Water supports the regulation of temperature, the function of organs, the transport of nutrients, the movement of oxygen, the lubrication of joints, and the removal of waste from our bodies. It can also be useful for alleviating ailments as common as back pain. But despite the commonsensical nature of the role of hydration—and the ease at which most of us can put water into our bodies at virtually any time—dehydration is rampant.
Being adequately hydrated is not tremendously complicated, but there is far more at play than “drink plenty of water,” which is the hydration advice most people get—if they get any advice on hydration whatsoever.
But it’s also true that, of all the elements of hyper wellness, this may be the easiest place from which to get a foothold on the feel-better-do-more cycle—and something of a secret weapon against some of the most common and debilitating health challenges in our modern world.
If dehydration is the cause—or at least an aggravating factor—for conditions like chronic back pain, migraine, and atrial fibrillation, wouldn’t a better, easier, and cheaper solution simply be drinking more water? If cognitive performance can be improved with a few more glasses of water each day, isn’t that where we should all begin?
First and foremost, yes. But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, everyone’s water needs are different, and the standard admonition to “drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day” (which many health promotion organizations have reduced to “drink 8×8”) does not appear to be backed by any sort of scientific evidence. When Heinz Valtin, a highly regarded physiologist who taught at Dartmouth University, went looking for the origins of this common advice in the early 2000s, the best he could surmise was that it started back in the 1970s as part of a brief section on hydration at the end of a book called Nutrition for Good Health, in which the authors wrote—without any reference—that “somewhere around six to eight glasses per 24 hours” was a good target. At best, this was “shoot from the hip” health advice, accentuated in no small part by the fact that the authors also suggested that soft drinks and beer were suitable substitutes for water.
There’s no reason to denigrate people who habitually carry water. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. Our kidneys can only remove about one gallon of water every four hours, but unless you’re engaged in vigorous exercise, it’s unlikely you need to be running your kidneys at max capacity, and overhydration can lead to a dangerous imbalance of the electrolytes our bodies need to carry signals from cell to cell, a condition sometimes called “water intoxication” that can cause disorientation, nausea, and vomiting, and which in some cases can lead to brain swelling.
The most important point here is that everyone’s needs are different—and data should prevail over slogans. A 5-foot-1 woman in her 20s who works as a roofer in Arizona is going to have different hydration needs than a 6-foot-4 man in his 40s who sits at a desk all day—and both of them will be much different from a 5-foot-7 woman in her 70s who plays tennis in the morning and swims in the afternoons.
In pretty much every way, my life was transformed
In the battle for optimal hydration, IV therapy has been a key tool that many have benefited from. The immediate power of IV drips comes from the simple fact that almost everyone feels better when they’re better hydrated, but there’s a growing body of evidence that IV supplementation of nutrients can have an impact far beyond hydration.
Magnesium, for instance, has been copiously studied in patients with asthma, and a meta-analysis of 10 separate trials demonstrated that IV magnesium sulfate treatment is associated with significant effects on respiratory function and a reduction in hospitalization. Intravenous glutathione, which is found in plants and animals and is a well-studied antioxidant, has also been evaluated for its potential to reduce damage to a person’s heart cells after a major heart attack, with one randomized control trial showing that, compared to a placebo, glutathione was effective at improving the survival of cardiomyocytes.
Six months after taking an initial health assessment and starting IV therapy, one patient (Christopher) followed up with another biomarker test, which showed vast improvements in almost every nutrient he’d been deficient or borderline on in the first assessment. “So, in that first report, I had five red marks and eight yellow,” he said. “And six months later there were just two things in the red and three in yellow, and that was totally affirming, but I have to say that I didn’t even need that report to tell me what I already knew. My life had been changed so much.
Proper hydration could be the most actionable change we can all make to our lifestyles that will have profound effects. An IV drip is one tool in the arsenal to maintain the right level of hydration while creating the opportunity for additional benefits through nutrient supplementation.
