Water

When I read this post from Catherine, I couldn't believe Kriston couldn't believe that she drinks 7 liters of water a day. Ogged can't believe Catherine drinks that much. I won't bore people with the intimate details of my water consumption, but I'm pretty sure I drink more than seven liters.

It used to be that I drank a lot of caffeine and also smoked a ton of cigarettes, which left me feeling dehydrated frequently and drinking a lot of water. Quitting smoking would, I would have thought, lead me to cut back. Instead what happened was that my Diet Coke habit got somewhat more severe for a variety of reasons and I started exercizing regularly, both of which boosted water consumption. More to the point, however, I needed to pick up a new habit to replace the frequent smoking breaks that used to punctuate my working day. Endlessly refilling my water bottle and consuming the contents seems to have done the trick. I don't like to chew gum, and it seemed like a healthier alternative to snacking all the time.

4/18/07 5:05PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Water? Yeah, sometimes I put some in my bourbon.

But seriously, 7 liters a day? That's damn near 2 gallons. That can't be healthy.

Posted by: too many steves on April 18, 2007 05:25 PM

Yeah, but can you drink a gallon of milk in sixty seconds?

Posted by: JP on April 18, 2007 05:26 PM

Unhealthy? Well, you have to remember to go the bathroom. M.Y. didn't mention the bathroom breaks. Sounds like a water habit gets you double the breaks, half for getting and drinking the water and another half for getting rid of it. Another blow to worker efficiency and breakdown of order, civilization and respect for the boss. This water thing is obviously and Democrat plot of some kind.

Posted by: anon on April 18, 2007 05:29 PM

I'd like to hear about your urination rate. Really.

Posted by: david mizner on April 18, 2007 05:29 PM

Water? I never touch the stuff. Fish fuck in it, you know.

--Atrrib. to WC Fields.

Posted by: blatherskite on April 18, 2007 05:33 PM

If you're drinking water instead of snacking or smoking or drinking soda, it's a healthier alternative. But this notion that gained steam sometime during the 90s that drinking loads of water has some huge health benefit, and the dehydration pandemic we discovered along with it, is just a huge crock. And it resulted in lots of organic-enviro-minded folk buying loads of plastic bottles from the Coke and Pepsi companies. Caffeine can dehydrate you, but not nearly as much as the liquid it comes in hydrates you. People who drink a lot liquor or exercise a lot need to make sure they take in plenty of water. Everyone else gets almost all the hydration they need from food.

Posted by: Dalton on April 18, 2007 05:46 PM

Well. It is good to drink lots of water. This organi-enviro-etc person uses the same bottle over and over. At least six a day.

I'm abouut to get six inches of colon removed, so this is very much onn my mind. How old are you guys? Just wait til you get to your fifties.

Posted by: wonkie on April 18, 2007 05:59 PM

Matt,

Watch out for water intoxication. I know you are a Harvard guy so you probably already know about this, but then I thought Corzine already knew about seat belts, so I mention it just in case.

Posted by: Fred on April 18, 2007 06:00 PM

Psychogenic polydipsia: all the cool kids are doing it.

Posted by: sangfroid826 on April 18, 2007 06:05 PM

"It used to be that I drank a lot of caffeine and also smoked a ton of cigarettes"

Ah, so he was THAT type of philosophy major (all you philosophy majors out there know what I mean).

Posted by: burritoboy on April 18, 2007 06:23 PM

Psychogenic polydipsia: all the cool kids are doing it.

Awesome. Does anyone else out there have a neurotic fear of diabetes, kidney stones, or anything else based on fluids in my guts that I don't understand?

Posted by: Consumatopia on April 18, 2007 06:30 PM

I have a fear of kidney stones, but I don't think it's neurotic, seeing as how I've had 3 of the #*(%^@)&# things. And I probably don't drink enough water (it's not 7 liters, I can tell you that).

Posted by: Stacy on April 18, 2007 06:40 PM

Hi Matt -

I didn't know if you've already seen this item - I imagine it's not the highest praise you've ever received, politics making for strange bedfellows and all that.

In any case, I just wanted to make sure you know what kind of influence you've attained in the blogosphere. Till you read the entire article, the reference in the excerpt to a trio of editors refers to the three editors of Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative magazine.

I couldn't find an email address for you, so that's why I'm posting it as a comment on your blog.

