Popular beliefs holds that a certain amount of water, precisely eight glasses of water is the optimal amount to drink each day, despite many people find this hard to attain. Today, a new study may bring to knowledge on why, after identifying a swallowing mechanism that prevents us from consuming too much water when we are not thirsty. In other words, 'Only drink water when thirsty.'
Given that around 60 percent of human body weight is made up of water, it is no surprise that water is essential for human health, aiding every bodily function. But how much water do we need to drink each day?
While you may have been advised or heard about drinking 8-ounce glasses of water each day - known as the "8x8 rule" - , or better still it should be reframed as "Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of fluid each day," because all fluids constitute toward the daily total. And also, there is no scientific evidence that pinpoints precisely how much fluid is the optimal amount.
Based on studies till now, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommend that women should take conscious purposeful effort to drink around 2.2 liters of total beverages daily that is, (around 9 cups), while the men should consume around 3 liters of total beverages daily (around 13 cups).
However and contrary to this advocacy and the popularly promoted 8x8 rule, the new study propose we should only take fluid when we are thirsty, after discovering a mechanism that makes drinking excess water challenging. Study co-author Michael Farrell, of the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Australia, and colleagues publish their finding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Brain reactions to water consumption. During their study, the team brought together a number of participants who had just finished exercise and asked them to drink large amounts of water at three [3] different condition- 1. immediately after their exercise, 2. when they were thirsty, and later on in the day, 3. when they were not thirsty. In each circumstance, the researchers asked each participants to score how hard it was to swallow water.
Of the three [3] conditions, the participants found it three [3] times more difficult to drink water later on when they were not thirsty. "Here, for the first time, we found effort-full swallowing after drinking excess water which meant they were having to overcome some sort of resistance," says Farrell. "This was compatible with our notion that the swallowing reflex becomes inhibited once enough water has been drunk."
Further to their study, the researchers aimed at measuring brain activity in each condition on each of the participants just before the drinking of water using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They discovered that certain areas of the right prefrontal cortex of the brain showed significantly higher activity when participants had to make an effort to swallow the water, suggesting that this brain region "overrides" the swallowing inhibition to allow excess water consumption.
'Drink according to thirst'. "There have been incidences when sportsmen were told to load up with plenty of water and died, in certain instances, because they slavishly followed these recommendations and drank far in excess of need," Farrell notes. Farrell and colleagues stress that drinking too much water can cause significant harm, it can lead to hyponatremia, for example, where blood sodium levels are abnormally low.
The researchers concluded their findings by suggesting that when it comes to water consumption, it is always better to listen to the body's needs. "If we just obey what our body demands us to we'll probably be fine and get it right - it is better off to drink according to thirst rather than an elaborate schedule."
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