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It might
have sneaked past you, but kidney specialists said there
is no scientific basis for the idea that each of us should
drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day.
Drs. Dan
Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb of the Renal, Electrolyte
and Hypertension Division at the
University of
Pennsylvania
published a study investigating the major claims made on
behalf of drinking all that water and couldn’t find any
clear-cut basis for believing them.
I’m not
sure I’ve ever met anybody who really tried to drink 64
ounces a day on a regular basis, although I have noticed,
wherever I have worked, that I always see the same people
in the bathroom every day.
I assumed
that those people happened to be on the same “schedule”
that I’m on, but maybe they’re just there a lot because
they’re the people who drink all that water. They wash
their hands a long time, waiting for you to leave. Then
they pee some more. Then they go to their desks and drink
water. They’re like human-fountain hybrids.
Negoianu
and Goldfarb concluded, oddly enough, that it is more
healthy simply to drink water when you get thirsty than it
is to keep funneling it into yourself until you are groggy
and nauseated, with a swollen, distended bladder you have
to support with two hands as you waddle to the latrine.
Most
people get as much water as they need just in the course
of normal consumption. There are some exceptions. If the
last eight people who passed you were riding camels, you
may be in a situation where you need to drink more water.
People who
believe in excessive water drinking tend to get a little
hysterical about how much of our own bodies are water. We
are “97-percent water!” they cry out, drive-blocking you
back from the water cooler so they can have their way with
it.
No, we are
not. We are 60-percent water. But a carrot is about
90-percent water. So eating is the new drinking. You may
find it satisfying to say to a carrot, in an Omar Sharif
voice, “And now I take your water!” before you devour it.
Much of
the news coverage dealing with the Negoianu-Goldfarb study
used the term “urban myth” or “urban legend” to
characterize the vogue for drinking insane amounts of
water.
That
doesn’t seem quite right. An urban legend would involve,
maybe, a baby sitter who refused to make the children
drink their 64 ounces of water. When the parents called to
check in, the baby sitter explained that she didn’t want
them drinking water because they were creeped out by the
new life-size clown statue in the downstairs bathroom.
“Take the children and run!” the parents said. “We don’t
have a new clown statue! That is an escapee from the
nearby homicidal clown asylum!”
That would
be an urban legend, except that it really happened to the
sister of a guy I went to summer camp with.
Negoianu
and Goldfarb will themselves, of course, eventually be
hunted down by assassins in the service of Dasani and
Aquafina and the rest of the Big Pointless Water Drinking
Lobby, but for now the people who are angriest at them are
the followers of Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D., who is
sort of the Bono of water drinking.
Batmanghelidj is the author of the You Are Not Sick,
You Are Thirsty! books, which argue that dehydration
causes many diseases, including asthma, arthritis,
hypertension, angina, adult-onset diabetes, lupus and
multiple sclerosis.
The
arthritis aspect of his work prompted a favorable essay by
the legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey, whose views on
health are of widespread interest because his own
appearance and facial expression have not changed in the
last 157 years.
Harvey
thought there might be some merit to the idea that
drinking water would help arthritis, although he has also
said the same thing about raisins soaked in gin and some
kind of bionic glove made by Louisville Slugger. One of
his principal sponsors sells a cream that offers “deep,
penetrating relief” and is 1.5-percent emu oil. Have you
ever seen an emu with arthritis? Well, then.
I’m
tempted to get some of that stuff because I really do have
severe arthritis in one knee, which helps me understand
why people are willing to do or buy almost anything to
make it go away. If you told me my knee would get better
if I sat for an hour a day next to a naked Paul Harvey in
a Jacuzzi full of hot, bubbling emu urine, I would
probably do it, even if there were several actual emus in
there with us.
Lately,
though, I have decided the problem is not that there is
not enough water in us, but that we are not in enough
water. I would feel pretty good and get around just fine
if I spent most of my day in chest-high water, dragging
myself out at night to sleep on some comfortable rocks.
This
closely follows the “aquatic ape hypothesis,” a rogue
theory of evolution espousing the idea that humans
developed their differences from the great apes during a
period when a bunch of apes went off and lived near the
water and waded around looking for stuff to eat.
I’m not
doing the aquatic-ape hypothesis justice here. It’s
actually a rather elegant theory, and when you embrace it,
you naturally realize that the reason you feel so rotten
when you get old is that you were never meant to spend so
much of your life on dry land in the merciless,
unrelenting grip of gravity.
So ask
your supervisor at work if he would object to the idea of
flooding the entire office space with about 4 feet of
water. Explain that everybody will start to feel much
better if you live this way.
I’m sure
he will be happy to get you some help. (LATWP News
Service) | 
