Optimal hydration may slow down the aging process in humans
thelancet.comPersonal anecdote. Experiences vary but for me over the past few years deliberately drinking a lot of water- generally 64oz+ per day, lightly salted (a couple of coarse grains per 32oz jug)- has had a huge positive impact.
I almost never feel thirsty when I don't drink and so have to put in conscious effort to do it but when I do many aspects of my psychic experience change. I am more awake, think more clearly, have more energy, on and on. Many more purely physical aspects improve as well- my digestion is better, I have better appetite management, my skin is clearer, etc.
Last year we had a temporary issue with our fridge ice maker so I used that as an excuse to get the family a super bougie standalone ice maker- the GE Opal. It has unexpectedly made the water habit much easier for everyone. Now I can't think of a better spent $600.
Really would like Huberman to do a hydration/water/salt episode.
I have the same issue. I mostly only drink out of habit.
This year I aim to get more active, and bought a fancy water bottle a while ago which will hopefully help with staying hydrated.
Regarding your 'lightly salted' water, if you can source it easily enough I'd suggest you try some Pocari Sweat [1] for a workout type drink - it's an electrolyte replenisher. I got into it when we lived in the middle east (found it in cans for cheap) and since then I sometimes buy it in powdered form [2]. I really like the taste - lightly sweet/salt.
I'll try adding a bit of salt to my drinking water and see how it goes, thanks!
[1] https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/nutraceutical/products/pocariswe...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Otsuka-Pharmaceutical-Pocari-Sweat-Po...
I make my own, based on a WHO recipe for rehydration therapy.
The WHO intends it for use for people suffering dysentery, but dehydration is dehydration.
It’s a 123 page PDF??! any TL;DR? :) (on mobile so forgive my laziness)
On page 3: Per liter of water: Sodium chloride 2.6g Glucose, anhydrous 13.5g Potassium chloride 1.5g Trisodium citrate, dihydrate 2.9g
Careful with Pocari Sweat; similar to Gatorade, it's full of sugar and not really suitable for all-day drinking.
Also despite being clear and implying a clean, fresh taste... it tastes like shit.
I think this part is largely subjective. I really like the taste.
Agree with the parent to your comment - did not mean to insinuate it should replace water.
Pocari Sweat is also hugely popular here in SE Asia. However, it's usually recommended by doctors to rectify dehydration. I agree with the other commenter in the thread who says it's really not meant to be a daily hydration drink, unless perhaps you are working out a lot and losing a lot of electrolytes.
How do you deal with peeing? I’ve gotten into a good water habit, but its such a burden having to pee all the time and being in actual pain if I can’t get to a bathroom easily for whatever reason.
I use it as a nice break from whatever I'm working on
Yeah, that's great unless what you are working on is sleep...
If you have a healthy drinking habit throughout the day you should be able to stop ~1hr before bed and drink excess right away when you get up in the morning
hahahaha. Please set yourself a reminder to read your post when you get to middle age. I have to stop drinking water at least 3 hours before bed to limit my wake up and pee to 1x per night.
>1x per night
Only one? As the Pythons would say, 'Looxury!'
Tea or coffee, same story. OTOH, if this theory's right, I'll be complaining a lot longer. (And getting better at it.)
That sounds like prostate issues tbh
There's a body chemistry component here. Are you possibly mouth breathing while you sleep?
Yes but how often. What if you are driving/on a public transport, or you have to deal with people?
Public transport is brutal for peeing. I’ve been forced to pee behind dumpsters because none of the businesses near the busstop I got out at had a bathroom for the public. On the subway you see people pee onto the track.
People with sodium-rich diet need to hydrate themselves more, it really depends on what you eat
OK so the extremes of this are accepted but I’m genuinely not aware of the evidence that sodium concentration varies with minor shifts in “hydration” (an odd term to see in a medical article).
