Does Drinking Water Really Improve Health Outcomes?

• Water is essential for life and many guidelines tout varying amounts that should be consumed per day.

• We know that some guidelines have been swayed by the bottled water companies. 

• New research does show that water can be helpful for several key health conditions, but overall the number and quality of studies remain low and poor at best.

• Bottom line: Water can help with some health conditions, and finding the right amount should be patient-specific and dependent on other variables as well (e.g. exercise, environment). Water, unsweetened tea, and unsweetened black coffee should be the mainstay of fluids for most people.

Full article here, transcript below.

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Transcript:

Good morning everyone, this is Dr. Wells from St. Augustine Beach. I'm here with Nutritional Physical Therapy Research Update today. This one is from JAMA Open Networks. It's Hakam et al. The focus is looking at a systematic review on water intake. Specifically, is there any evidence supporting these policies on water intake? As physical therapists, athletic trainers, strength coaches, we know the importance of water, particularly within athletes and in certain medical situations.

We often counsel patients on water, but do we really know where that supporting documentation and evidence comes from? I know that Marion Nestle has produced a lot of material around the water recommendations, and a lot of them were focused on guidelines that were pushed and promoted by the bottled water industry. So, do we really need to be drinking this much water? And that's kind of what the systematic review dove into. Of the 1,400 records they looked up, only 1% of the studies really qualified as decent enough to be included in this analysis.

So, that was about just over 18 or something like that. When they looked at the overall studies, the quality was limited and there was a small number of studies. So, fortunately or unfortunately, it really wasn't a robust number of studies. But regardless, when they did dive down into the data, they did find that drinking sufficient amount of water, in other words, for adults like drinking six cups a day, were associated with lower urinary tract infections, lower odds of developing kidney stones. It may help with hypotension. Now, I know I've published some other videos on the effects of water and how it can help with particularly blood pressure control, but some of these other findings aren't really surprising.

They say that younger adults, younger kids, can drink up to eight cups a day. And at the end of the day, I think as healthcare providers, we need to educate our patients on what they should be drinking. And typically, my recommendations are first, water. Second would be unsweetened coffee or unsweetened tea. Those are really the only three beverages that should be going into a patient's mouth. So, anyhow, I thought this would be helpful and guidance. Probably not super surprising, but at the end of the day, I really wonder how many of those studies that were analyzed were part of that influence and guidelines from the bottled water industry. So, I'll have to dive deeper into this Open Network article. You can check out the article below.

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