How much water should we drink?

There are a lot of reasons why dehydration is so prevalent today. Some of it comes from a lack of education or access to clean water. However, in our developed countries with nearly universal access to drinking water, there are dark forces working against good hydration and health. We have mentioned in previous articles the lack of research when it comes to WATER consumption and its importance in our lives and the bad information on baseline Hydration levels.

The 6–8 glasses per day that many think of as standard is just a guess at best. And at worst, that bad information is contributing to our chronic conditions and poor quality of health. So, How much WATER should we really be drinking?

The answer is—it’s complicated. There are a number of factors that will determine how much water we need to ingest each day. But let me give you a rule of thumb I learned from my own research: The starting point for daily WATER consumption is half our body weight in ounces.

If you weigh 150 pounds, half of your body weight is 75 pounds. Therefore, you will need to ingest at least 75 ounces, or almost 9.5 cups of water a day. If you weigh 200 pounds, that number is 100 ounces, or 12.5 cups a day.

It makes sense that our daily water intake would be tied to our body size.

This figure is going to change as we work our way through some other factors that impact our level of hydration. Lifestyle, humidity, diet, and other factors will also impact our water needs.

Advertising influences our choices.

TV programs and advertisements make a big impact on our choices. Advertisers know this, and they spend enormous amounts of money to encourage us to buy their food and beverage products. Food and beverage advertising on TV has literally altered our diets in ways that make them unrecognizable compared to what people in pre-TV generations ate and drank.

As a result, they increase our waistlines, raise our risk for sodium-induced hypertension, and contribute to high levels of dehydrating food addictions.

Back in the late 90s, the US government summarized the state of food and beverage marketing and its consequences for dietary changes: beverage advertisers outspent the USDA on consumer “education” by 2.5 times.

Research shows that highly processed foods may share characteristics with drugs of abuse and result in “food addiction”. The foods considered addictive typically have high levels of sugar, fat, or sodium that may cause some people to over consume and become addicted. They also increase your likelihood for dehydration by increasing rates of obesity and causing severe imbalances in your electrolytes (sodium & potassium).

Next month we are continuing with the best ways to stay hydrated and how to keep away from harmful dehydrating lifestyles.

Visit our website for simple and economic ways to change your WATER at home.