For example, we know that destroying the ion gradient in the kidneys through massive overconsumption of fluid and underconsumption of solute can lead to hyponatremia (“potomania”).
But this mechanism is not relevant in normal physiology. So I’m again wondering whether it is appropriate to be attributing sodium shifts to hydration. In the Intro, the authors really dance around this and do not address it. So I assume that there is not actually good evidence for their assertion.
You could, in contrast, easily sell me on the notion that sodium set points change with age, but that could have nothing to do with volume intake.
They don't dance around it at all. It's just a poor HN title.
The result is an association between high plasma sodium and aging.
I might have missed your point though.
But to your point in hydration and sodium.
Sodium ion concentration dominates plasma osmolality which makes it not a bad way to think of hydration.[0]
I don't think of plasma sodium concentration as being a good indicator of hydration because it's aggressively homeostatically controlled. As I mentioned, we usually think of sodium shifts as a pathological state. It would be interesting to me if small variations in fluid consumption could also influence sodium concentration to a lesser degree, because it's not really aligned with what I was taught. But I acknowledge that it could be, I'd just like to see data.
The entire premise of the article's interpretation—that hydration status is reflected in sodium concentration—rests on this being true.
Don't get me wrong, the finding that you pointed out (that there is an association between high plasma sodium and aging) is interesting even if the authors' premise is not true! But if small variations in daily water consumption (for example) don't actually change sodium concentration, then the observation could be 100% true and yet their interpretation and proposed follow-up studies could make no sense.
So when I said they dance around whether it is appropriate to be attributing sodium shifts to hydration, that's what I meant.
Looks like others had the same issue with respect to the interpretation[1]:
> However, “it would have been nice to combine their definition of hydration, based on serum sodium levels only, with actual fluid intake data from the ARIC cohort,” Sesso [an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston] added.
1 = https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/health/hydration-disease-agin...
Don't we know that old people "dry out" already because they don't drink enough water?
That paper doesn’t say anything about a relationship between routine variation in fluid intake and sodium concentration, or did I miss it?
It’s undisputed that in pathological states, hyper- or hyponatremia can occur. And the formula in the paper you linked gives a solution to calculating the free water deficit (for example). But it’s not the same as knowing that modest variation in fluid intake can be seen in sodium concentration (because it’s homeostatically regulated).
Sodium concentration is understood partially (but not entirely) be a surrogate marker for other factors associated with inadequate hydration and electrolyte imbalance.
I used to drink water only when thirst climbs up my throat; over the course of last year or two, I gradually increased the frequency and amount of water intake, to about 2.5 liters per day. Not an extraordinary amount, but quite effectively, it has alleviated my chronic stuffy nose.
Slowing down aging, improvements of digestive system, etc. I can't really feel. But the freedom to breath through my nose, which used to occur only after a hot shower, to be liberated from having to gape my mouth like a dazed cat all the time, is a huge reward in itself.
Anecdotal, of course. But I've rule out tons of other variables already (location, allergen, air humidity, temperature, diet, etc.) for this chronic---and inherited---condition, and I'm reasonably confident in my uneducated guess that hydration has something to do with it.
This might be my problem. Did you ever go to a doctor? Doctors told me I have inflammation in my nose but I always just felt something was dry. I've found a humidifier helps to an extent, but perhaps my problem is drinking water.
Both my father and I have gone to doctors, and were diagnosed with inflammation. That was a long time ago and I don’t remember the specifics, but essentially, it’s the kind of disease that is chronic and they didn’t really know the specific cause of it. We got prescribed those steroid nose spray to use on a bad day. It helps to an extent, but not quite solving the problem. The effect only lasts for a few hours and I think they strongly recommend against using it more than once a day. Plus it’s kinda expensive if used frequently.
Drinking a lot of water, on the other hand, has a huge effect on my breathing. I can breath through my nose all day now. It probably doesn’t treat the underlying cause, but symptom-wise, it works better than any prescription I’ve taken.
