 Hey everybody, Dr. O here and in this video I just want to talk about how much water we should drink. So obviously you see water here, there's not medical advice, there's lots of recommendations out there. Should we drink eight glasses of water a day? Should we drink half our body weight in ounces? I'll kind of give you my spin on it but this eight glasses of water a day is one of those things that's been said so many times that everyone believes it but it never was actually stated anywhere. It's one of those things that was referenced and then referenced again and referenced again and we just believe things and that happens a lot sadly in science and a lot of other areas as well. The research was done in the 50s it showed we need a certain amount of fluid and take including other fluids and including food, the fluid we get from our food but still I don't have a problem with this eight glasses of a day of water but I don't think it's as scientific as people would assume. Saying half your body weight in ounces at least that's better, at least take size and consideration. If you weigh 120 pounds me and you should not drink the same amount of water so I do like that better because at least it takes size into consideration. If you want to know how many cups of these you should drink you should look at a cup of this. This is my kind of go to answer and I think that urine is a very good measure of hydration so the color of the urine and the amount of urine you're producing are the key indicators to me that you're hydrated or not. I always like to say if you want to know something just ask your body. Your body will tell you based on how often you urinate and the color of your urine if you're hydrated or not. Here we see a chart that shows that what urine looks like if you're hydrated versus dehydrated so if your urine is a nice pale straw pale yellow color then that means that you're hydrated. If it's crystal clear you're over hydrated and drinking too much water and I've been there I used to drink way too much water it was just kind of a nervous tick while I was a student I was just drinking and drinking but so up near the top there if you have that pale straw pale yellow colored urine that's a very good sign that you're hydrated obviously so at least looking at your urine takes other things at a consideration right are you consuming diuretics are you in a real human environment where you're sweating a lot like to tell a roofer in Texas and someone that works inside all day like me that we both need eight glasses of water a day just doesn't make sense are you exercising or not these are all things where your hydration status can be measured to me in somewhat directly by looking at your urine so the color of your urine is very important number two though is like how much urine should we make how often you urinate so it isn't just the color because maybe it is because you're consuming diuretics like alcohol or something else but if you have that nice pale yellow pale straw colored urine and you're urinating every two to four hours so to me if you're urinating every three hours now not counting when you're going to bed but you should certainly have to go right when you wake up if you're urinating every three hours and you urine is pale yellow then your body is telling you that you're hydrated if you're urinating every five hours and it's in its dark yellow or almost brown that means your body is holding onto all of the water than it can which is why it's producing as little urine as possible and if it's and if it's crystal clear you have so much water flowing to your body your body's not even trying to hold on to it and getting rid of it so here we see normal urine production is one to two liters per day I think that's a very sound number if you're consuming more or if you're producing more than two and a half liters a day of urine as you can see here excessive water intake can be a cause consumption of alcohol and caffeine or we're also worried about diabetes here diabetes mellitus being because the high blood sugar is pushing is pulling water out of your body as it leaves and diabetes and syphidis is a condition where you don't have enough anti-diuretic hormone so we can cover all that later but if you're producing too much urine excessive water intake might be the first thing to consider unless you have one of these disease states now caffeine is kind of tricky when you first start consuming caffeine is pretty sensitive pretty powerful diuretic but your body appears to get used to it I've seen that WebMD Mayo Clinic all sorts of places say that once you get used to a certain amount of caffeine it does not have the same diuretic effect not saying it doesn't have any but doesn't have the same diuretic effect that had when you first started consuming it but on the other side if you're if you're consuming 300 or producing sorry don't be consuming urine if you're producing 300 to 500 milliliters a day of urine that's called oliguria and you're not producing enough that means you're dehydrated or else some other serious condition and then anuria not producing any urine really you would consider kidney failure all right so just to quickly review how much water should you drink you should drink enough water so that your urine is pale straw pale yellow and you're yearning every three hours I think that I think that's the best advice that I can give you but it's not medical advice all right I hope this helps have a wonderful day be blessed