Me and my friend are arguing the question as to whether coffee or Miyo enhanced water is still considered water? Does your body still process it the same as water or does the concentration change its perception of how it’s utilized in the body? Would love the opinion of a nutritionist or biologist. Thanks!
Huberman just talked about this on his podcast. He discusses it with Andy Galpin on part 5 of the series. One interesting insight they made was that caffeine dehydrates if it is in a pill, but in coffee, there is enough water that it still does count as source of hydration.
Usually when people say “stay hydrated” or “drink water” they actually just mean that you should consume enough liquid throughout the day, no matter the type. So, just stay hydrated whenever possible! Eating a cucumber, or some sliced watermelon, could work too
You ever wondered why you can’t drink seawater? It’s actually false. You can drink salty water (probably don’t drink it directly from the ocean, though, that wouldn’t be sanitary).
But the reason we say you can’t drink seawater is because salty water dehydrates you. Why? Because after you absorb the salt, you body needs to remove the excess… by using water to flush it out through the kidneys. The salt concentration of seawater is so salty, that it takes more water to flush out the excess salt, than you drank in the seawater. That’s what makes it dehydrating.
So all edible liquids are gonna exist on a spectrum, from pure water, which obviously hydrates the most, to really salty liquids like some soup broths that might actually outright dehydrate you.
For coffee, it’s well established that coffee is net hydrating. There’s more water in coffee than it takes to process the caffeine in coffee. Likewise, sugary drinks aren’t going to hydrate quite as much as pure water, because it does take some water to metabolize the sugar, and some other biological processes too. It’d probably even be possible to make a drink so sugary that it was outright dehydrated you, even, though I haven’t done the math on what that’d look like.
On balance, though, most drinks do contribute to hydration.
What about electrolytes? So, most folks know that if you drink a bunch of water, eventually, you’re gonna have to pee. The thing is, pee isn’t pure water. Pee contains other stuff, especially salts.
I mentioned how drinking a bunch of salty water, will make you have to remove the salt, and water will come out alongside the salt, resulting in net water loss. Well drinking a bunch of water, will make you have to remove the water, and salt will come out alongside the water, resulting in net salt loss. It’s the same deal, just for salts instead of water.
You don’t lose this salt as fast as you lose water, it’s not as major of a concern. But if there’s a little bit of salt in the water, that helps prevent the salt loss; that’s all electrolytes are.
Crucially, though: it would be possible, theoretically, to put in so much electrolytes, including the salts in MiO, that it actually became too much and started to lower the hydration potential of the drink. But I wouldn’t be too worried. I’m pretty sure it would start to taste bad before that happened.
Yes. Google “Beverage Hydration Index”.
Water is assigned a hydration index (HI) of 1, and then other drinks are relative to this.
In some cases, even a light beer can be as hydrating as water as the diuretic effect of the alcohol (volume of alcohol too small in light beer) does not offset the hydrating effect of the 98% (approximating) water in the drink.
Source: nutritionist
Yeah, there’s water in food, juices, soda’s even beer. some drinks like alcohol and caffiene are diuretic and dehydrate you, or draw water away from the organs to be sent out as waste. but short answer, yes. as a younger man I’ve been known to go years without touching a glass of straight water, I’d of died of thirst if the answer was no
Yes. And technically, none of the water you drink is ever going to be 100% pure water
That said - plain water is best; but your body still does get hydration from things like coffee, even soda. It’s just not ideal to do that
Lots of people don’t drink plain water at all. Those people still get enough water to stay alive and function- because you can only survive so long with legitimately no water. So the coffee, tea, MIO, or water from vegetables etc is going to help hydrate
Caffeine is dehydrating. So, the coffee is not considered water. No doctor would add coffee to the water totals for the day,nor juice for that matter. Fresh or reconstituted frozen juice are not water.
MiO or Stur or the like are comparable to sugar free vitamin water.
I recently learned of “nutritive mismatch” . Basically, food is information and these fake flavors send false preparatory signals to our body. The classic being fake sugars that possibly inform our bodies of major sweetness but never delivers. I wouldn’t trust that shit at ALL.
Check out “The end of Craving” by Mark Shatkzter you might find it a very thought provoking book as I did.
Any time you are trying to figure out something about how water affects the body, you should also consider electrolytes. I think your question is too semantical and that as you dig deeper, in order to really get at the truth, you should include not only fluids consumed by drinking but also the amount of water that is contained in foods.
I think that will throw even more of a wrench into your pursuit though.
As far as the general medical advice to drink enough water, that advice is probably intended to include liquids made up of only water and low-calorie flavorings. It would likely not include coffee.
Coffee dehydrates your body, so it’s not even considered to increase your “water intake” but the opposite: it takes liquid from your body.So Imagine drinking water from the sea, you can drink a lot, but it won’t count.
The comments you often hear are mostly overreactions to what someone ‘heard somewhere’.
The truth is if you drink little water - you shouldn’t really count that one cup of coffee, tea - or especially 3 sodas - in an attempt to cheat ha. But sure water is water. 8 glasses / day for everyone, regardless of weight or activity level is also beyond stupid - but that’s what most think.
Eg. if you weigh 200 lbs - you should drink about 100 oz / day TOTAL - less maybe if sedentary, more if active. So my 2 large glasses of tea ‘count’ - as does my one cup of coffee, or hot tea. Anything else, like sodas or energy drinks don’t IMO - due to absorption issues, and detrimental health effects.