Transcription
How much fluid should you be drinking in a day? In this video, I'm going to show you how to optimally hydrate your body so that you can perform best in everything you're doing in your life. Taking your kids to school, jiu-jitsu, dancing, yoga, whatever. Let's get into how to optimally hydrate.
So, when you're thinking about hydration, we're talking about fluid first that you're taking in and then electrolytes like salt second. So, I'm going to cover both of those in this video. I'm going to talk about different types of fluid, different body types, different temperatures you might be in, how to calculate how much water or other fluids you should be drinking when you're exercising, and how to think about how much salt and other electrolytes you should be taking in during the day.
So, first things first, let's talk about fluid. So, when you're drinking fluids throughout the day, these can be a variety of different fluids, but let's just start with water. Now, somewhat surprisingly, your body size doesn't matter a whole lot here. Most humans, regardless of body size, give or take, need about 2.3 liters of water per day. That's about 77 ounces of fluid or water. I'm going to show you. There are different ways you can do this. Doesn't have to be just water, but let me show you what 77 ounces or 2.3 L of fluid looks like. It looks like this. So, this is what 77 oz 2.3 L of water looks like. So, it's about 10 glasses of water. About 10 8 oz glasses of water. A little less than 10, but you get the idea.
Now, if you're looking at this, you might think that's a lot of water. And it really is because you can think about the amount of fluid you get in a day based on all of the fluid you get in a day as long as that fluid is hydrating. And I'll talk about that in just one moment. But you could have a couple of different types of fluids that might contribute to this 10 glasses of water, which is actually 10 glasses of fluid that is hydrating every day.
The other thing to think about is that this is the amount of fluid that you should probably consume in the first 10 hours of the day after you wake up. Because in those 10 hours, your kidneys are much better and much more active at filtering the fluid and it will be much easier to pee that fluid out during the day. So, you won't be left peeing multiple times a night. Now, it's pretty much normal for a human man or woman to get up maybe once a night to pee. But if you're getting up three times a night, four times a night to pee, that's a lot of interruption of your sleep. And you really want to aim to get the majority of your fluid in the first 10 hours of the day after you wake up. So if you wake up at 7 a.m., you want to get this amount of fluid from all the different sources I'll talk about before 5:00 p.m. And then after 5:00 p.m., you really want to try and limit it to about 5 to 8 ounces of water before you go to sleep. And that will almost certainly help with nighttime urination. You'll get up less during the night, less sleep interruptions, better quality sleep equals better quality life.
You don't have to drink 10 glasses of water. You could also drink things like orange juice or milk. These are both hydrating. And in fact, according to many studies like this one, milk and orange juice are even more hydrating than water. So, in a given day, I do not drink this much water. I drink fluids based on my activity level. And I'm drinking milk. I'm drinking watermelon juice when I'm in Costa Rica and I'm drinking orange juice. And so in a given day, my intake of fluids might look very different. I'm still getting around 2.3 liters of total hydrating fluid in a day, but it might look more like this. You could also replace some of that water with milk. Milk is hydrating. In fact, there are studies that suggest that milk is even more hydrating than water. So, in my day, I drink about a liter of raw milk, which looks like this. But you could also make your hydration look like this. You could also replace some of that water in the day with something like fresh squeeze orange juice, which is also more hydrating than water. So, this is more like what my fluid hydration might look like in a day. I'm still getting 2.3 L of fluid. Part of that fluid is raw milk. Part of that fluid is fresh squeeze orange juice and part of that fluid is a filtered water. I'm definitely not drinking tap water full of fluoride, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and chlorine derivatives. Please filter your water as well.
