The reason why it is no longer recommended to drink two liters of water a day
A study published in the journal ‘Science’ reveals the reason why the recommended amount of water per day varies depending on each person.
Is drinking two liters of water a day a myth or a reality? According to a new study published in the journal ‘Science’, science has never supported the idea of eight glasses of water (two liters) as a proper guideline.
Thus ends with the idea that you have to drink two liters of water a day to meet the daily needs of the human body. However, this new study reveals that there is a wide range of amounts of water depending on the needs of each person.
Dale Schoeller, a professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) who participated in the research, has spent years studying water and metabolism. “Total water turnover with water from beverages and a lot of your water comes from the food you eat,” he said.
An investigation with more than 5,600 people
Schoeller believes this work is the best they have done so far to measure the amount of water people actually consume on a daily basis taking into account the turnover of water in and out of the body.
To do this, water renewal was measured in more than 5,600 people from 26 countries and aged between 8 and 96 years old. Thus, daily averages were found that oscillated between 1 liter and 6 liters per day. Even with outliers as high as 10 liters per day.
This study differs from previous ones in that, to carry it out, people were randomly selected, while the others used volunteers who remembered and reported their consumption of water and food or were focused observations.
The new research measured the time it takes for water to circulate through the body of the participants by following the rotation of the “labeled water”. Study subjects drank an amount of water that contained traceable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen. In this way, they were able to observe the rate at which a person excretes stable isotopes through urine over the course of a week, thus indicating how much water you are replacing and how many calories you are burning.
Babies renew more body water
More than 90 researchers participated in the study. Together they collected and analyzed the data of the participants, comparing environmental factors – such as temperature, humidity and altitude of the cities – with measurements of water renewal, energy expenditure, body mass, sex, age and athletic status.
The volume of water renewal reached its peak in men aged 20 years, while in women it was between 20 and 55 years. On the other hand, newborns are the ones who renew the most water on a daily basis, coming to replace about 28% of the water in their body.