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How much water to drink is an important consideration in flu prevention because, as we shall see later, it affects the integrity of our cell membrane structure and that, in turn, affects our vulnerability to virus attack.
Before we go into that, it worth noting that such a question never arose in the past. People drank when they felt thirsty and stopped drinking when they no longer felt thirsty. It was simple as that. No questione needed ... Until some "expert" came along and proclaimed that everyone should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.
It would be interesting to find out who first came out with this recommendation. It was made absolutely without any scientific basis - not as if the person conducted some studies or scientific experiment and found that eight glasses a day was the optimal amount of water to drink. Yet this idea quickly got embraced universally. "Drink 8 glaases of water" daily because the golden rule.
The idea that everyone should drink the same amount of water daily is actually senseless. If you just pause for a while to think more carefully, you will realise that how much water to drink depends on, among other things:
And so on. There are just so many different factors that determine how much water to drink. And the very fact that doctors and other health authortities keep repeating this nonsensical recommendation only goes to show how unthinking they are. They simply repeat what some other "experts" say.
In reality, a person's actual needs for water might vary from as little as one glass a day... to more than eight glasses a day. Some years ago, I visited India and I found the weather so unbearably hot and dry that even eight glasses a day was not enough water for me. I was drinking maybe 12 glasses of water a day. But if you ask the an Indian living in the same environment, how much water to drink, you may find that the person does not drink as much.
Why? Because people adapt to the environment and to their circumstances. People who face a drought certainly do not have the luxury of drinking eight glasses of water a day, Maybe not even one glass. While they may not be in optimal health, they don't all die from dehydration either. Many survive with very little water. They adapt.
Water to make up for perspiration?
Even the idea that how much water to drink depends on how much you perspire needs to be carefully thought over.
Try this very simple experiment... On a hot day or after you have just finished some heavy physical exercise, drink lots of water, maybe two or three glasses at one go, and see what happens. You will perspire profusely. On another hot day, drink just a small amount of water. You will find that you don't perspire that much.
So it is not just a case of how much water to drink depends on how much you perspire. It is also the other way around - how much you perspire depends on how much water you drink.
This was very clear to my ex-wife and I when we used to walk up Bukit Timah, a short hill in Singapore that takes about half an hour to reach the summit. We never carried water bottles and we never drank along the way. At the summit, we were perspiring only slightly. And we felt comfortable. In sharp contrast, those climbers with water bottles were sweating like pigs. Some of the men even removed their t-shirts to wring out the sweat!
Watch your urine!
So back to the question: How much water to drink?
One way to determine how much water to drink is to simply watch your thirst. If you feel thirsty, drink. If you don't feel thirsty, don't drink. This is not entirely reliable, however, because sometimes we may get so engrossed in our work that we do not realise we feel thirsty. I certainly am guilty of this.
The most sensible answer that I have ever come across is this - watch your urine. If your urine is dark and you seldom urinate, you need to drink more. If your urine is transparent and you keep having to urinate more than once every few hours, or if you wake up frequently at night to urinate, you need to drink less.
Why is your water intake important?
Because how much water to drink affects the integrity of your cell membrane structure. When your drink lots of water, your cells absorb water and become bloated.
This happens simply because of osmosis. When you drink water excessively, the fluids outside your cells become watery and diluted whereas the fluids in your cells are relatively more concentrated. This will spark off the process of osmosis, which causes water to flow from the more diluated environment to the more concentrated environment, until the two are balanced.
When your cells become bloated and expand, the tiny holes on the surface of your cell walls - which are necessary for nutrients to enter and for toxins to be discharged - will become larger. After a point, they will become large enough to allow viruses to pass through.
That is when viruses start to activate and reproduce. On their own, viruses are as good as "dead". They cannot do anything, they cannot reproduce. The need to enter the cells before they start to cause any harm.
So for flu prevention, it is important not to drink too much water.
However, how much water to drink for flu prevention is not the same as for flu treatment. Because when you already have a flu, your body is "fighting a battle" and a lot of toxins are produced during this "fight". Drinking lots of water will help flush out these toxins.
Still, don't go overboard. And once you start feeling better, revert to drinking enough, but not too much water.