The last two things to think about with your hydration every day is that this amount of fluid every day will increase if you are exercising. And you want to pair this amount of fluid with electrolytes like salt. Average for most people is around nine grams of salt. Please look for a low heavy metal sea salt. Add that to your food throughout the day. Pairing that amount of salt with this amount of fluid will lead to pretty darn optimal hydration for most people. So this is what a typical day of hydration might look like. For me, I drink about a liter of raw milk per day. So, I've got four glasses. Each of these is about eight ounces. Eight ounces is around 230 milliliters. You guys get the idea. Four glasses of milk is around a liter of milk. When I'm active surfing every day, I'm going to drink about a liter of fresh squeezed orange juice every day, too. So, so this is now 2.3 L, 77 ounces of fluid, of which maybe only two glasses per day are actual water. Now, remember what I said in the beginning of the video. This milk and this orange juice has been shown in studies to be more hydrating than water. So if you want to drink raw milk instead of a few glasses of water a day or you want to drink orange juice, preferably freshsqueezed based on your activity level, that all counts toward your intake of fluid during the day.
Now the caveat here, the important thing to understand is that some fluids are dehydrating. Things like alcohol and coffee are particularly common in the human diet. These don't really count the same way towards your intake of fluid because alcohol and coffee can be dehydrating. Now, I know a lot of you guys drink coffee throughout the day, but I wouldn't think about coffee as one of these glasses during the day. I wouldn't think about coffee as part of those 2.3 liters in quite the same way. I would think about things like water, preferably spring water, which you've tested for heavy metals, or filtered water from a reverse osmosis filter that's been remmineralized. I would not drink water from a tap, from a sink because of fluoride. There's lots of evidence that fluoride in excess is harmful for humans. Increased amounts of fluoride in the human diet have been associated with decreased IQ in kids. So don't drink tap water. Filter your water and know that a Brita filter doesn't really cut it when it comes to contaminants in your tap water. I've done other content about what's in tap water. You have pharmaceuticals. You have heavy metals. You have all sorts of endocrine disrupting chemicals. You have breakdown products of chlorine and other chemicals used to purify your tap water. Tap water is not good for drinking. And in fact, I would consider putting a filter on your shower if you are bathing in municipal water. Regardless, if you want to drink water throughout the day, think about the quality of your water. Think about what's in that water. But remember that you can drink things like milk, preferably raw, or orange juice or other juices that are fresh squeeze that are organic that are not just like high fructose corn syrup fake juices. This will all count toward your hydration in the day. And remember, you want to get this amount of fluid in about the first 10 hours of the day.
The second part of all of this equation is how much salt and electrolytes you should be drinking during the day. Because if you just drink 10 glasses of water per day, you may be hydrated, but you could be overhydrated. This is a condition in medicine that we call hyponatremia. You can drink too much water. It can be very dangerous for you. And when people are doing long exertional efforts, I'll talk at the end of this video about how to think about increasing your hydration while you're exercising. But when people are doing long exertional efforts and they're drinking lots of water, like in an Ironman or a marathon, you can push the sodium levels in your blood too low, this can be dangerous. It's a condition called hyponatremia.
So, how much salt should you be eating a day? Now, if you're interested in the quality of your salt and you want to know which salt to eat that has low amounts of heavy metals, check out the other video I did on salt analysis because many of the sea salts that I was using in the past that are common in our grocery stores, etc., actually had significantly elevated levels of heavy metals like lead in them. So, you don't want to be using those salts. How much salt should you be using? Most of us need around 8 to nine grams of salt per day. That's not sodium, that's total salt. So, let me show you what 8 to 9 grams of salt per day looks like. And remember that if you're sweating a lot, you might increase this. If you're on a ketogenic diet, which is something I'm not a huge fan of long term, you may need far more salt than this because when you're on a ketogenic diet, your insulin can actually drop too low and you will not hold on to electrolytes. This is a huge part of my story. Adding back carbohydrates to my diet, significantly improved the electrolyte balance in my body. When I was on a carnivore diet, which was a long-term ketogenic diet, I had lots of muscle cramps because my body was not holding on to salt and other electrolytes because my insulin signaling was actually too low at the level of my kidneys. So, for someone that is not on a ketogenic diet, say you're eating an animal-based diet of meat, of organs, of fruit, of honey, raw dairy, all this kind of stuff, 8 to nine grams of salt usually works well for most of us. And let me show you what that looks like.
