Video

Transcript

you know some years ago i did a video

on this whole water myth that everyone

needed to drink a certain amount of

water or else they’re going to be

dehydrated and it kind of shook up quite

a few people because

everyone knows that eight glasses of

water is like the law you have to drink

at least eight glasses of water because

your body is

mostly water and so that video created a

confusion because when you tell a person

the opposite theory of what they’re

basing this concept of water on

it can really put someone into a kind of

a confusion so i wanted to do this video

to give you some

interesting new points on water in

general

in its ability to hydrate your cells

first thing you need to know is

what is hydration

is hydration just water in your cells

actually no it’s not

how does that water get into the cell

and out of the cell the water gets in

and out of the cell through little

channels

that

get help with electrolytes

and electrolytes are like these um

electrically charged minerals that in

different concentrations inside and

outside the cell you’ll get a flow a

certain flow either going outside the

cell or going inside the cell and so a

truly hydrated cell

has the right amount of

electrolytes inside and outside with the

right amount of fluid and a dehydrated

cell is basically an imbalance of

electrolytes and fluid it’s not just a

lack of water

in fact if you drink too much water

you’re going to dilute certain

electrolytes and create dehydration in

certain parts of your body there’s a

condition called

hyponatremia that means low sodium in

the blood

one cause would be you just drink a lot

of pure water without any salt and now

you diluted this sodium throughout the

cells it’s very very dangerous you can

have

inflammation of your brain you can

actually go into a coma so we don’t get

hydrated just from water

now on the flip side i’m not against

water i drink water and i think you

should too

but this concept of you know carrying

your gallon jug of water and just

forcing yourself to drink all day long

might not be the wisest thing you can do

especially if you start bypassing the

normal thirst mechanism that our body

was designed to

tell you if you’re thirsty or not

when you’re not thirsty and you force

your body to drink a lot of water

you can end up in trouble especially if

you exercise

there’s an incredible book by this

written by an exercise physiologist

with a lot of research in long distance

runners and even ultra marathon runners

in relationship to hydration and if they

should be drinking just a ton of water

when they’re not thirsty they can end up

with low sodium and actually create a

big problem with their health and then

you have a lot of

other fluids that you drink through the

day that can create a diuretic effect

you can actually lose more water and

become dehydrated when you drink things

with caffeine like coffee tea

sodas

anything you drink with caffeine is very

dehydrating and of course alcohol right

if you reflect back on the last time you

drank a lot of alcohol the next morning

you’re going to be completely dehydrated

that’s why you have a headache that’s

why your lips are dry and so alcohol is

a diuretic and it tends to dehydrate you

as well and then what about fruit juice

okay would that be hydrating well here’s

the data with glucose let’s just take a

diabetic for example

what happens with someone with high

sugar they’re peeing a lot they have

urinary frequency

and they’re thirsty a lot too so the

more sugar in your blood the more your

body is going to get rid of water and

the more dehydrated you’re going to be

and so fruit juices

sodas

things with sugar will greatly dehydrate

you now what’s fascinating is that

you have all these electrolyte sport

drinks with added sugar and apparently

the idea is that if you’re exercising

you need some sugar to replace the loss

of glucose right when you exercise and

they call this hydration but

is it really hydrating you does

consuming glucose hydrates you

i’m going to tell you it dehydrates you

it pulls water from the cell there is an

interesting study which i’ll put down

below it’s called the nurses health

study 2 which they did on a certain age

group from 9 to 15. now this study

wasn’t about hydration but it was

interesting because

it revealed an unknown consequence of

drinking these

healthy sports drinks

now the study found that if a teenager

or young adult was consuming

at least one soda a day

they would have an extra

pound of weight

and this is what they found and i’m

going to just generalize here

teenagers that consumed

one

soda a day

on a regular basis gained an additional

two pounds of weight whereas those who

consumed at least one

sports drink a day okay

these so-called healthy sports drinks

with electrolytes but with added sugar

gain three and a half pounds of fat

extra on their bodies so the sports

drink produced

more fat than the

sodas now this is probably because the

