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Allan Adler - 17 May 2005 12:37 GMT

I've heard of people who were told by their doctors that they had to
start drinking a lot of water every day, something like 20 or 30 glasses
of water. What kind of condition would lead to such advice and what would
be the downside, if any, for someone who didn't have that condition, of
drinking that much water every day?

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <ara@zurich.csail.mit.edu>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.

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Jeff - 17 May 2005 13:08 GMT

> I've heard of people who were told by their doctors that they had to
> start drinking a lot of water every day, something like 20 or 30 glasses
> of water. What kind of condition would lead to such advice and what would
> be the downside, if any, for someone who didn't have that condition, of
> drinking that much water every day?

Two conditions:

1) Really small glasses.
2) Stupidity. No one would need to drink 20 or 30 glasses (regular size
glass, like 8 oz or 240 ml). The only exception would be if the person were
sweating a lot, but that should be an obvious, like it is 110 F out, and the
person playing soccer.

Jeff

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Allan Adler - 18 May 2005 15:09 GMT

What I was thinking was that if someone is prone to kidney or urinary tract
infections, drinking a lot of water throughout the day might tend to flush
the bacteria out of their systems before they have time to accumulate.

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Howard McCollister - 18 May 2005 15:33 GMT

>> I've heard of people who were told by their doctors that they had to
>> start drinking a lot of water every day, something like 20 or 30 glasses
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> infections, drinking a lot of water throughout the day might tend to flush
> the bacteria out of their systems before they have time to accumulate.

Not necessarily for infection, but forced hydration to approximately that
extent (2 glasses of water every 2 hours) along with alkalinization of the
urine is commonly used for patients with kidney stone formation (cystine
stones in particular). It's generally safe, but some patients might have a
problem with the resultant hemodilution dropping the sodium level.

HMc

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dcholiman@ev1.net - 19 May 2005 08:37 GMT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My reading of the literature on this is
that the average non-sweating
person needs 1 liter of water per day.
Since food is 50-95% water, it is
theoretically possible to get enough
water from food alone without drinking
anything. The 1 liter calculation proved
anecdotally correct when I turned in
1 liter of urine to my VA clinic during
a 24 hours urine volume test.
I was about age 57 at the time. My
only beverage was coffee.
David H
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Allan Adler - 23 May 2005 05:10 GMT

OK, so it's to prevent the formation of kidney stones, not to keep
bacteria from proliferating. The detail that is bothering me is that
I vaguely recall an article in Science News a few years ago about how
it was discovered that kidney stones have a very small organism at their
centers which are the actual cause of the kidney stones. It had gone
undetected until just a few years ago for some reason, maybe that it is
a lot smaller than most bacteria. If my recollection is correct, then that
means there are two things one needs to control to prevent the formation
of kidney stones: (1) these critters from getting started in the first place;
(2) the rate at which the stones form around the critters. Let's say that a
critter only has a certain probability of actually getting to form a kidney
stone. In that case, lowering the concentration of critters would also have
the effect of preventing kidney stones.

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Howard McCollister - 23 May 2005 05:57 GMT

> OK, so it's to prevent the formation of kidney stones, not to keep
> bacteria from proliferating. The detail that is bothering me is that
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> have
> the effect of preventing kidney stones.

Maybe you're talking about struvite stones, about 10% of all kidney stones.
The bacteria don't serve as the nidus for the stone - they throw off the pH
balance of the urine which allows ammonium phosphate to precipitate. Again,
the point of forced hydration is keeping the concentration low enough that
the crystals can't precipitate.

Other than that, I know nothing about "critters at the centers".

HMc

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Allan Adler - 25 May 2005 03:54 GMT

> Maybe you're talking about struvite stones, about 10% of all kidney stones.
> The bacteria don't serve as the nidus for the stone - they throw off the pH
> balance of the urine which allows ammonium phosphate to precipitate. Again,
> the point of forced hydration is keeping the concentration low enough that
> the crystals can't precipitate.

Thanks for the clarification.

> Other than that, I know nothing about "critters at the centers".

I think, in retrospect, they might have been described as nanobacteria.
The article had pictures. Unfortunately, I can't give a reference, except
that it was probably Science News.

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