You can never have enough water! With this mentality it is common knowledge that the average human should drink at least eight cups of water per day. However an article taken from the Scientific American seems to suggest that we have we been led to believe a lie due to the many deaths caused by excessive water intake.
In 2007 a radio contest was being held in California, the competition was to see who could drink the most water without urinating. A woman died later that day from consuming over two gallons of water, this is not the only case where excess of water has been the cause of death. Because your kidneys control the amount of water, salts and solutes leaving your body when pressured with this huge amount of water within a short time period the kidneys get overworked and cannot flush the water out fast enough resulting in the blood becoming waterlogged.
So now that the truth about water has been exposed how do we know how much water to drink? According to several resources (Mayo Clinic, Dr. Ben Kim) there are many different ways to figure that out, but the most reliable method is you need to drink to your own thirst.
When I heard about this radio competition a couple years ago I was very surprised because I aways thought it was great to drink a lot of water. I never really knew why the lady had died from drinking too much until this blog and it totally makes sense to me now. Her kidneys got over worked! I now know only drink enough water for my own thirst and never any more! I don't want to die from too much water! Very informative blog and articles that you linked!