To miss the days when people were just 'thirsty'?!

[Babycham1979]

What's all this shit with, 'hydrating'? It's called drinking fucking water!

Whenever I hear someone claiming to be 'dehydrated', I want to reach for my revolver. No, dear, you're not dehydrated, you're just thirsty. It won't hurt you to wait twenty minutes for a drink.

Advanced capitalism, combined with nanny-statism seems to have fostered a nation of adult-babies who can't got five minutes without a snack, needing a piss, or a plastic bottle to suck on. It truly does my head in.

I can't remember the last time I sat through a film or a play without multiple audience members nipping out at least once during the show. Yes, I do appreciate that SOME people suffer incontinence, or might have needed a shot of insulin but, come on, not on this scale!

This thread has gone strange!

"You're still not commenting on the evils of fizzy,brown chemical \sugar water drinks Charis".

Nor on how she knew, so much better than treaclesoda what was said in treacle's hospital appointment, by treacle's medical personnel, to, y'know, treacle, ppeat!

Oh my goodness, this threads gone bonkers this morning. Intolerance is an under rated value and without it a sort of religious zeal to enforce individual desires & opinions on everyone sets in. The hang em flog em mind set is not one I aapire to.

In this brand new world of drinking controls and enforced behaviour modification, there would be no place for disablility or medical conditions, however weakly you cry 'special exceptions'. As posters appear to be denying any physical effects of water on the body, and ignoring the basic biological functioning of how the body uses fluids, so in this Brave New World you are imagining, specialists and scientists would be ignored and shouted down. After all, it's all imaginary anyway right?

I especially disheartened that a 'science teacher' has avoided any of the real science on here and hasn't actually explained why she feels justified in her nonsensical and emotive statements that are being presented as fact. It was slightly amusing the way others decided that someone had said drinking water lowers blood pressure and when that didn't run left the nasty science bit alone.

And the belief that tea & coffee have all the good properties that water apparently does not, well that's not really based in fact is it? Tea and coffee have water in them, but aparently have magical extra ingredients that mitigate the harm water does! Is there a reason that water doesn't hydrate but tea & coffee do? This feels like an over exaggeration of the reality which is that most liquids hydrate as the diuretic effects are weaker than the amount of liquid available to our bodies. So other liquids shouldnt be demonised or thought of as not counting towards your daily intake. But it turn it on its head and claim that water is somehow less thirst quenching / hydrating than other drinks is a step too far and not supported by biology.

Now the environmental argument is absolutely true but it's only been brought in to substantiate the argument that water drinkers are foul and the source of all evil.

I also love the unsubstantiated claims around productivity. Water sure is responsible for many sins on this thread.

It's so odd that water drinking can cause so much angst, and I do agree with others that there's something a bit odd about people who have such a strong reaction to others benign behaviours. It's not like they are doing you any harm, and getting so het up shows a disturbing intolerance.

To all those posters who are convinced that being thirsty means you are dehydrated and waiting 20 minutes for a drink may be dangerous, please could one of you actually state (with evidence) what the long term consequences are for someone who has lived for around 50 years and regularly relies on thirst as a prompt to drink.

"I feel so much better when I drink water" and "drinking water makes me less tired" is not the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Thanks so much.

"It's so odd that water drinking can cause so much angst, and I do agree with others that there's something a bit odd about people who have such a strong reaction to others benign behaviours."

Very wise words, Miscellaneous. We cannot, as a general rule, control what others do around us in public spaces. But we can control our reactions towards them. We can choose to be irritated by people drinking water out of sports bottles, or we can choose to ignore that behaviour and to use techniques such as those cognitive behavioral therapy teaches to modify our reactions to them.

I have been learning how to do this, with relation to the bullying I suffered as a child, my reactions to it then and now, and the depression I suffer as a result. It is a work in progress, but if I can use these techniques to cope with a serious issue like this, I am sure it would work for more trivial irritations.

this thread has gone strange

incorrect. it started strange then it proceeded to be weird, escalated to surreal and will conclude as bat shit crazy

as you were

I don't believe that if you're thirsty you're already dehydrated, assuming you are already healthy. I think it might well be true for some people though, presumably as part of other underlying health conditions.

However, I do believe that if someone has a dry mouth/sore throat/headache/dizziness or even if they just feel thirsty, and they fancy some water, it does not make them a selfish arsehole, lacking in moral fibre.

ArgyMargy see my post at 16:21, for WHO's description of symptoms of dehydration at 1% of bodyweight. At that level, waiting 20 minutes won't be life threatening but it's a prompt to take in fluid. 4-6% is moderate dehydration, reach a 7% deficit and you're likely to collapse.

I'm sure you can work out how much fluid would comprise 1% of your bodyweight. It's just over a pint of water for me.

"However, I do believe that if someone has a dry mouth/sore throat/headache/dizziness or even if they just feel thirsty, and they fancy some water, it does not make them a selfish arsehole, lacking in moral fibre."

Treaclesoda - what makes you think that such sensible words have any place whatsoever on a batshit crazy thread like this one? For shame!

