Watered-Down Science

Published by admin | Filed under Education

Maybe you've seen the headlines that read something like, Water - A Waste of Time. That's thanks to a recent study by university of Pennsylvania researchers. They combed through the research on water to investigate whether drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, as some scientists suggest, actually offers any benefit. The UPenn researchers concluded that for most healthy adults, no research substantiates that the recommendation offers any clear benefits. However, they also concluded that no clear evidence exists that there are no benefits to drinking large amounts of water.

Of course, the mainstream media sensationalized their conclusions by telling people that they have no reason to try to get in decent amounts of water each day. Our readers should pay no attention to this hype and still try to get in about one gallon of water per day. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (they're the ones that make the daily recommendations for nutrients) actually suggests that the average male should double the old eight 8-ounce glasses recommendation to about sixteen 8-ounce glasses of water (or one gallon), and that the average female should consume eleven 8-ounce glasses daily. Some of this water will come from food, such as fruit, vegetables, prepared oatmeal, etc., but it's hard to calculate the amount of water in the food you eat. So the easiest route is to just drink that much in water, or other non-caloric fluids.

There is evidence that higher water intake benefits athletes. And any hard-training bodybuilder is definitely an athlete. When you exercise you lose more water, due to sweating and your exhaled breath, than the average couch potato does in a day. So you need more water to replace that lost. In fact, many exercise physiologists suggest that you get in about 20 ounces before workouts, 5-10 ounces every 15 minutes during exercise and about 20-32 ounces after training. That's because research confirms that as little as a 2% decrease in bodyweight (from water loss) can cause decreases in muscle strength and endurance. Then there's the muscle factor. Bodybuilders carry much more muscle mass than the average person and even the average athlete. Since muscle is largely water, you need more water to maintain muscle size.

Although the UPenn researchers claimed that studies were inconclusive as to whether drinking water offers benefits to weight loss, we disagree. Not only do anecdotal reports support the concept that drinking large amounts of water can encourage fat loss, German scientists reported that drinking about 2 cups of cold water on an empty stomach boosted metabolism by 30%. They even theorized that if a person added about six cups of cold water a day to his regimen (drinking two cups of cold water before breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a year), he'd burn 17,400 extra calories, which translates into a little more than five pounds of body-fat. Sounds like a good reason to ignore the latest mass media hype, doesn't it?

Sandra Prior runs her own bodybuilding website at http://bodybuild.rr.nu.

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