Eight glasses a day wrongly challenged

An Australian study has concluded that globally accepted guidelines to drink 8 glasses of water a day are unnecessary.

The Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute associate professor behind it said people have “died, in certain circumstances, because they slavishly followed these recommendations.”

The research discovered a new “swallowing reflex” that protects us, becoming “inhibited once enough water has been drunk”.

We are advised to “just drink according to thirst rather than an elaborate schedule.”

I fear this is actually very bad advice from the wrong conclusion.

Of course, we have some resistance to all over-consumption. And, of course, extreme over-consumption of anything can be dangerous.

But my understanding is that the full weight of scientific evidence points to us anticipating hunger early, while becoming thirsty late.

So we need these guidelines to encourage us to hydrate. And even low levels of dehydration affect us quite seriously.

The Australian researchers acknowledge this for elderly people.

Academic research is often blown out of proportion by the media. But academics have a responsibility too.

This report was based on just 20 participants and apparently didn’t correlate with other factors.