I’m in no position to give real medical advice, but since drinking a bit more water is usually regarded as harmless (2.5 liters is well within the safe range of water intake as far as I know), I’d say give it a try. Just prepare to pee more frequently.
> 2.5 liters is well within the safe range of water intake as far as I know
I have seen 2L/day of urine output recommended as a target minimum for preventing kidney stones.
What is "optimal hydraton" here?
From the article:
> People whose middle-age serum sodium exceeds 142 mmol/l have increased risk to be biologically older, develop chronic diseases and die at younger age. Intervention studies are needed to confirm the link between hydration and aging.
I'm not really sure about how high that level is (relatively, are we talking dehydration levels or are we talking that you have to be a top 1% "hydro homie" to "not age too much").
That’s the question isn’t it.
The reason we don’t drink distilled water is that it ends up robbing your body of minerals. But you can get the same effect by overhydrating. One of the signs being having clear urine all day long. Your kidneys should be concentrating urea, otherwise the water just carries nutrients away without an upside.
That sounds like the kind of thing that should be studied and not just pronounced in an HN comment. Just to repeat: the linked article looked at exactly this measurement and found the opposite effect (health benefits from lower electrolyte concentrations), albeit at a different end of the concentration spectrum.
That doesn't mean that you're wrong about a bathtub curve effect at very high hydration levels, but it means you have more work to do here.
Mostly: I don't buy it. My gut says that you're wrong and that at all but the most unreasonable levels of water intake we're healthier being hydrated.
All of their results are in a ±10% band. They haven't even determined if they're in a bathtub, let alone how big it is. I call bullshit on your call of bullshit.
> The reason we don’t drink distilled water is that it ends up robbing your body of minerals.
The Internet has multiple opinions on the veracity of this statement. They range the full gamut: from "causes harmful leaching", to "has no/neutral effect", to "generates helpful absorption".
As a non-expert, I find the "neutral" explanations more persuasive.
Am I wrong? Or do we just weigh plausible sources differently?
Either way, we are entering the Trough of Disillusionment with respect to Hydration with a capital H. Drinking liters of water a day is not the solution to all of your health woes.
It really depends on the diet. I eat mostly vegetables, rice sometimes, and almost never drink water (I just force myself with mouthwashes before sleeping, with some dilluted and clean seawater it's even better), never feel thristy because my diet is extremely low in sodium (maybe too much even) and ultra rich in fiber
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hyponatremia/...
Careful going too low sodium. And high fiber + dehydration can result in constipation. That said, it sounds like you may well be getting a good amount of water from the vegetables themselves, depending on what form you're eating them in.
raw only, for example today: peppers, tomatoes, dates!, grapes, mushrooms, leeks, onions. (leeks and onions, I try to let them ferment a bit). Sometimes a bit of rice (only thing cooked I eat)
Indeed, there is no silver bullet.
I'm no expert either, but I consider the likelihood of distilled water being neutral-to-good to be pretty poor. I can't really imagine naturally-occurring freshwater sources without minerality of some kind, and so I thus expect evolution to "expect" that minerality in water at the organism level.
Rain fits the bill for what you describe.
The RDA for calcium is about 1.2g per day and magnesium is about 420 mg. It's hard to think of a way that the 24 mg calcium (2% of RDA) in a cup of bottled water and 5 mg of magnesium (1.1% of RDA) could have any effect at all compared to the massive amount in food. I guess if you were marginal on your doses of those minerals it could add up, but I can't think of a way deionized or distilled water could actually be harmful.
Disclaimer: I drink reverse osmosis water every day with a ppm of about 8 compared to my tap which is 100 ppm. Rainwater varies but is probably about 8 ppm. :)
Sure, but nobody and nothing is standing out in the rain to "drink" the majority of their water intake. It's hard to think of any civilizations that relied on mostly rainwater, but maybe I haven't heard of any. What little prehistory I do comprehend suggests that consistent freshwater sources control patterns of human habitation (eg, most capitals are on rivers; Ur is a desert ruin because it is no longer a port city covered in greenery but was once).
