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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

Except it's well known that that is way too much water unless you are sweating a lot. If you drink that much, you'll just pee a lot, it won't actually do anything useful.

Since the article got something so basic wrong (and if it was intentional you would think they would mention that the numbers were similar), I decided to stop reading the article at that point, I don't need incorrect information.

Maybe it's an editing mistake?

The actual amount of water you need varies by exertion, and diet and all sorts of things, it's not a fixed amount.

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I don't understand why you're downvoted. At the very least, the article is inconsistent on this point:

8 cups / day is widely reported - and suggested in the article itself - to be too high as a minimum, and yet the article actually ends up concluding that you need to be drinking more than that.

>The actual amount of water you need varies by exertion, and diet and all sorts of things, it's not a fixed amount.

I completely agree with this statement.

>If you drink that much, you'll just pee a lot, it won't actually do anything useful.

I drink on average 6L of water a day. When I first started water-only fasting I was urinating constantly. I discovered that this was because I would drink a lot in one sitting, (as a 'meal' replica) and then interspersed throughout the day.

Once I changed my consumption style to ~150mL frequently I found that my body used the water better. Once it realized that a "constant supply" was readily available (and didn't need to worry about feast/famine cycles) I retained what I needed and more casually urinated the processed water.

My body can better manage itself when I drink 150ml 40x a day then it can manage 1L 6x a day.

If the body was previously worried about "feast/famine" of water before, wouldn't it retain water rather than pee it all out?

The body doesn't really have any way to retain [liquid] water without causing medical issues. There's no storage compartment except for fat that could be metabolized into water.

You can also store water, for a short time, mixed into fiber in food that was recently eaten.

But drunk more gradually thorugh the day, it is able to be 'retained'?

Asking in good faith, taken independently each of your comments make perfect sense to me!

I'm not implying I have 'water pouches' or anything as silly. 1.5L of water in my stomach gets processed as quickly as my kidneys can manage. Thus I urinate out a large % of that liquid intake before use can be made of it.

Continually drinking small amounts doesn't overwhelm my stomach and therefore it feels like I urinate less, and 'retain' that water.

Wow, 6 liters? you drink 40 times a day?

(24h - 8h) * 60 min/h / 40 = 24 min

So you stop what you're doing every half an hour and drink get a glass of water and drink it? Or do you have constant supply at your desk or how are the logistics?

I have a 1.5L Naglene bottle at my desk, and a water cooler 10 feet away in front of the server-room doors.

So cold water is always close.

I also drink when I'm at home.

Yes agreed, it's not helpful to search for a constant consumption requirement. A healthy and sedentary person, with a reasonable diet, on a cold, gray, damp day, does not need to consume much water.

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