DRINKING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE

Submitted by Alix on October 22, 2009 - 1:57pm
Body: 

NB this post comes with a health warning! Please don't act on it without very careful consideration. I have hesitated a long time to write on this topic, because I am sure there are a lot of women here and in the general population drinking too little fluid and only comparatively few drinking too much.

I posted some time ago about a helpful visit to a specialist physio. Her most useful intervention was to suggest that I might be causing myself problems by drinking too much. This turned out to be spot on. Pre prolapse, I had already taken to heart the advice to drink plenty and post prolapse, aware of the need to avoid constipation, I redoubled my efforts. As a result I was peeing often and peeing lots. I couldn't do 50 minutes of vigorous walking without my knickers' getting at least damp. Brief runs round the park were interrupted by visits to the (not very nice) loo.

As I am a vegetarian, my food is very moist. I don't feel comfortable eating without drinking a little water at the same time. I consume up to 1 litre (2+ pints) daily of skimmed milk for the good of my bones. However, I have cut out most of those many comforting cups of tea and cocoa I used to drink and even when I feel thirsty I swig mindfully and in moderation. It was and is a sacrifice, but it is a thrilling liberation to be able to last so much longer without even thinking about my next trip to the loo.

I feel I walk a tightrope between aggravating my urethrocele by drinking too much and inviting constipation by drinking too little. I sometimes even wonder if it is possible I am also eating too much high fibre food, thus over burdening my bowel in the same way that I have been over burdening my bladder.

louiseds

October 23, 2009 - 6:26am

I think that pale urine is the benchmark here. If it is dark, drink more. If it is clear and copious, drink less. Yes, what you eat does have a big effect on what you need to drink. Fibre absorbs water. Dry grains such as muesli and snack foods have a lot of starch which absorbs a lot of water, as do nuts and dried fruit and other dried foods.

Eating less also reduces the amount of fluid needed, as most foods, particularly carbohydrate will absorb water.

So look at output, rather than input. I think your body will tell you how much you need.

I usually carry water with me so I can drink when I am thirsty, and don't have to resort to buying sugar-laden convenience drinks, which I don't like anyway, but I have given up completely on 2 litres of water per day. Ironically in summer my urine is paler than winter. I think it is because I don't get thirsty in winter.

Cheers

Louise

kiki

October 23, 2009 - 8:47am

don't worry about your 2 litres louise...apparently this is a huge myth.
we lose about 2 - 2.5 litres of water a day. but, we get a lot of that back from our food--nearly half. so right there, you're down to only needing to drink about 1 - 1.5 litres max. and it'll depend on what you eat--drying food, or lots of fresh fruit full of water...

apparently also coffee and tea don't dehydrate. you absorb about 2/3 and they aren't actually diuretics. stimulants yes, diuretics now. someone i know used to be a researcher for tv and finds all sorts of amazing stuff...

but, drinking to thirst is probably what we should all do, and watch what comes out as you say Louise.
i know i get very very thirsty. i probably drink about 2.5 litres a day on average....the result, i pee a ton. far more than the 4 times a day i read. forget that! if the bladder can hold 500ml, and i'm drinking 2500 + the 1000 ml i get in food, right there if i always go to capacity i'd pee 7 times a day. so add in the peeing because i'll be on public transport for an hour, and i could easily fill a day... ;-)

Alix

October 23, 2009 - 1:54pm

I fear there are no easy answers to this problem. In my case, I take a lot of vitamin and mineral supplements, so my urine is never very pale however much I drink. Listening to my body I find frustrating in the same way as when (long ago) I was listening to a small baby. Neither is a very good communicator. I used to wish and wish my baby could talk and TELL ME IN WORDS what she wanted. I read that we sometimes feel hungry when in fact we are thirsty: maybe the converse can also happen? And thirst can be pathological, a warning of something going wrong, as for people with diabetes.

I also read that our sensations of thirst are never very reliable and get less so as we age. Certainly, I can get so absorbed in something, I no longer feel thirst for hours. I used to do long distance competitive walking events where I would go for up to 27 miles in Summer with very little fluid intake, not feeling thirsty at all. Once past the finish, suddenly I would be desperate to drink gallons of the horrid orange squash provided, which normally I would despise. I used to notice that (conveniently) I was peeing very little, quite unlike my usual dash from loo to loo.

At home, I am much more tempted by comfort drinking than comfort eating. My desire for that soothing / rewarding cup of something does feel like thirst, but I'm sure it's not.

Christine

October 23, 2009 - 5:14pm

Many religions teach some version of “controlling the senses” and drink certainly falls into this category.

It’s kind of a neat practice to see if you can go longer and longer periods of time “self-contained” without desire of food or drink. Keeping your tongue rolled up to the roof of your mouth and breathing evenly into your lower belly helps with this. I agree with Kiki that, like animals, we should drink when thirsty.

I think exercise ties in with this discussion as well. When you’ve been “dormant” for awhile and then vigorously exercise, you can really get a sense of how aerobic exercise squeezes fluid from every cell in your body. We forget that the water in our body becomes stagnant and how important it is to keep things moving, for if we could see how things really are at the cellular level, we would know we’re much more like rivers than solid objects.