A nurse for my primary care physician has been telling me that I should drink lots of water. My first response was, I do already, as I drink lots of orange juice, apple juice, wine, etc. due to a dry mouth condition caused by radiation treatments.
She tells me that none of those are water, at least to the human body.
Chemically, all of them are mostly water, but biologically, she could be right. Does the human body accept fruit juices as water or not? Does it distinguish between H2O ingested alone and mixed?
Not a medical professional, but I don’t mind winging this one: The nurse is wrong. When it comes to counting your water intake, your liquid intake is a sufficient proxy (so far as I understand it).
However: if she said something more like “Orange juice, et al, are not merely water to the human body – that is, your body has to process the non-water component of those drinks, too,” she’d have been a lot more accurate. That’s why drinking a liter of cola is less healthful than drinking a liter of water. You’re body has to deal with the extra calories, caffeine, CO2, and acid you’ve consumed choosing cola over water.
Drinks containing caffeine or alcohol can act as diuretics, which means could make you pee enough to interfere with their capacity to hydrate you.
Fruit juices can be higher in sugar than many people realize, especially for something that is widely thought of as healthy. That doesn’t have anything directly to do with their hydration capabilities, but it does mean you’re getting a lot more calories and sugar from them than you would from water.
Conclusion: The most ecologically valid of the published studies offers no support for the suggestion that consumption of caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle leads to fluid loss in excess of the volume ingested or is associated with poor hydration status. Therefore, there would appear to be no clear basis for refraining from caffeine containing drinks in situations where fluid balance might be compromised. Caffeine ingestion and fluid balance: a review - PubMed
It’s true that if you’re body is in urgent need of water, and all you have available is strong coffee, you should go ahead and drink it. (Then your own urine, then the other guy’s urine.) But more realistically, if you’re dehydrated and you have a choice about what to drink, it’s preferable to drink something that doesn’t contain a diuretic.
I just spoke to the nurse who gave me the reason to start this thread. He is admitting that juice contains sugar, etc., but still insists that it isn’t going to supply water to my system. Maybe he flunked chemistry class?
There is some merit to the aspect that since juice is sugar water, and sugar water is hypertonic (concentrated), then some of the water in the juice will be used purely to metabolize and excrete the sugar.
Similar thing with coffee or alcohol, these cause water to be excreted.
But the upshot of this is that a glass of juice or coffee is only like 90% as hydrating as a glass of pure water. They’re not as effective, but better than nothing. If you need hydration and all you have is coffee or cola, absolutely drink that, it will definitely help. It’s just not the most helpful thing.
Anyway, if you’re eating right, most of your routine water needs will come from the food you eat.
Nurses are not known as towering medical intellects. They go to a school that teaches them how to administer treatments that they don’t fully understand, they hear and repeat medical facts from others without really thinking about it.
He/She/Schmee, it’s all the same! What is this, gender city?
As far as getting more calories from juice, calories are something I can definitely use, as I cannot eat any solid food right now (aftermath of radiation treatment).
I find when I’ve had my limit of water I can have one and feel quenched for a bit.
It’s a true struggle to balance your needs and wishes. Especially when you feel ill and have horrible treatments to face.
You don’t think it’s a bit weird to make up an anecdote about some clearly fabricated nurse? Why the need, why not just ask the question? No harm done, it’s just strange.
I don’t believe it’s fabricated.
If it is, well so be it.
Dry mouth and many other small problems when you’re undergoing significant medical treatments are common. Getting conflicting advice. Reading different things on Dr. Google don’t always help. When your brain is concerned with staying alive you’re not always at the top of your discerning thoughts.
Asking questions is how you can learn.
Making typos, differing gendering, forgetting words doesn’t make you a liar.
Calling someone a liar for pedantic reasons is rude.
I don’t take my medical advice from any internet site or message board, but I appreciate any and all comments from my friends at SDMB, a board that I have been a part of for 25 years, which has some intelligent and educated people. {beat} Plus some total dipshits.