Your point about diet is reasonable, but I still think it's probably "easier" to get it right in the water. No need for the body to move stuff to the kidneys if the water's already got some in it!
>Disclaimer: I drink reverse osmosis water every day with a ppm of about 8 compared to my tap which is 100 ppm. Rainwater varies but is probably about 8 ppm. :)
Parts per million of what? Maybe I'm stupid and that stands for "particles per milliliter"?
> It's hard to think of any civilizations that relied on mostly rainwater, but maybe I haven't heard of any.
I think that the Maya mainly relied on capturing rainwater for their water needs. I assume this would have included drinking water.
https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2012/07/18/los-mayas-resolvieron-... (in Spanish)
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/maya-water-sys... (in English)
I'm sure that naturally-occurring water sources will have much higher mineral content (i.e. dissolved solids) than distilled water.
But I'm not convinced that "drinking water" is a significant contributor of minerals to the human diet.
My instinct (not a nutritionist!) is that there are far more accumulated minerals in the plant and animal "apex hydrators" that I eat than I could get directly from water. And I probably drink a lot more direct water than most people do.
The anti-DW "leaching" argument is that you have the minerals in your body already through other sources and accumulation, and when you drink DW (yuck anyway), it has so much capacity to dissolve things that it leaches necessary stuff from you. The counterargument is that most of the incorporated minerals aren't coming out of your organs easily, so DW mostly sucks up bad stuff that you'd probably excrete most of anyway, but every little bit helps. These both seem flawed to me!
You can explode a salt water adapted single celled organism by putting it in fresh water. The osmotic pressure sucks in water and the cell blows up like a balloon.
I'm not talking about minerals in drinking water being a nutritional supplement. I'm talking about your kidneys not being able to block minerals from leaving in your urine. Any water coming in with absolutely no mineral content means a net loss on the other end.
>But I'm not convinced that "drinking water" is a significant contributor of minerals to the human diet.
I don't think I'm claiming that. I'm sure kidney functions work so long as some salts get in 'em, whether dietary or water intake, I just suspect that the body expects the minerality to already be in the water directly, because the vast majority of non-human-curated drinking water seems to be that way.
https://figshare.com/articles/figure/A_histogram_of_the_corr...
Here is a histogram. 142 seems about average.
From my experience, optimal hydration comes with vegetables, because that's the perfect mixture with water, minerals, vitamins, other elements and fibers, so also as raw (to preserve their qualities) and ripe as possible, fermented too is great
In the abstract the researchers state:
We used serum sodium, as a proxy for hydration habits.
However they do not explain whether higher or lower levels mean more or less hydration, or vice versa.
I found the answer at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK306/
Only when such a patient is denied access to water or is unable to obtain water because of unconsciousness or disability does the serum sodium concentration rise, resulting in hypernatremia.
> However they do not explain whether higher or lower levels mean more or less hydration, or vice versa.
You wouldn’t expect this to be laid out in a medical journal article. Much like you wouldn’t expect the definition of taking a derivative to be explained in a machine learning paper.
Could it be explained? I’d like to properly understand the article.
Higher sodium = your blood is saltier = insufficient hydration.
Your body attempts to keep it at a constant level. This is much easier if you drink more than you need to; it's easy to remove excess water, harder to remove excess sodium especially if you're about to drink more water and would then be sodium-deficient. But in general, serum sodium shouldn't vary much unless you're at least a little dehydrated.
I try to always keep some water handy, since if I don't, I have a tendency not to go grab it until a bit later than I really should have.
ELI5, but basically, imagine you have a glass of salty water, and a thin membrane between this glass of salty water and another glass of water.
If the second glass of water has no salt in it, then salt will start crossing the membrane and equalising the salt levels in both glasses. However, if the second glass of water already has some salt in it, then the first glass will lose less salt through osmosis to the second glass.