Regards,

Trey Z.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0705.konetzki.html

from the above article -

An unlikely trio of editors, of which I was one, put the magazine together every two weeks in a small, drab Rosslyn office. We made an unlikely editorial team. TAC’s editor, Scott McConnell, is an heir to the Avon fortune whose stepfather played Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. He has veto power over just about every aspect of the editorial process, but seldom wields it, preferring to spend most days browsing newspapers and the blogs of the American Prospect’s Matthew Yglesias and the New America Foundation’s Steve Clemons. Scott is involved in the production cycle mostly by brainstorming feature pieces and writing short, snarky news items. He is skeptical of government, but also of religion. He advocates reduced immigration, but thinks aggressive environmental regulation to curb global warming might be a good idea. Each one of his conservative views seems to be countered by a liberal one. In fact, he strongly en dorsed John Kerry in 2004 and may yet support Barack Obama if he faces a hawkish Republican in 2008.

Posted by: trey z. on April 18, 2007 06:43 PM

Save some water for the rest of us.

Most of the world is chronically dehydrated - Matt is making up for a few of them.

Posted by: Pat on April 18, 2007 07:17 PM

This is the weirdest youth-culture practice I have encountered in my whole sixty years.

Posted by: John Emerson on April 18, 2007 07:20 PM

There's no way you need that much water. When I was on geology field trips as an undergrad, I would spend all day trudging through the desert and never had to carry more than 4 liters of water a day, and I weighed 200 pounds at the time. OK, actually, it was usually 3 liters of water and 1 liter of Gatorade. There's no way a person sitting at a desk needs twice that much.

Posted by: Adam Villani on April 18, 2007 08:15 PM

I probably do that much, tho a lot is in coffee and coke. Trying to add it up. At least 48 oz of coffee, a 32 oz coke, a liter of bottled water for every dog walk, which was twice today. The walks are 2-10 miles, at 3 miles an hour. An hour of weights will do another liter, 3 times a week. Vitamins and fruit for electrolytes.

My partner & I go through a 5 gal bottle of Ozarka every week, not counting coffee etc.

Dipsomania, i have all three next to me right now. Blood sugar under 80, I do worry about kidney stones and diabetes. And having lived with someone on dialysys(?), I value the freedom to drink liquids very highly.

I pee a lot, although fast approaching 60, I never have to get up at night. :) Pizza makes my urine milky.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on April 18, 2007 08:25 PM

This is the weirdest youth culture / grumpy old man practice I've ever encountered in my 60 years. Fish fuck in it, it's not psychoactive, it has no nutritional value (calories, vitamins, or minerals) - it's just an inferior beer and coffee substitute.

Posted by: John Emerson on April 18, 2007 08:45 PM

I would guess I drink about 3 liters a day, constantly refilling a former juice bottle. This is not interesting, but in trying to figure this out, I discovered this fairly awesome conversion calculator that I assume MY will need at some point, in case he's trying to figure out how many tablespoons are in a barrel.

Posted by: Seth D. on April 18, 2007 08:54 PM

Also, I must point out that immediately after saying this:
I won't bore people with the intimate details of my water consumption
you go on to describe the details of your personal water consumption. I call flip-flop!

Posted by: Seth D on April 18, 2007 08:56 PM

With her 7-liter-per-day consumption, Catherine must spend half her time drinking water and the other half bailing out the canoe. So to speak.

Posted by: Peter on April 18, 2007 09:00 PM

I drink half a cup of coffee 7 am and then I have to pee twice before noon, which is not always easy to da as I am in a classroom with 3rd graders. I can't imagine drinking 7 liters of water a day.

Posted by: cw on April 18, 2007 09:13 PM

I was drinking two to four large coffees a day and smoking 5-8 cigarettes a day and riding my bike to work and school and living in Tucson, so for about three years I drank near 2 gallons of water a day. And a lot of that was as a substitute for coffee & cigarettes compulsion.

Posted by: justin on April 18, 2007 09:21 PM

"I'm pretty sure I drink more than seven liters."

When you visit your ancestral homeland of the Village, make sure to head on over to the Russian Turkish Baths and sweat some of that water out.

Posted by: Petey on April 18, 2007 09:51 PM

Throw some salt in that, dude. 1 liter water, 1/2 tsp table salt.

Otherwise, risk the dreaded death by water intoxication!

Also, beware the deadly nightshade. Do not eat it.

Posted by: anonymous on April 18, 2007 10:01 PM

Also, I'm sorry, this is just a waste of time, though as far as habits go, drinking water is a harmless enough one.

In college I was a competitive fencer. That's pretty intense aerobic (and anaerobic) exercise. While wearing layers and layers of clothing. And a mask. And thick socks, pulled all the way up. It's a hot sport.