Squirrelled - I wasn't asking for symptoms, I asked for consequences. Of which there are clearly none.

Charis every time you post I'm going to suckle a little louder on my water bottle and just hope that you are in the vicinity to enjoy it :)

Yup Treacle sensible opinions are not welcome here on the bat-shit crazy thread.

Your docs and my docs must come from the same school of 'sponsored by Evian' medics. They all need burning at the stake, burn the water loving heretics!!!

Yes it's got that bad, three exclamation marks bad. Arrrrggghhh!

Off to drink some more W... Ooh, just occurred to me, a campaign to swap the insidious evil water for wine! Yup, 2L of wine a day folks, it's the only way forwards. And the bottles are made out of glass so a much more sensible choice... Hic :)

Argymargy I could happily explain the effects of low levels of dehydration on the performance of elite athletes (swimmers are my speciality), but I suspect you do not fall into that category.

I often look after patients who are fed via a feeding tube. If there is evidence that they are dehydrated (for example a rising sodium level, rising urea and creatinine levels, reduced urine output, sunken eyes, reduced skin turgor) one of the methods of re-hydrating them is by giving water via their feeding tube. Water. Not coke or coffee or juice. Water. If the liquid in the bowel (where it is absorbed into the bloodstream) is more dilute than the liquid in the bloodstream, more water will be absorbed into the bloodstream (osmosis, basically) so the circulating volume in the bloodstream will be higher. The kidneys then manage how much of that fluid is retained and how much is peed out.

If you're putting fluid directly into the bloodstream ie with a drip, the fluid that you put in needs to be a similar concentration as the fluid already in the blood, or the blood will rapidly become more dilute than the fluid in the cells and tissues so causing rapid fluid shift into the cells and oedema into the tissues. (Osmosis again). So for rehydrating intravenously we use isotonic fluids, basically saline (salty water with the same concentration of salt as should be in the blood)

Oral rehydration fluids are useful when fluid has been lost through vomiting or diarrhoea as salts (which are important in the active (ie not osmosis) transfer of fluid and other things from the bowel to the bloodstream to the cells.

So basically, if you are dehydrated due to having insufficient liquid in your bloodstream because you haven't drunk enough, water is the most sensible thing to drink.

Oh, and a science teacher who doesn't get the concept that drinking fluid leads to an increased circulating volume in the bloodstream? Fucking hell.

Food and drink goes in your mouth, into your stomach where it is broken down, into the small bowel where nutrients are absorbed into the blood, into the large bowel where fluid FLUID IS ABSORBED INTO THE BLOODSTREAM then the waste is shat out. Fucking primary school biology.

Although Argymargy if you are chronically mildly dehydrated (as research shows that a proportion of the population is) then:

"Dehydration of as little as 2% loss of body weight results in impaired physiological and performance responses. New research indicates that fluid consumption in general and water consumption in particular can have an effect on the risk of urinary stone disease; cancers of the breast, colon, and urinary tract; childhood and adolescent obesity; mitral valve prolapse; salivary gland function; and overall health in the elderly."

Susan M Kleiner, J Am Diet Assoc. 1999;99:200–206.

HTH

Drowning (fluid filling the lungs) on the other hand, will not lead to any fluid getting in the blood at all. Unless you swallow water before you drown. In which case it gets into the bloodstream as described above.

No, Squirrelled, I'm not an elite swimmer and neither are 99.99% of people. So for almost everyone, there are NO adverse consequences of drinking when you are thirsty.

Thanks for confirming that.

Yay for some rational thinking sallysparrow :)

Bet you won't get an answer though as any facts are either 'falling for the nefarious tricks of bottled water manufacturers' or just plain wrong, for no reason in particular.

Drowning (fluid filling the lungs) on the other hand, will not lead to any fluid getting in the blood at all. Unless you swallow water before you drown. In which case it gets into the bloodstream as described above.

Wasn't going to bother to say any more, but this, ( along with this sllysparrows previous posts) show such a level of ignorance that I'm going to have to. Ignoring her complete misunderstanding of primary school science

This is DANGEROUS

don't bother about the science, or anything like that, but Sally,

if you have children, and if they ever go under in the sea or swimming pool and inhale water, take them to A and E, even if you get the water out of their lungs immediately, because it will be in their blood ,and can kill them.

You need to know this, even if you don't understand it.

I have not quite RTFT, but I have to just say YABU.

I do hydrate, and I get thirsty. Both apply, but they are not mutually exclusive. I get migraines when I dehydrate, but when I get to a dehydrated stage I am not necessarily thirsty, nor am I necessarily dehydrated when I am thirsty. So if my referring to needing liquid when I'm not actively thirsty gives you the rage, then quite frankly you can do one. I'd rather not be stuck with a migraine if it's all the same.

Brilliant posts sally but I bet your posts get ignored as did mine about insensible loss plus about litre being around for years before bottled water and the 2 litre figure " we have all been conned" by was even invented.

Charis is right about water entering the bloodstream if water is inhaled btw, I was referring to the posts about enteral hydration.

SDTGIsAn I was suckling on my water bottle today and I enjoyed it. It's comforting