How to Find out if You Drank Enough Water

I think it's the first time I've recognized her publicly, but I'm one of those people who is obsessed with convincing others to drink more water.

The main reason I try to convince those around me to drink more water is because I felt on my own skin what it means not to drink enough water, endangering my health due to kidney stones.

Due to the fact that I did not drink enough water, but only when I was terribly thirsty, I managed to upset the fluid balance of the body, favoring the storage of calcium that my body could assimilate and which in time gathered together in the form kidney stones (calcium kidney stones).

Thus, I had kidney stones twice, in just 1 year between episodes. For the first "series", I had to be hospitalized, and the second I managed to eliminate it naturally, but believe me it was not pleasant at all :). After having the second series, I decided to study intensely the effect of water on the body, in order to better understand what causes my kidney stones.

We go on about 2-3 years from the last kidney problem, I drink somewhere at 2-3 liters / day, maybe even more depending on the activities I have every day and the amount of effort I put in a namely day. I haven't had kidney stones since I drank enough water.

So, I experienced on my own skin the effects of water on the body.

How much water is enough for a quiet life?

Before we talk about the scientific reasons why you should drink more water, let's first determine as accurately as possible how much water an individual should drink daily.

You have probably heard of the recommendation to drink 8 glasses of water every day or 2 liters / day.

These recommendations are "rule of thumb" type recommendations, they have no scientific basis, because if they had, each adult would have had a quantity of water calculated individually.

Instead, they are public recommendations, meant to be easy for the population to adopt.

Let's say that a glass has 250ML, then 8 glasses would mean 2L of water, hence the idea of ​​2l of water :). Basically, these 2 liters would keep you in the hydration zone.

I propose 2 methods to determine how much you should drink which are accepted by doctors or nutritionists.

Methods for determining how much water is sufficient

Among specialists and people passionate about nutrition, there are all kinds of recommendations, but at the moment, there is no recommendation nailed down on how much water you should drink daily.

A common “formula” is this: mass (kg) x 40 (ml) = total water you need to drink (ml).

Let's take my weight: 86 (kg) x 40 (ml) = 3.44 L of water daily (water from liquids and food). If you are overweight or even obese, the formula will give you headaches, because it will indicate that you need to drink a lot of water. However, this "formula" has proven to be a good friend in recent years, managing to avoid kidney problems. Judging that when I developed kidney problems, I consumed at most 1.5 L of water a day, then it is quite logical why I had those problems.

Daily needs can be influenced by factors such as:

physical activity

climate

food

salt consumption

If it's even hotter and you make a sustained effort, it would be good to drink 1-2 liters more than your daily needs. The important thing is not to be thirsty. Never get thirsty.

The next method I propose to you is to take into account the fact that you did not manage to measure the amount of water you drank or you simply forgot how much you drank. This method is also useful in supplementing the above recommendations.

The method may seem a bit strange, but my own experiments confirm it to be extremely useful on days when I am more forgetful and as a method of controlling hydration overall.

All you have to do to apply the following method is to notice your urine. I'm not kidding. The color of the urine may indicate the degree of hydration of the body.

The big disadvantage of the method is given by what you eat, because food is a factor that can play an extremely important role in urine coloration, certain fruits or foods can influence the final color of urine (excess meat, blueberries and berries influence the color urine).

The basic rule is this: the lighter the urine, the better hydrated you are.

In addition to the above recommendation, you will find a good part of the articles about hydration written by doctors and specialists.