Now, imagine the first glass is your blood, and the second glass is your waste water. By measuring the salt levels in the first glass, we can estimate the concentration of salt in the second glass, and therefore how much water is being cycled through.
You can also measure serum sodium in urine, but urine tests are more significantly impacted by recent consumption (e.g. if I drink a big glass of water a few hours before the test, likely the serum sodium levels will be significantly lowered), regardless of general trends. This means they're normally used as a secondary diagnosis tool in case blood sodium is abnormal to validate kidney function.
> If the second glass of water has no salt in it, then salt will start crossing the membrane and equalising the salt levels in both glasses.
Is that correct? Normally in osmosis water will cross the membrane to equalize concentration of ions right?
Generally it depends on if and how fast molecules of water and solvents are able to pass through the membrane.
Say sodium and water passes equally well, there will be a net flow of water one way, and a net flow of sodium the other way. Notice that the flow of water will make the water rise on the flow-to side, then pressure there will rise and oppose the flow.
You are right, I used the wrong word, I should have said diffusion.
The top comment in this thread seems to be the clarification you are looking for. It tells that higher serum sodium concentration is tied to lack of hydration.
none of the answers I've seen, and I've been looking, are answering the fundamental questions at all.
humans are big membrane enclosed bags of mostly water, but also fats, proteins, etc. And some salts including sodium-salt. According to what I keep reading, none of that other stuff matters, only the sodium-salt and the water. Add a little salt to the big-garbage-bag-that-is-a-human, we are told, then you must add a ton of water to keep the salinity the same. How much? Till you are pissing clear, you're not done. Your body magically keeps every thing else in balance, but you need to manually intervene by overconsuming water. And I just don't believe this could be the case, it's just the "drink lots of water" meme repackaged.
"what is the harm" or "why" is never addressed.
They felt there was sufficient evidence of a correlation between middle aged sodium levels and aging in a data set that was gathered over 25 years to recommend doing studies that use treatments to shift the sodium levels to see if they reduce aging (the "intervention studies" in the interpretation).
The study measured hydration in terms of sodium, but how do we know that the effective age reduction was not (or additionally) due to relatively higher consumption of potassium rich foods (such as fruits & vegetables)? Potassium can reduce sodium via membrane potential.
Or even on a more basic level; people that manage their hydration probably overall manage their health better.
For me it's a constant balance that's hard to find, am I thirsty and lips cracked or did I visit the bathroom six times this morning?
We don't. This is why these studies should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Very funny :)
I’m having a Bad Pants day today because we had a big bowl of popcorn with our movie last night and I’m retaining water because of it.
One of the ways I’ve controlled weight, tooth decay and crossing the A1C threshold into prediabetes is to swap sweets for savory snacks, which almost universally come with a higher sodium burden (not just salt but also umami).
Telling people that sodium is bad is part of how we got to overindulgence in sweets. We do not want to go back down that road.
I doubt that the there is any way in which a higher potassium intake could reduce the sodium concentration in the blood.
All the living cells in the body pump inside them all the potassium that exists in their environment.
When more potassium is ingested, there is more potassium inside the cells. That draws more water inside the cells, to restore the intracellular concentrations, i.e. the equilibrium between the intracellular and extracellular osmotic pressures.
This leaves less extracellular water, but the same amount of sodium, so the sodium concentration in the blood increases, which causes thirst. After drinking water, both the extracellular sodium concentration and the intracellular potassium concentration are back to normal.
It does not matter whether one eats more sodium or more potassium. The final effect is the same, more water retained in the body, after initially having both a higher extracellular sodium concentration and a higher intracellular potassium concentration.
The difference between sodium and potassium is that when eating more potassium there is more water inside the cells and less outside, while when eating more sodium the reverse relation is true (but the deviations from normal will be corrected when sodium and potassium will be excreted).
