How Much Water You Need Everyday

A lot of people are following a common practice of drinking a lot of water throughout the day. In my clinical practice, I have seen people drinking about a 6-12 glass of water every day, some people drink even more. All of them have a common belief and perception, that drinking excess of water will help in keeping them well hydrated, helps in removing the toxins from the body, maintaining a glow on skin and keeping their digestion and bowel movements better. All these beliefs are absolutely wrong and unscientific.

No doubt, water is an absolute necessity of the body, and water constitutes about 50-70 % of our body, but drinking water in excess of body demand may lead to a severe health hazard.

Most of the people have a belief that yellow color of urine is a bad sign and a clear urine is a good sign, which is again absolutely wrong belief since the yellow color of urine come from the metabolism of bile pigments within the body, which happen every day in our body.

Excessive water intake rather forces our kidney to work more to get rid of the excess of water. Therefore by drinking an excess of water, we are doing nothing but putting an inappropriate undue pressure on our kidneys to work more. This will lead to a compromised renal activity and after some period it may lead to renal failure or hydronephrosis ( swollen kidneys).

Water is absolutely necessary for our digestion, but drinking excess of water also lead to severe digestive problems like Indigestion & bloating, regurgitation of food, anorexia( lack of appetite) e.t.c.

Drinking excess of water, about 2-4 glass empty stomach in morning reduces the density & concentration of HCl (Hydrochloric acid) in our stomach, which retards the digestion process, causing several nutritional deficiencies like Vit B12, Vit B6, and other fat-soluble Vitamins. and as we all know. A poor digestion is a mother to all diseases.

So the question arises, how much water one should drink in one day? The requirement for water is different for different people. Some may need one glass and some may need dozens of glasses. But to find out how much water we need every day, we must understand our natural urge of thirst and our hydration level.

Whenever our body needs water, it presents its requirement in the form of thirst. So whenever you feel thirsty, you must drink water a bit more than your thirst, For e.g, if your thirst is getting satisfied by 200ml of water, then you can drink up to 300ml of water, 100ml of extra water will be stored as a buffer in your body for future requirement.

Check your urine. If you feel any difficulty like burning or straining in passing urine then you must consume water.