I’ve just finished laughing along to yet another comedy routine making fun of the current gen’s ‘obsession with water’. This comedian was nostalgic for the old days when, every week or so, we’d just ‘wet our tongue on a water fountain’ and that was our dehydration sorted! And while I laughed along and I am against the trend of fashion accessories masquerading as expensive water bottles right now …on that note though for a laugh, please do yourself a favour and watch Will Anderson’s take on this!! But here’s what is being missed in it all…
If you’ve studied nutrition anytime in the last century you would have been taught that 20% of our fluids comes from our food.
Am I right?
Remember all those calculations you had to do with dietary intake records etc?
You’re welcome lol
But that was then and this is now. And UPF now make up a much MUCH larger piece of most people’s dietary pie (pardon the obvious pun!) and especially the younger generations. So what might this mean in terms of water intake?
An increased overall need for water due to excessive Sodium – the oldest & most potent dietary diuretic we know!
Together with less actual fluid in our food
All up, according to some scribbly ‘back of the envelope calculations’, that could mean that those of us eating the most processed diets will in fact need approximately an extra 800ml!!! Yep. Deviation from expected fluid provision from our food = 300 mL + Increased requirements due to Sodium running rough-shot = 500 mL → ≈800 mL/day extra. So, put that in your designer water accessory and suck on it!
No really…please do
I’m part mumma and half water-hog and I worry about everyone’s hydration!!!
Water & Our Kidneys – Helping or Harassing?
It seems almost farcical to question the merits of hydration for our renal health but is this actually the truism we have been lead to believe? Where does the recommendation of ‘8 glasses a day’ come from and what is the level of evidence to support it and in whom? Or should we in fact be setting our sights on output ie. 24 hr urinary volume, over input. Do all kidneys love water – or does this relationship change with the progressive impairment seen in CKD which affects up to 30% of our middle-aged population? When does hydration become harassment?
You can purchase Water & Our Kidneys – Helping or Harassing? here. If you are an Update in Under 30 Subscriber, you will this episode in your online account. You can become an Update in Under 30 Subscriber to access this episode and the entire library of Update in Under 30 audios and resources here.