Drinking water with meals - good or bad?

[gromehown]

@Anachronism

I can’t remember a specific site but I have heard it is bad to drink water because it dilutes the digestive acids in your stomach. I have also heard drinking water aids digestion so I too am curious if either of these is true.

This is what I heard, that water dilutes stomach acid and consequently causes ulcers and all kinds of other fun. From the replies it looks like this is not the case, liquids pass through the stomach too quickly.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@Blake

The point is not that you never need 8 glasses of water a day. The point is that you don’t always need 8 glasses a day. Saying that you should drink 8 glasses is as inaccurate. Indeed under most circumstances if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend a large part of the day urinating.

And that would be bad because?

Chapped lips are caused primarily by dry air, nothing to do with hydration levels.

In my case, I get them when I don’t drink a lot of water. As soon as I add more water to my intake, the lips are fine. Same goes for the skin pinch test.

But if you are that severely dehydrated and don’t feel thirst then you have a seroius physiological problem and should consult a doctor.

I’m perfectly fine. Last set of checkup + tests was perfect.

As the Snopes link I provided shows, this is not the opinion of medical professionals. It is no easier to ognore the need for water than to ignore the need for food.

Which says pretty much nothing. How many people that you know happily tell you they don’t eat but one meal a day or that they only have coffee for breakfast? Our bodies need food, but people make a practice of ignoring that for a long time and don’t even notice. Even I, who try to eat well, can get so absorbed in what I’m doing that I won’t notice I’m hungry for quite a while. Point being that people very likely do ignore their thirst and so if they make a consious effort to drink more water, they will make up for the deficit.

Precisely. You were well aware that you were thirsty, you chose to ignore it.

Not really. I was interested in what I was doing and wasn’t paying attention to my body’s signals. It’s not that hard to do.

Nobody is saying that you can’t learn to ignore thirst, just as you can learn to ignore hunger, or pain. The point is that you are thirsty and are well aware of it.

Well, I’d say if you’re ignoring it, it’s because it’s not so pressing that you are ‘well aware’ of it.

Prolly not, just as it doesn’t hurt to wear a crystal pendant to channel your healing aura, and it doesn’t hurt to sacrifice a chicken to make the sun return in spring.

:rolleyes:
Tell me something. Why do people with high blood pressure take diuretics?

[benny73]

I would just go with the flow and continue to let your body tell you when to down some water.

The only thing I am concerned about is my PUR water pitcher. It’s a simple thing that has a filtering device within a compartment inside the pitcher. The water must filter through it via gravity, which seems fine. But, the thing is, the filter I’ve been using in mine has been in there for several months and the little orange indicator shows that there’s many more fillings to go before it’s time to change it. And so now I’m starting to wonder if bacteria is forming in and around it. It tastes okay, but still I wonder.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Blake

I hope this is a joke that you forgot to put a smiley on.

Just to clarify, that post is entirely inaccurate.

Well, it used to be the conventional wisdom. I can remember seeing it in at-least-semi-authoritative sources. But I also remember reading relatively recently that it had been debunked.