In a chance meeting with a

friend, I discovered that we had both begun drinking more water, and felt

better than we had in years.

Our resolve was based on articles

we'd read such as one by Jane Brody, a respected food columnist, who advises

that a good New Year's resolution would be: "Start drinking eight

glasses of water daily. None of your body parts, from your brain to your

toes, works well without adequate hydration."

My friend and I became convinced

that ordinary drinking water is a virtual miracle drug. After reading

how water aids digestion, safeguards the kidneys, cushions creaky joints,

helps shed pounds, and promotes wrinkle-free skin, I started a regimen

of two glasses at each meal plus two more at other times during the day.

One researcher says that dehydration

may often be blamed for poor concentration and memory loss among seniors.

(And why would seniors in particular drink too little water? Honey, when

you get a certain age, the inability to get to the bathroom in time can

result in serious embarrassment. One way to avoid that is to reduce the

frequency of nature's call.) It's logical, isn't it?

More than two-thirds of our

weight is water. It is essential for controlling body temperature, dissolving

chemicals, distributing nutrients and eliminating waste. We can live for

weeks on our bodies' food stores, but only a matter of days without water.

We can't store water very long;

we excrete it continuously, with every breath, in perspiration, and through

the kidneys and intestinal tract.

Our daily water requirement

is 2,000 to 3,500 cc per day, and, yes, we do get much of it from fruits

and vegetables. That much is fairly incontrovertible, and came from medical

texts I used in paramedic training.

What the medical community

would call anecdotal evidence is this: My joints were beginning to twinge,

sometimes severely, especially my knees, damaged playing basketball so

long ago I can't remember much except the pain of twisted cartilage. Since

I've been drinking lots of water, they went from hurting every day to

hurting not at all. I'm still cautious about how I turn or twist my back,

but I can once more get out of a low chair without help.

My winter-dry skin is less

so and call me optimistic but I swear the little wrinkles in my face are

less noticeable. And two glasses of water before a meal does take up tummy

space that I would ordinarily fill with calories.

Water is calorie-free, and

that's science, not anecdote. So why is this discussion about to take

a detour?

Well, I'm obliged to make a

disclaimer to keep your lawyer off my case: Check with your doctor before

making drastic changes in your intake of anything, water included. When

I told mine I was drinking lots of water, he said he believes it can be

harmful. I couldn't believe my ears, or didn't want to.

What he says about drinking

gallons at a time is true, of course: Water intoxication can have deadly

results. But we're talking about two quarts, half a gallon distributed

over a whole day. So I called two other physician friends, expecting them

to bolster my argument.

The best I could get out of

the dermatologist was, "From a general health standpoint, you should

drink all you can, but it won't make much difference with your skin."

Dry skin, she adds, is due more to exposure to sunlight than to lack of

water, and wrinkles are caused by a weakness of collagen and elastic tissue.

From the internist, "Sometimes

we don't give the kidneys credit. At the molecular level it doesn't matter

where the liquid comes from."

Meanwhile, the dietitians are

saying, "What do doctors know? They get maybe three hours of nutrition

training." And the docs are saying, "Where did you get your

information, off the Internet? (Well, yeah, part of it.) How much physiology

and chemistry have these 'experts' had, and have they published controlled

studies of their theories?"

My doctor advises that you

should drink water when you're thirsty. Nutritionists say if you're thirsty,

you're already dehydrated enough to impair judgment, that a loss of just

2 percent of body weight in water may start weakening brain power and

performance levels.

My doctor says drinking too

much water will cause electrolyte imbalance. My paramedic manual says

electrolyte imbalance is caused only by drinking too little water. My

internist friend says: "What an incredible job the kidneys do to

balance the electrolytes! Even if one day you have a high consumption

of water, the next low, kidneys regulate electrolytes."

But he adds, "Water is

so much of what we are and what we need, and it's so available. It has

the added benefit of keeping calories out."

The dermatologist notes that

in many parts of the world there is no good drinking water. "In many

places you can't drink the water, but people seem to survive maybe not

as healthy as they could be, but they live on very little water."

Yet both she and the internist agree that they drink a lot of water and

recommend it to their patients. They believe, however, that the theory

is based more on tradition or medical folklore than on good science.

I'm open to comments ([email protected]).

Meanwhile, I'm drinking six glasses a day, in addition to soup, tea, coffee

and juice. And I feel great.

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