletes are now advised to replace all the water lost through sweating (that is, loss of body weight), or consume the maximal amount that can be tolerated or drink 600-1200 ml per hour.5

But none of these ideas is evidence based.2 3 In particular, there is no evidence that athletes must drink "the maximal amount that is tolerable" to optimise performance and prevent medical consequences. Thus the hyperbolic statement, "If strenuous exercise is undertaken by hypohydrated subjects, the medical consequences can be devastating," has no factual basis.7 Nor is it proved that all the weight lost during exercise must be replaced immediately, since the resting human may carry a fluid reserve of about 2 litres.2 3 Nor were prospective trials undertaken to ensure that these guidelines are always safe. Thus it was not then appreciated that unrestrained drinking, either at rest8 or during exercise9 can have fatal consequences.1 2 8–12

The first reports of hyponatraemic encephalopathy in athletes, army personnel, and hikers appeared shortly after the change to this new "drink the maximal amount that can be tolerated" dictum."

There's something called Water Intoxication that happens when you super-saturate your cells with water. There were these people on TV who were doing it... you get like a high from it. They were drinking around 4 gallons (if I remember correctly) a day. Holy crap, I would live on the toilet.

The reason you lose water weight if you drink a lot of water is cuz your body works like this: When you're not drinking water a lot, your body holds on to what it has. It's like, oh crap, I need to retain this so I don't dehydrate. When you drink a ton of water throughout the day, your body is comfortable letting go of all of it because it expects more to come in.

It's kind of like how you can gain weight by not eating enough.

IronFist

Quote:

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Originally posted by IronFist
There's something called Water Intoxication that happens when you super-saturate your cells with water. There were these people on TV who were doing it... you get like a high from it. They were drinking around 4 gallons (if I remember correctly) a day. Holy crap, I would live on the toilet.

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They do that on purpous?!?:eek: That's proof that idiocy is the mother of all invention. Can't drink yourself to death with booz? Just use water! :rolleyes:

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The problem is not in people on special diets, but in people who follow guidelines that have been pushed for the last 20 years even though there's no evidence to support those guidelines.

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It's both. Sometimes they are put on that special diet by physitions, like in the case of liver or kideny failure. But more often they discide that since too much sodium is bad, then little or none is good. Then they slam as much water as they can. hence the condition Lipcault spoke of.