Just so you guys know, with the raw milk, I'll usually put in the glyphosate-free honey from Lineage. And first thing in the morning, I'm going to be throwing in some creatine into my raw milk. And Lineage is, of course, a company that I built. I've always wanted to make it the cleanest stuff out there, so I'm really proud of our glyphosate-free honey and super clean creatine. Here is my handy dandy little scale. I'm told that this is a drug scale, which makes me feel kind of mischievous. I've never weighed drugs on this scale, but let's weigh some white granular powder, which I promise is kosher sea salt. I'm going to show you guys what 9 g of salt looks like. 9.25 grams of salt. So, that is the amount of salt that I am thinking about eating in one day. Now, I think it's just helpful for me to see that amount of salt at any one time. And I'm going to add part of that salt to my food throughout the day. I don't weigh my salt every day, but I think, yeah, that's about the amount of salt that I'm going to use per day because I'm going to add a little bit of salt to my raw milk and honey in the morning before I surf. I'm going to add salt to my meat two times a day. If I'm doing squash, like I like spaghetti squash when I'm in the States, I'll add salt and butter to my spaghetti squash. But you want to combine those 2.3 liters of fluid with around that much salt every day for optimal performance. And again, you might increase the amount of salt if you're on a ketogenic diet or if you're exercising in a very hot climate.
Okay, so we've got 2.3 liters of fluid from a variety of different sources. Remember which fluids are hydrating versus dehydrating. Milk and orange juice are good. Water is good. Coffee not so much. Dehydrating, think about nine grams of salt, give or take, in a day. Think about getting the fluid early in the day, the first 10 hours of the day, preferably after you wake up.
How do you know if you're dehydrated? Well, there are these sort of colloquial ideas that you can look at your pee. Obviously, if your pee is super dark, you may be dehydrated unless you're taking a B vitamin because riboflavin and B vitamins can make your pee dark and it can make it fluorescent yellow. So, that's a little bit tricky. But, be that as it may, you may have some sense of your hydration status based on how often you're urinating during the day or the color of your urine. Or you can get strips on Amazon that will tell you the specific gravity of your urine. Now, looking at specific gravity, sources disagree as to what level of specific gravity signals dehydration. Some sources say that any specific gravity greater than 1.01 is dehydration. Some sources say any specific gravity greater than 1.02 is dehydration. So you can get urine strips and experiment with what the level of specific gravity of your urine is when you are drinking about this amount of fluid, getting this amount of electrolytes in the day and see how you feel. Tenting of the skin, this is all sort of non-specific and not that useful. I think you may have a good sense intuitively of whether you are dehydrated or not.
Now what happens if you're going to go exercise? Obviously this depends on how hot it is where you exercise. Most people are now using something called the Galpin equation. Andy Galpin has apparently come up with this. You take your body weight in pounds, divide that by 30, and that is the number of ounces you should be drinking of a hydrating fluid every 15 to 20 minutes while you're exercising. So, you can use the Galpin equation to add hydration to your daily total when you are exercising. Obviously, if you're in a very hot climate, all of this may need to be adjusted in a certain direction, but hopefully this is helpful, guys. You can think about how much fluid you should be eating in a day. How much salt you should be eating in a day. Don't fear salt. Don't fear orange juice. Obviously, don't fear raw milk. But improving your hydration status can significantly improve all of your performance across all areas of your life. Being dehydrated is just going to weigh you down. Don't be dehydrated. Use these metrics to improve your hydration daily. I'll see you guys in the next video.
All right, guys. If you want to see the video I did on salt and know which salts are high or low in heavy metals, click here. I'm going to go finish hydrating with some raw milk here.