sports drinks usually come in like 32

ounces and sodas come in a 12 ouncer so

when you look at the label you have to

look at the serving size

and

rarely does anyone just drink one

serving size they drink the whole thing

and there’s more serving size in sports

drinks now even when people

are consuming electrolyte powders

many times these electrolyte powders and

electrolyte drinks and i won’t mention

any names contain added sugar and some

per serving size contain like 11 grams

of sugar per serving size now there’s

four grams of sugar per teaspoon so

that’s just under

three teaspoons of sugar for one serving

size okay and we’re not talking about

like a whole bottle we’re just talking

about one serving size or one of those

little stick packs of electrolytes not

to mention the source of the sugar was

it beet sugar probably it was and most

of the beet sugar in the u.s is

total of gmo with traces of glyphosate

which is an herbicide and even if

they’re doing sugarcane unless it’s

organic is going to have also traces of

glyphosate so that’s on top of the sugar

effect so we have this effect of

drinking more water if you’re going to

add electrolytes to it and then you have

the electrolytes with glucose which

basically is going to

stop any ability to burn fat

and the only thing it probably would do

for hydration is if someone had diarrhea

for example there are types of oral

rehydration therapies where they’re

adding glucose to minerals

because in the intestine the glucose

will help retain sodium so that’s a

different situation than if you’re

exercising and trying to be hydrated or

if you’re not exercising and trying to

be hydrated to truly hydrate the cell

you need

all the electrolytes you need sodium

potassium chlorides calcium and

magnesium now the professor who wrote

the book waterlogged which i’m going to

put a link down below had some

fascinating information in relationship

to drinking more than what you’re

thirsty for you have a thirst mechanism

and some people will say well you know

we don’t really know when we’re thirsty

we just have to force our body to drink

so much water and that’s just the way it

is but

he evaluated tremendous amounts of data

and he looked at studies that weren’t

funded by companies like gatorade for

example and he found that even runners

long distance runners when they drink

too much water when they’re not thirsty

they get into trouble i think a really

good principle would be to drink when

you’re thirsty and don’t ever force

yourself to drink

too much okay because you can start to

dilute these electrolytes

now on the flip side if you’re prone to

a kidney stone you need to be drinking

at least two and a half liters of fluid

every single day but i would also add

electrolytes to that now are there any

tests that you can do to see if you’re

drinking too much water sometimes people

say well check your color of your urine

and it should be clear but i think

there’s a better test in fact it’s

pretty inexpensive you could buy on

amazon or another platform

these little urine strips that measure

something called specific gravity and

that will give you a good rough estimate

on whether you’re slightly dehydrated or

you’re really dehydrated or you’ve

drinking too much water because on this

urine strip that you’re going to get

you’re going to measure a lot of

different things but specific gravity

measures and compares the density how

concentrated

your urine is

to actual water now water has a specific

gravity or density of one and urine if

it’s normal should have a density of 1.0

to 1.030

so if your

urine specific gravity

is low okay and what i mean by low is if

it’s less than

1.010

you have mild dehydration so the closer

you are

to the specific gravity of water which

is 1.000

the less electrolytes you have and the

more you need to

take electrolytes or drink less water

so specific gravity kind of tells you

the concentration of particles in your

urine and of course when you drink a lot

of water you dilute that a lot of

electrolytes that you’re going to get

will come from your food if you eat

healthy

but also realize there are things that

you’re consuming that are depleting your

electrolytes too like refined sugar like

alcohol like the things that i mentioned

that act as a diuretic but this video is

primarily on just drinking

water

there is a situation of drinking too

much water and you need to find the

right amount for you

and so there are a lot of variables if

you’re working out it’s hot outside and

you have a very high metabolism

man you need to drink a lot of water but

just make sure you drink the

electrolytes with it but for the general

person who doesn’t really work out that

much

and it’s not summer i would pay

attention to your thirst i would use

that as a guide and try not to force

yourself to drink more than what your

body really should be taking

now i think the best next video for you

to watch would be my video on

electrolytes okay so check it out i put

it right here