Drinking water is one of the keys to a healthy life. This is because your body needs a regular supply of water to help manage all that it loses each day. A healthy amount of water keeps you well hydrated and your body happy. Without adequate water, various systems in your body will begin to have issues that lead to a negative impact on your health. None of us want to deal with such things and as a result we tend to look for advice on the amount of water that we should be drinking. There is a lot of floating advice on the suitable amounts of water to drink each day to keep ourselves healthy. The advice typically takes the form of ensuring that you drink six to eight glasses of water a day or more. It is well meaning advice, but many people actually take this advice to an extreme and assume that drinking still more water will be even better for you health. This is highly inaccurate and it is entirely possible to make yourself sick by drinking too much water. Let’s look into the whys and hows of this problem so you can understand why it is possible to drink too much water.

Concentration
There’s a quick rule most of us ignore about the things we eat and drink regularly: anything in the right amount can kill you. Your body exists in a particular balance of nutrients that allows it to function properly. Overdoing it on vitamins is much more common than overdoing it on water though. Vitamin toxicity, much like water toxicity, only happens in extreme concentrations though. This involves ingesting many times over the required amount and forcing your body to process it. This has varying effects depending on the vitamin in question. Some will make your short of breath while others will cause painful cramping and yet others can actually affect your skin tone. Dosing is the key. Nutritionists have done their best to ensure everyone has easy access to general, daily guidelines on what amounts are safe and healthy to ingest. That’s a bit harder with water though and a great deal trickier.

Water, Water Everywhere
Water is a vital component of life on Earth. Almost every species craves it and tries to secure what sources of it are available. Humans have it comparatively easy these days as all we really need to do is go to the tap or grab a bottle from the pantry. This ready access to water in developed nations is what, strangely, makes it more likely for someone to get water toxicity. We’re bombarded with dubious health advice on the amount of water to drink each day and we’re not sure what to think. Here’s the thing though…doctors aren’t lying to you about the general amount of water you need to take into your body. Eight glasses is entirely reasonable if you’re not getting water from anywhere else, but you get water from everywhere. That juice you like? Water. That vegetable you’re eating raw? Water. That Kobe steak? It also still has water in it. You get water from your food as much as you do from what you drink.

The Natural Fallacy
Interestingly enough, some people don’t believe it is possible to drink too much water because it is natural. This kind of thinking is dangerous and ignores that the natural world is absolutely full of dangerous things. Even things you think of as comparatively harmless can actually involve a potentially dangerous compound at one level or another. For instance, apples are a common treat for most of us and we don’t think much of whether we eat the seeds on accident or not. All those apple seeds you’ve eaten had cyanide in them though. Keep this in mind the next time you’re wondering if something could possible do you harm. Even water can hurt you if you get too much of it in you.

Water toxicity is a real thing. It is a condition in which the body has so much water that the sodium levels in the body are thrown out of balance. There are potentially devastating effect including nausea, convulsions, coma, and death. As a result, try to remember to take any advice on the “proper” amount of water to drink with a healthy amount of skepticism. You’ll get a lot of your water from the foods you’re eating in a healthy diet. Consequently, you probably don’t really need those eight glasses of water. Try to keep in mind you only really need to drink water when you’re thirsty. Letting your body guide you like that will keep you in good health.