"I have to drink 8 glasses of water a day" has no basis

Water is the source of life. For this reason, many health guidelines call on everyone to drink 8 glasses of water, 8 ounces each. According to this standard, almost everyone believes that they do not drink enough water every day, but the US New Scientist website recently stated that there is no scientific basis for this argument.

No one knows the original source of the suggestion of drinking eight glasses of water a day. Some people think that the bottled water industry has instilled the idea of ​​promoting people for promotion. However, in the past few decades, many doctors and health organizations have also contributed to the promotion of "drinking 8 glasses of water a day", making this concept deeply rooted.

A few years ago, Dr. Hans Walting of the Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, USA, came up with a whim to investigate the provenance of this popular statement. He used a computer search system and searched for all the relevant papers published in the regular scientific journals. He did not find any data to support this “8×8” statement.

This statement may be traced back to a report published by the National Research Council (NRC) in 1945. At that time, the report pointed out that normal adults consume 1 ml of water for each calorie intake, and it is inferred that each adult Men need to drink about 2.5 liters of water a day, while women should drink 2 liters of water.

Later, in 1984, Barbara Rawls, a nutrition researcher at Pennsylvania State University, published a book entitled "Hunger", which he believes that if people in temperate climates do not exercise vigorously, this A quantity is basically suitable. Also, drink 8 cups of 8 ounces of water per day for a total of 1.9 liters of water.

However, most people do not realize that we also get a lot of water from food, and NRC's report at the time emphasized this point. Food not only contains water but is also chemically decomposed into carbon dioxide and more water. So if you don’t sweat, you only need about 1 litre of water a day. The British Health Department recommends that normal adults drink about 1.2 liters of water per day.

In addition, the superstitious idea of ​​drinking eight glasses of water a day believes that foods containing caffeine are not included because they are diuretics and stimulate the body to lose more moisture. However, in 2000, scientists conducted a comparative study of healthy adults, and the results showed that whether or not they obtained water from foods rich in caffeine did not result in increased urination.

Some people think that pure water is better than other drinks, but this statement is also worth discussing. The key is that if you are healthy, drinking enough tea, milk, juice, etc., every day will provide your body with sufficient moisture.