Drink 8 cups of water every day?

There are someone, who recommend people to drink as least 8 cups water every day. They claim that it is good for us, since it “wash” the toxic things from our body and since we are creator from the sea. They tell us that more than 70% or our body is water, similar to the ratio of water in the earth.

According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is not good recommendation for every one. Each people is different for their body size, physical and emotional work, diet habit, etc. How can we ask everyone take the same amount of water everyday?

In Chinese Medicine, water is related to our Kidney system. It means that the Kidney system handle the water metabolism in the body. Overwhelming intake of water will damage the function of Kidney, to cause swelling, hair loss, plugging feeling in ear, loss teeth, osteoporosis, ache in joints, and disturbed sleeping. This is because the Kidney system in the body handle the functions of hair, teeth, ear, bone, brain, and others. This is especially if our kidney system has been damaged, such as overwhelming sexual life, too much times of pregnancy, and so on.

It is only a dream to clear the body off the so called toxic stuff with the drinking of water. The water we drink will come into the blood circulation first. Depending on the demand condition of the body to water, the body may hold the water in the blood or excrete it out of the body through the form of urine. There is definite barrier between the water content in the blood stream and the water inside the body cells. Their exchange is not as what we can expected so freely. The metabolic waster materials may come out of the cells and into the blood stream due to the low concentration of the molecular in the blood stream, but it work as such only if there is such high concentration grade difference there. For normal people, if we have such concentration grade, we will have a feeling of thirsty, that is the signal from the concentration grade to the nervous system asking for help to remove the extra waster material. Other wise, we should not feel thirsty.

More water intake than the body needed will only bring the body heat out. After a long time, people could feel cold in hands and feet. We call it Cold body constitution. People with the Cold constitution tend to have chronic fatigue, drowsy, dry skin reduced desire for sex and reduced tolerance to physical (temperature, pressure, sounds, car speed, smell, etc.) and emotional stimulation (easy to lose temple). This is because the water is related to the Kidney and the function of the Kidney is opposite of the Heart, that is related to the Fire.   

In clinic, there is cases in which people have swelling but still feel thirsty. In this case, the problem is the disorder of water distribution in the body. In this case, more water intake will make things much worse. In this case, what we should do is to try to solve the problem for the water distribution, rather than to supply more water.

So, drink water if you feel thirsty, on the condition that you have no sign of water accumulation in the body (swelling, obesity, etc.). Listen to your body’s demand.