What is all this with water?

I believe it's a good idea to drink water while having a meal.
Eat a little bit, then a few mouthfuls of water etc. This helps the food to go down and avoids constipation.
And there have been a few mentions on here about UTIs in older people, because we forget to drink water.

My Dh hardly ever feels actual thirst - he tends to want to eat instead. He nearly collapsed not long ago after a long hot bike ride with not enough to drink - I wasn't there at the time but it was scary - he lost his vision temporarily.
Some people do need to be reminded to drink.

And yet I was always taught never to drink water when eating!

I have heard that you should drink a glass of water for every glass of you drink.

There are degrees of thirst. Feeling ordinarily thirsty is not an indication that one is dehydrated; it's Nature's way of telling you to have a drink just as hunger is Nature's way of telling you you need food.

I often feel thirsty. Sometimes I feel very thirsty. Once in my entire life I have been actually dehydrated and had a stonking headache to prove it—after a miscarriage when I'd lost a lot of blood but couldn't drink while I was waiting for a D&C.

Dehydration is serious. Thirst isn't.

Unless you can't get a drink for ages.

I definitely feel better generally when I drink more water but as I have waterworks similar to tiny tears doll i.e straight in and straight out, I find it difficult to maintain a good level

The water in drinks like tea and coffee and the water in our food all counts towards hydration. I have living evidence that this is true: my husband never drinks water. Repeat, never. And yet he manages to stay alive and mentally very active.

When we need fluids we feel thirsty. Most of our fluid requirements come from food. These are two facts.
The mania for carrying water around and believing you must drink even when not thirsty came from the manufacturers of bottled water. That’s fact three and accounts for beaches worldwide covered with plastic bottles.

Thirst and dehydration are not the same thing. Just because you feel hungry does not mean you are malnourished, it just reminds you to eat. As a litter picker and beach cleaner I find it appalling how we are polluting our environment with plastic. Our beaches, oceans and rivers are littered with plastic bottles which are just used once and then tossed away.

If you think about it prehistoric man, living "in the wild" as DD would say, would need the same amount of water as us - but how would he get it. No plastic bottles but scooping a handful out of a pond or river. There's no way he could manage 2 litres a day as well as hunting for food. Most of the water would have to have come from what he was eating.

did they carve wooden cups with flints or make cups from horn I wonder?
Then there were the Beaker People

Beakers with a measure on the side for 2 litres?

Another modern day affectation which annoys me is the enormous takeaway cups of coffee people carry around everywhere. Again something used once and only a fraction recycled.

My friend's one year old granddaughter was hospitalised due to dehydration, so it happens. I can't go anywhere without a bottle of water. A couple of times I've started wheezing when I have no water and that has created a bit of a phobia for me.

We even have people in church glugging from water bottles. I can't see that anybody is going to get dehydrated in one hour. Also the youngsters in my office keep slurping water, even though we have regular tea/coffee breaks. My doctor told me that we should be careful not to drink too much water as it can flush out essential minerals from our bodies.

My son ran the London Marathon with a friend; they both had the ingenious water bottles that strap to the back with a small tube over the shoulder that you can suck some water through when needed. My son's friend collapsed at one point due to over hydrating himself, about half way through the race. In about twenty minutes he had recovered and was on his way again, but a good lesson in not overdoing the water!

The advice is probably more to justify the massive salaries of the public health advisors than anything else and can be taken along with the rest of the perfectly obvious 'don't eat too much sugar', 'get eight hours sleep' homilies . People know how much liquid they need as their bodies tell them unless they are actually ill either physically or mentally.

I think there are a number of factors in play here. Firstly a lot of people eat a lot more pre-prepared food, take-away, restaurant and cafe food than they used to and guess what? It contains a lot of salt because salt makes things tasty and is mildly addictive, so you buy more of the product and even better it makes you thirsty so you buy drinks as well. I am a bit of a nut-bag about reading ingredients on packets and am frequently horrified at the salt content - and sugar content. Probably very sugary food makes you drink more as well. Then of course there is the need to market bottled water and sell it.

Having said all that I do recognise that you dont always feel thirsty when you get older, but you might be dehydrated. I was on holiday last year in Cuba and the tour rep was crazy about making us drink. Found out one day that a client of the company had died fairly recently on holiday from dehydration, so it is perfectly possible. They were avoiding drinking in case they had to use the dire toilets and they hadnt felt thirsty.

Dear Antonia please do not ignore the drinking water advice. Many people need to drink more. I has a stroke in my fifties at the end of 2008 and was told to drink plenty of water as the doctors reckoned I was dehydrated. You should drink water when you exercise, even swimming. Ask many health professionals or my Pilates teacher and they will tell you people need adequate hydration. We should encourage all schools to let children drink water at their desks.

You have to be careful when excercising especially in hot weather. There have been cases of young soldiers dying whilst out on excercise due to lack of water. I always take water with me when I am out cycling. However I take a bottle I have filled up from the tap and reuse the same bottle.

Many lorry drivers and other mobile workers reduce their fluid intake when out on the road because of the lack of toilets. This of course puts them in danger of dehydration which has the knock on effect of reducing concentration - not good when driving an artic.

Many people restrict their fluid intake when going out and about because of the lack of toilets - so many are being closed by councils who believe it is saving them money; it might be but the cost to the NHS physical and mental health services must surely rise as people fear wetting themselves and find it easier to stay at home and thus become isolated.

Some children are not allowed use of the toilet during lesson time whilst others don't like using school toilets for one reason or another.

So overall it's a situation that we're being asked to maintain our fluid intake but the output is not being properly catered for!

I was advised by my urology SN that unless I drink at least 1.5l, my bladder weakness won't improve. Also, tend to have regular hospital admissions with Ketoacidosis and get told off for not drinking enough water.

Someone once told me that if we drink too much water our brains will drown. So I am very wary, although realise this is probably nonsense! I don't like water but do try to drink some every day. I keep a glass topped up in the kitchen and make a point of a couple of mouthfulls every hour or so. Hopefully that is enough, together with my tea, coffee etc.

As a Nurse I have always recommended an intake of 1 litre fluids per day, however one day I check on my intake and it was 900ml, learn as you teach!

My grandson, aged four and a half is in the reception class. He has to take a bottle of water to school every day which he has free access to. They are also given water to drink with their cooked lunch. In fact water is the only drink he will have, he won’t drink anything else!
Different to my day when it was the small bottles of milk. I had an allergy which meant no milk so I was given the same size bottle of orange juice! Not good for the teeth!

Will, at a minimum, eight cups of tea throughout the day suffice?