As part of a general “get better at cycling and shift some lard” approach to 2014, I’ve been doing more cycling and eating more healthily, which encompasses cutting out the booze and drinking more water, and I’m up to about two litres a day at work, plus maybe another pint or two at home. The weird thing is, it seems like over time, the more water I drink, the lower my tolerance of thirst gets, so even though I’m drinking loads, I seem to get thirstier more quickly. I did think this might be due to an increase in activity, but Mrs Pondo is doing more or less the same thing without the exercising, and she thinks she’s the same as well. All of which is a roundabout way of saying, does your body adapt to an environment with an abundance of water by encouraging you to drink more? Do you, in effect, become less efficient at processing it? Or not?

Maybe you are flushing all the minerals out of your system if you have altered your diet to remove certain stuff. 💡
Probably talking tosh tho……
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=47388
http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/thirst-excessive/overview.html
http://www.healthline.com/symptom/excessive-thirst

Beware net diagnosis, speak to a pro….. 😉

Had a diabetes check recently?

Hmm, interesting – doing a few miles but I’m taking it pretty steady, wouldn’t have thought I was losing enough fluid to flush the minerals out of meself. Maybe I’ll get some electrolyte tablets and chuck em in a water bottle before I set off. 🙂

Edit – No diabetes check, hadn’t really felt the need for one. But maybe I’ll get it checked anyhoo. 🙂

Our caveman thirst reflex is suppressed by the abundance of water in processed foods, part of the reason we eat when we are in fact just thirsty

Start drinking water as we should and the thirst reflex returns. Just a little now and then pints of it sloshing around in the stomach has no benefit

The book Waterlogged by Tim Noakes (which came out a few years ago) is very interesting reading. It’s pretty much summed up though in this extremely in-depth review http://www.irunfar.com/2012/07/waterlogged-a-dogma-shattering-book.html so you don’t necessarily have to read the whole thing!

It’s aimed primarily at (ultra)running but I don’t see why it shouldn’t hold true for other endurance activities as well.

Our caveman thirst reflex is suppressed by the abundance of water in processed foods, part of the reason we eat when we are in fact just thirsty

That’s interesting – I’m cutting down on processed food and (without anything to base it on) just assumed there’d be more fluids in fresh fruit and veg. And one of the reasons I’m trying to drink more water anyway is to cut down on the hunger pangs. Think it’s helping, because I eat less (in calorific terms) than I did, even though I’m exercising more. 🙂

Start drinking water as we should and the thirst reflex returns. Just a little now and then pints of it sloshing around in the stomach has no benefit

Sounds good – I just keep a bottle and a glass on my desk, have a sip when I feel like it. Interesting to see how quick I can get through it when it’s nice an easily to hand. 🙂

Our caveman thirst reflex is suppressed by the abundance of water in processed foods

I can’t imagine there’s much more water in crisps, biscuits, and cake, than there is in fruit and vegetables.

It’s pretty much summed up though in this extremely in-depth review http://www.irunfar.com/2012/07/waterlogged-a-dogma-shattering-book.html so you don’t necessarily have to read the whole thing!

Crikey – I really don’t need to buy the book! Cheers for sharing. 🙂

Sounds like Cat Aids to me….

Sounds like Cat Aids to me….

Not again… 🙁

Classic diabetic sign, do you have any family history of it. You don’t just have to be overweight! Genetics screwed me getting it at 39 years of age!
Go to the chemists if you can’t go to doctors initially the longer it’s left the more long term serious damage it will do to your body!

Hmm, no history that I know of, and no other signs that I’m aware of – the thirst thing has only increased since I’ve started drinking more water as part of the diet, and it’s not an outrageous burning thirst that’s come on all of a sudden or anything. Still, would be daft not to get it checked out – I’ll give the doctor a bell. 🙂

Just a little now and then pints of it sloshing around in the stomach has no benefit

It may not have any benefit, but I think the body has probably evolved to work with an intermittent water supply rather than a drip feed. Otherwise we’d have died out before the creation of the water bottle.

That’s an interesting review of waterlogged but I’d consider drinking 400 – 800ml of fluid an hour, which the author recommends, to be about as much as I could manage anyway. I reckon I probably drink in the 400 – 500ml an hour range on a warm to hot day and couldn’t really imagine drinking anymore but I’m only 55kg.
One thing I do find though is that I’m often a lot thirstier on the day following a long ride. Electrolyte drinks seemed to reduce that next day thirst on the odd occasions I used them but a recent blood test that showed high potassium has put me off using them.

Homeostasis

Unless you’ve got something wrong with you then your body will do a pretty good job of maintaining ‘balance’ without even having to realign your chakras. As you’d expect, exercising more causes you to lose water through sweating. Perhaps that’s increasing your thirst?

As for all this electrolyte drinks and isotonic wotnot, just forget it. It’s a whole bunch of marketing. There was a fairly good piece in the BMJ a while back that ran through the history of the hydration dogma. Sadly, it’s behind the BMJ paywall.