And I never, EVER, drank a gallon of water in a day. Even after 16 bouts in a hot gym. We took, like, 2 water breaks during practice, and nobody ever collapsed from dehydration (or much noticed it).

Granted, we were competing in New England, which isn't like running a marathon in Miami.

But c'mon! I don't think anybody needs this kind of water!

Although, again, as harmless diversions go, I'm echoing John Emerson as being more confused by this fad than anything else. Still, if it brings you joy, then follow the water, my children! Follow the water!

Posted by: anonymous on April 18, 2007 10:16 PM

Keep it under 10 liters a day

At about 10 liters a day of free water consumption, some people will start to be unable to dilute the urine sufficiently to keep themselves out of trouble with hyponatremia (too low a concentration of sodium in the blood and body fluids generally). The tolerance is probably even higher for folks who have absolutely no degradation of kidney or heart function, but 10 liters is where it starts to be credible to attribute hyponatremia to free water consumption, rather than some other explanation.

On the other hand, taking in 7 liters of free water every day, long-term, is definitely unusual. No one can guarantee that long-term consumption of free water at rates that high might not have some ill effects that we haven't observed as a clinical syndrome simply because there aren't enough people at risk from this practice for such a syndrome to have been noticed. It never pays to be an outlier (at least in medicine!), and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of such harmful effects.

Posted by: Glen Tomkins on April 18, 2007 10:26 PM

"Pizza makes my urine milky." - bob mcmanus

it's comments like this that have made matthewyglesias.com what it is today.

Posted by: PK again on April 18, 2007 11:55 PM

"it's comments like this that have made matthewyglesias.com what it is today."

I think it is the mozzarella or provolone. I don't have the problem with Swiss.

I was waiting for someone to comment on the 73 bloodsugar. The mate is just a little high, and I have been stuck three times for grins. I went surfing, and about the only explanation for consistent low blood sugar in a non-diabetic was serious metasized cancer. So I stopped surfing.

But probably all the water.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on April 19, 2007 12:21 AM

If someone's a liberal, that's prima facie evidence that their brain works harder than conservatives or moderates. They need as much water as possible to flush out the toxins, and to keep their brains cool so they don't overheat.

If anything, Matt and other liberals need to drink even more water. I suggest going for 7 or even 8 *gallons* of water in the day.

Keep it pure however: don't bother with nutrients, trace minerals, gatorade or any of that other junk.

Just drink as much water as you can, all day long every day. Liberals remember: 8 hours of sleep, and 8 gallons of water!

[Disclaimer: this comment is for entertainment purposes only, and is not meant as medical advice. Follow these guidelines at your own risk.]

Posted by: TLB on April 19, 2007 12:32 AM

If my craziness in the abortion thread isn't enough to get me banned, the stupid illiteracy of "serious metasized cancer" oughta do it.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on April 19, 2007 12:39 AM

I can sweat out 7 liters of water a day. Then I get encrusted with salt. If you find that licking the dried sweat salt off your own skin gives you intense gastronomic pleasure, it's time to do something about topping up your electrolites.

Posted by: Ronald Brak on April 19, 2007 07:41 AM

Water makes you stupid.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1133308.stm

Posted by: crack on April 19, 2007 08:57 AM

Au contraire...

If someone's liberal, she is unquestionably brimming with bile and other evil toxins. Water helps filter that stuff out, and helps to avoid BDS. Matt (like many of you), unfortunately, suffers severly from BDS. I'd recommend upping the water intake to at least 10 liters per day-perhaps psychological balance (and a conservative outlook) can be achieved.

Posted by: Sk on April 19, 2007 09:19 AM

I won't bore people with the intimate details of my water consumption

Too late.

Posted by: AJ on April 19, 2007 11:52 AM

If someone's liberal, she is unquestionably brimming with bile and other evil toxins. Water helps filter that stuff out, and helps to avoid BDS.

Fools! It's the fluoride that causes BDS!

Posted by: Consumatopia on April 19, 2007 02:05 PM

It is absolutely beyond me how anyone with the slightest intelligence whatsoever can smoke. It is the stupidest activity possible.

Posted by: Pete on April 19, 2007 02:34 PM

It is absolutely beyond me how anyone with the slightest intelligence whatsoever can smoke. It is the stupidest activity possible.

True! But it is also, unfortunately, VERY fun.

Posted by: Evan McElravy on April 19, 2007 05:01 PM