How much water do you drink a day?

Not enough, especially when I'm fishing. I always promise myself I'll drink more than one small bottle but never get around to it - too absorbed to think about it. Then when I get home, I feel awful because I'm dehydrated. We tend to drink more tea and coffee when we're at home during the day, but if I do drink water it's usually in the evening. Tizliz I am another who will not put water in my malt! Sacrilege !

How can you be not drinking enough? When you need fluid you have this built-in warning system called "thirst".
I only drink black coffee or water as they are all I like. Two of my daughters have never drunk anything hot. As long as it's not full of sugar we can all drink what we want and don't need to monitor our intake.

Sorry, but drinking water is barely any different to drinking anything else that isn't alcoholic or sugar laden, so if drinking water is a chore then just drink tea.

I have a glass of water on waking and another at bedtime - other than that I drink copious amounts of tea and an occasional latte when I'm out and about.

I love water and always drink tap water. I can't understand why people buy bottled water in this country where the tap water is perfectly good and wholesome.

I buy some fizzy water to offer guests at home and the only other time I buy water is at the airport when I have to throw away my tap water to get through security. Then I buy a copy of the Telegraph (not my normal paper but quite good to read occasionally) because I get a free bottle of water with it in Duty Free.

Go on Jalima name and shame them!
No-one you know!!

DD1 (hope she is not reading this)

I can't understand why people buy bottled water in this country where the tap water is perfectly good and wholesome.
Our tap water sometimes smells vile (over-chlorinated like a swimming pool) so I use a filter jug sometimes or resort to bottled water.

I don't know where you live Jalima. I've lived in various parts of the country where the tap water is perfectly fine but if yours is not the filter seems a good solution. Perhaps I'm too stingy too but bottled water.

I work on the basis that tea is made with water. I did look at the caffeine contact and, if I remember correctly, you can have about 8 cups a day without going over the daily recommended amount. I do try to be healthy as much as possible but I don't like water and life's too short to go without my lovely cuppa.

If you think about the way our ancestors lived in the jungle they wouldn't have been drinking several litres a day. It would have been the water they got from their food, or what they could scoop or lap out of a pool or river.

Just watched a programme on BBC 1 which suggested that drinking plain water is not the most effective way to stay hydrated.

I suppose it's what you're used to, but there have been places we've lived in this country where we have found the water very unpalatable because it is hard, and we have had to filter it; the South East, and Norfolk, for instance. Supposed to be better for your heart than soft water, though.

I saw that too, Anya. Milk, surprisingly, hydrates you better. Who would have thought it?

I have a glass of water with every meal and take another one upstairs to drink overnight if I wake up. Drinking water with a meal helps to make you feel full and not eat too much, according to one of those Michael Mosley -type programmes on the TV.

Just a word of warning to those who think that the sense of thirst will alert them to dehydration.

Apparently as we get older, our sense of thirst diminishes and it's possible to become dehydrated without knowing it.

Mr A demonstrated this a few years ago when he collapsed in style at a restaurant in Newcastle and had to be blue-lighted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary. He had turned blue and his blood pressure had fallen at an alarming rate.

It had been hot and he had been sailing all day, and the sailing had been so exciting that he had not bothered to drink anything.
After a worrying night, attached to monitors, when various tests were done, the diagnosis of dehydration was made.

Needless to say he is now not allowed out without at least a litre of water on his person.

I can't help thinking that a healthy body is probably better adapted to coping with fluctuating levels of hydration throughout the day than it is to being hydrated / over-hydrated all the time. After all, surely that is what it has evolved to cope with, given that constant access to safe drinking water is a very recent luxury.

My bet is that it's only a matter of time before the scientists decide that being permanently hydrated is actually harmful, and we are advised to limit our intake!

Yes I too watched that programme. Milk surprised me in the hydration stakes too. But of course, it's much more calorific, so I won't be drinking glass after glass of it.
I drink decaf tea with a dash of milk, or chamomile tea with nothing added. I am also drinking cranberry juice at the moment instead of my usual home made lemonade (very sore down below , so can't be doing with an acidic drink). Oh and yes, I do drink tap water as well. All these are liquids, for heaven's sake so they all hydrate.

indi cranberry juice has loads of sugar in it. If you're sore down below get some proper drugs to sort it out! My experience tells me they're the only thing that really works

Indiana cranberry juice is sugar laden

Oh didn't see your post Jane

I do have an appointment with my dermatologist GP, but not till the end of June (he only works at the surgery 2 afternoons a week). I am suffering a horrendous psoriasis outbreak at the moment (yes, there as well ). When I saw the nurse for blood tests on Wednesday it was she who told me to drink cranberry juice, so that's why I bought it!

There is a low calories version of cranberry juice I think - someone will now say its full of something nasty!!

indi I'm lost for words

Cranberries are acidic so if you "can't be doing with an acidic drink", cranberry juice does not seem the brightest suggestion from that nurse, quite apart from the sugar load.

Any fluid works...it does not have to be water. Apparently milk is the perfect fluid to be taking in.

The voice therapist I had to see some years ago warned me that tea and coffee dried out the vocal chords though they don't have an overall dehydrating effect, since they are made with water. The chorus master of a very prestigious choir told the members not to drink tea or coffee before a concert. I have a large mug of tea at breakfast and roibos thereafter, supplemented with water or soda water with sugar-free codial. I don't measure the amount of water I take on board during the day.

Salter make bathroom scales that also give a Bmi and hydration read-out. Don't know how good they are.