Contrary to popular notion that you should drink eight 8-ounce of water everyday, a shocking new study has found that most of us have been drinking water the wrong way.
In the new research reported on Medical News Today, it was suggested that you should only drink water when you’re thirsty following the discovery of a mechanism that makes drinking excess water challenging.
In the study carried out by researchers at Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Australia, participants were asked to drink large amounts water immediately after exercising, when they were thirsty, as well as when they were not thirsty.
The researchers then asked the participants to rate the difficulty of swallowing after each of the three conditions.
Their findings showed that the participants found it three times more difficult to drink water when they were not thirsty compared with drinking water just after exercise.
Furthermore, the researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity just before they swallowed water in every experimental condition. The results showed that certain areas of the right prefrontal cortex of the brain exhibited significantly higher activity when the participants exerted effort to swallow the water. This suggests that the brain region “overrides” the swallowing inhibition allowing excess water consumption.
Study co-author Michael Farrell said: “Here, for the first time, we found effort-full swallowing after drinking excess water which meant they were having to overcome some sort of resistance.”
"This was compatible with our notion that the swallowing reflex becomes inhibited once enough water has been drunk.”
While water intake remains essential to human health, the researchers emphasized that consuming too much water can cause significant harm such as hyponatremia, where blood sodium levels become abnormally low.
--Mini, The Summit Express
In the new research reported on Medical News Today, it was suggested that you should only drink water when you’re thirsty following the discovery of a mechanism that makes drinking excess water challenging.
In the study carried out by researchers at Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Australia, participants were asked to drink large amounts water immediately after exercising, when they were thirsty, as well as when they were not thirsty.
The researchers then asked the participants to rate the difficulty of swallowing after each of the three conditions.
Their findings showed that the participants found it three times more difficult to drink water when they were not thirsty compared with drinking water just after exercise.
Furthermore, the researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity just before they swallowed water in every experimental condition. The results showed that certain areas of the right prefrontal cortex of the brain exhibited significantly higher activity when the participants exerted effort to swallow the water. This suggests that the brain region “overrides” the swallowing inhibition allowing excess water consumption.
Study co-author Michael Farrell said: “Here, for the first time, we found effort-full swallowing after drinking excess water which meant they were having to overcome some sort of resistance.”
"This was compatible with our notion that the swallowing reflex becomes inhibited once enough water has been drunk.”
While water intake remains essential to human health, the researchers emphasized that consuming too much water can cause significant harm such as hyponatremia, where blood sodium levels become abnormally low.
--Mini, The Summit Express
