Drinking Water

[poodybear]

I hate water, I've never once finished a glass of water in my life. I decided to start drinking water and yesterday I had four glasses. I had to put the mio flavoring in it because otherwise I wouldn't get it down.

 

This morning I woke up feeling like utter crap and it was so hard to get out of bed. I drank three glasses of water throught the day. After the second I started feeling physically sick and I had to lay down. I took a nap and woke up feeling worse than when I had laid down.

 

What I'm wondering is: is this my body detoxing? Could this be psychosomatic, because I feel like I can still taste the water. A mixture of both maybe? Is there something that explains this? Maybe its the mio flavoring.

 

In hindsight I guess I should have started off slowly, but I didn't expect it to have such a large impact.

[EdEarl]

Welcome to SFN

I have no idea, in general water is good for people, but it can contain pathogens. It may be coincidence that you got sick at the same time you started drinking water.

I hope you feel better, soon.

[poodybear]

Welcome to SFN

I have no idea, in general water is good for people, but it can contain pathogens. It may be coincidence that you got sick at the same time you started drinking water.

I hope you feel better, soon.

Thank you, I'd been lurking for awhile. Lots of info on so many different subjects.

 

I thought the same thing, then had a glass of soy milk and feel much, much better. I guess just general curiosity on the impact of water on the body.

 

I'm a massage therapist and I can tell the difference in the tissues of people who drink water and those that do not. About everyday I recommend water and never follow through myself. But I can call people out that don't hydrate enough.

[EdEarl]

Good to hear you feel better.

[CharonY]

Distilled water has barely any taste at all, most of the things you actually taste are stuff that got into the water, depending on source and storage of water. That being said, highly purified water is not really that healthy as you may lose minerals. But unless it is contaminated with something there is no good reason why water should make you feel sick, especially as strong reaction as you described. More likely is that you got something else and you associate it with water consumption, for example.

[John Cuthber]

Argh!

Will people please stop saying this "highly purified water is not really that healthy as you may lose minerals."

 

However, as you say, pure water has no taste.

 

Re. "Could this be psychosomatic, because I feel like I can still taste the water."

Yes.

And it's rather difficult to see what else it could be if the water is fit to drink.

[CharonY]

Well purified water is known to induce diuresis and electrolyte loss. Of course during normal nutritional situations the effects should be pretty low to non-existent. But if you are in situation where electrolyte loss is occurring (such as during heavy sweating), it could become an issue.

[John Cuthber]

"purified water is known to induce diuresis and electrolyte loss."

Drinking water makes you wee. Who would have thought it?

But the important question is whether there's a difference between tap water and distilled water

People get practically all their minerals + electrolytes from food, not from water.

[drakefor3]

If the water that you drank was from the tap, you could have gotten sick from that. Your body might not be used to the purifying system that your house/state use, and if you only drank bottle water (since you stated that you hardly drink water), it could have a negative effect.

 

Also, psychosomatic is also likely. 4 glasses of water isn't enough to really overflow (literally and metaphorically, of course) your system.

 

Hope you feel better!

[CharonY]

"purified water is known to induce diuresis and electrolyte loss."

Drinking water makes you wee. Who would have thought it?

But the important question is whether there's a difference between tap water and distilled water

People get practically all their minerals + electrolytes from food, not from water.

 

As I said, it depends highly on the nutritional situation. Tap water varies highly, but rat studies have shown that feeding water that has less than 75 mg total dissolved solids electrolyte for a longer time apparently disrupts mineral homeostasis (see Schumann et al. Vet and Hum Tox 1993) . This was also the case despite being on a otherwise sufficient diet and similar effects were observed in humans (see e.g. Med Mo Pharm1993; 16: 146., in German, unfortunately, but I believe there was a position paper of the WHO about this subject). The point is not that it provides insufficient nutrients, but rather that with a (barely) sufficient diet and/or situations where electrolyte loss is already occuring high amount of low-mineral water can push people towards deficiency and disrupt mineral homeostasis. The negative consequences are usually only temporary and thus rarely lead to pronounced health effects, though (I cannot recall whether there were ever studies longer than a year on this matter).

 

Finally, it should be noted that for certain minerals drinking water could be actually quite significant source for some populations as some studies indicate (Rubenowitz et al. Scand J Clin Lab Invest. 1998; Galan et al Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102 (11) (2002), pp. 1658–1662).

 

Acute effects such as water intoxication is usually only found after excessive fluid consumption after heavy exercise. In this case very low TDS water did not do much of a difference as compared to low-med TDS water. I.e. higher salt intake becomes necessary.

As usual, when it comes to dietary concerns ymmv.