I've suffered acne pretty much my entire life well into my thirties. It used to get pretty bad. Over the past year I randomly discovered a correlation: drinking water helps, not drinking water makes it worse. I can't count how many times I've seen articles that end with generic off-hand advice to "hydrate" and just ignored it, because I consume fluid every day. Never occurred to me that this is actually the most important part - drinking enough water will literally improve your life.
Very interesting - as a fellow sufferer I’ll give this a go.
I’ve also found a strong correlation for my own breakouts with drinking caffeine. If I have a caffeinated coffee I can guarantee that a break out will occur within the next few days.
Caffeine is a diuretic FWIW; you may even be noticing the same hydration effect through a different mechanism
Interesting. I'm a physician, and I'm often perplexed at what evidence my colleagues could possibly be referencing when they talk about the ideal water intake for human health.
The pubmedding I've done on the issue seems to intake that thirst is a more sensitive instrument than any easily available serum marker.
Given how many people's taste buds are out of whack due to drinking lots of non-water (coffee/soda/etc.), and eating sugary/salty/fatty foods, is it realistic to expect most people to be able to listen to and understand what their thirst is telling them?
After all, if people really listened to their bodies, they wouldn't be eating and drinking so much crap, right?
Another anectode, the 2 weeks ago I had some minor urinary tract infection and the solution was - drink more fluids. Water or tea.
I was sure how much was it, so I drank much more than usual of tea and a water intake was normal.
At some point I reversed it. Stopped drinking tea, but drank 1 liter of water conciously.
And man did that changed things quickly. In two days my uti was gone and I had such a great time working more, thinking more creatively, even having clearer skin.
Could it be that people who sweat have lower serum sodium?
I wonder if it's possible to lower the value not only by adding water, but by sweating out the sodium?
People who exercise or use saunas have much lower mortality rates.
Of course, maybe they have to hydrate, as they remove sodium through their sweat and their body might accentuate their sense of thirst.
additionally, people's sense of thirst is decreased as they get older.
I like to reuse large containers from orange juice and ice tea as water bottles.
I’ll keep several around the house, so I’ll always have a large bottle of filtered water right next to me.
For me it helps with staying hydrated, and I like to think that reusing these bottles is better than recycling them right away.
Also as a cheap skate the notion of a $30+ bottle is silly
I had a really bad chronic headache. Had it for most of my life. Came with bouts of over-eating, sensory overload. In the end there were months with few days below 5 on the pain scale. Nobody could find anything, nothing was wrong, but I was in pain. On a whim, on one of the bad days, I decided to “drink until I was no longer thirsty”. The thirst was not strong, but I was desperate. 6 liters of heavily salted water later I was better. And I’ve remained better. I always have a bottle at hand - mostly tap water, some mineral water or sport hydration thrown in for salt retention. When I feel a headache coming on, the day will include more (and more conscious) drinking. Not sure why this is or whether that’s only me. But it is something quite safe and quite accessible that might help someone.
A divulgative article over the submitted original is on MedicalXPress at:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-01-good-hydration-linked...
The older you get the higher the propability to get diabetes, not sure they tested for something like that. But kidneys ability to filter sodium goes down when there's a problem with fructose or so. I think I saw this on yt with Peter attia. He also notes that sodium should always be consumed with liquid
Lol All It shows is that It is way too easy to get published in this field
Rule of thumb: if expulsed urine volume (after fall) exceeds ripe lemon color, you have to drink more. How this relates to the paper? Only intuitively.
Here's something to aim for: Drink enough so that at least once per day your urine is clear.
As a child my rule was: Pee should look like Sprite, not Fanta.
It would be interesting to run tests with this data on alcoholics. Most binge drinkers damage their bodies mostly due to dehydration. Could also explain how some get away with minimal damage to health
> Most binge drinkers damage their bodies mostly due to dehydration
Citation needed.
sleep
exercise
hydrate
pick two, ideally three :)