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Comment by korch | Hacker News Reader

This might be Myth Busters material, but wouldn't it be more energy efficient to drink water closer to the body's own temperature? Less energy is needed internally to process warm water, than to heat cold water up to 98.6 F.

This is also similar to why it's bad to drink soft drink, the body consumes more water to break it down than it gains from the soft drink.

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Fluids come as hypotonic, isotonic and hypertonic. Water is hypotonic, and before it can be absorbed, the body has to add in glucose and electrolytes from internal supplies. Hypertonic drinks, like Coca Cola need to be diluted with water from the body. An isotonic drink which is 6% glucose + electrolytes can be used almost immediately. That's why sports drinks are often isotonic.

>This is also similar to why it's bad to drink soft drink, the body consumes more water to break it down than it gains from the soft drink.

The longest one can last without additional water is something like 3 days, no? http://health.howstuffworks.com/live-without-food-and-water.... (it gives a couple of citations but I haven't checked them, I tried the sciam.com one but it's paywalled) gives 3-5 days + 1 for a "healthy" person.

So if this assertion is right then drinking exclusively soft drinks for about 5 days will kill you. A simple experiment to do.

You would also have to avoid juicy foods. You could probably avoid drinking water indefinitely if you ate enough apples.

Yes. And that is something that nomads in eg Mongolia practise. You sweat less and your body has less warming up to do.

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