Benefits of not drinking water

[10-K]

Ok.. there are 2 components to what I'm talking about

Physical: That's mainly what I wonder - can you change the body?

Mental: By practicing regular periods of tolerating thirst beyond the point where you'd normally drink you can cultivate the ability to hike further than normal without water and without as much mental distress You're not *really* going to die - you're just torturing yourself mentally for 2 hours until you get to the water. THAT is what I'm talking about - the not torturing yourself mentally part.

Very similar to marathon training. If you're working up to 20+ mile runs you have to run through discomfort that make someone who isn't training immediately stop. Yeah, it might be what the body wants but you'll never run a marathon that way.

[mudhead]

Don't you just accept that that is when you get to have water?

What Garlic said about urine. It will catch your attention, and you will remember it.

[kayak karl]

other then urine color the physical symptoms are headaches and you stop sweating. think about hangovers which are caused by dehydration. with excessive (over time) drinking they go away. are you still dehydrated? YES, but the body adapted. sweating slows daily. skin and body take on a different look. the body was trained and it does adapt to survive what we do to it. why would you want to do this on purpose?

[SassyWindsor]

OBSERVATIONS

I've never heard of anyone dying from drinking too much water while on an extended backpacking trip. When backpacking I attempt to drink as much water as I can and I will still come up a little dehydrated. You can live longer without food than without water(THIS ONES HEARSAY). Since water is pretty cheap why would anyone try to cut back knowing you could be doing the body harm?

[Feral Bill]

. Just like driving in cars w/o seatbelts and not wearing helmets while riding bikes in my younger days. How did we all survive?

"We" all didn't survive. A large number of people died for the lack of seat belts or helmets. Still do. They're not here to pipe in for themselves.

Back on topic, I find being thirsty detracts from my ability enjoy myself long befoe it would become a danger, so I drink up often.

[StealthHikerBoy]

I don't know a lot about hiking, but I can put this in a running context. I don’t think you ever see an elite marathoner training without a lot of attention to hydration.

I was on a run about 10 years ago with an Olympian (he was taking it easy on me). He changed my thought process entirely on training. What he said was that people don’t realize that it isn’t training that makes you a better runner. Training actually breaks you down. It is the recovery that builds you up stronger and makes you faster. He said that too many runners focus entirely on training efficiency and not nearly enough on recovering efficiently. He was big on proper nutrition, hydration, sleep, and massage and stretching. That made a lot of sense to me. If you think about it, a lot of benefits of the illegal, performance enhancing drugs are that they speed recovery – it isn’t so much that they make you able to work out harder, instead they help you recover well so you can work out harder more frequently.

At least for marathon training, you are trying to teach your body to efficiently stay at a hard effort for a very long time. Training (and the recovery from it) help you push the threshold longer and harder. I’d think hydrating and fueling optimally is the best training strategy. If you think of the elite marathoners, they are very attentive to nutrition and hydration. A good training session isn’t about the suffering during the session. It is about getting the most benefits from the run after the run is over. For this to happen efficiently, I think your body needs hydration. Recovering well is what makes you train harder and longer over time.

The only case I can think of that the elite runners undergo “deprivation” training is training at altitude, where they purposefully deprive themselves of oxygen. But, that seems also not to be aimed at damaging yourself in training so you can race better. It is about stimulating your body to get stronger (more red cells) while recovering. Even those training at altitude come down lower for their really hard and fast days - when they really want to work hard, they go to a level where they aren't deprived.

So, I guess I am on the “don’t deprive” yourself of water side of this one. Water helps recovery, and again, recovery is what builds you up.

[10-K]

You ever get the feeling that no one hears a word you say around here?

[coach lou]

You ever get the feeling that no one hears the word you say around here?

Yes, the only place I'm taken seriously is in the Cafe, go figure.

[hikerboy57]

You ever get the feeling that no one hears the word you say around here?

what was the question?

[kofritz]

Eustace Conway, The Last American Cowboy, noted in his autobio that he carried little or no water and drank as he found water when he walked the AT in 4 months...one time so deprived he drank from a mud puddle. i agree avoiding dehydration/heat exhaustion is the key... i'm no cowboy....

[Pathfinder1]

Hi...


Aqua Vitae...!!

[coach lou]

Eustace Conway, The Last American Cowboy, noted in his autobio that he carried little or no water and drank as he found water when he walked the AT in 4 months...one time so deprived he drank from a mud puddle. i agree avoiding dehydration/heat exhaustion is the key... i'm no cowboy....

"I've seen the time I've drank out of a filty hoofprint, and was glad to get it".. Laboeuf {Glen Cambell}..True Grit. When ever this subject comes up, this is all I can think of, and The Dukes' reply

[colorado_rob]

If I misunderstood, that's my bad. But I thought some of us were on the same page.

You're asking:
1) can we physically adapt to less water through training? Good question, I think so, but not 100% sure. Hard to say because of 2), below.

2) Can we MENTALLY adapt to less water through training? A definite YES, I say, as I do this regularly. Just like you say: get used to how this feels so you don't wig out when it happens and then you know you will be just fine because you've experienced the unpleasantness of dehydration before.

Again, getting dehydrated is a given in mountaineering, and a probable, at least some small fraction of the time, on thru hikes. How many liters of water can Everest climbers realistically drink on their summit day? One, perhaps, sometimes none. They pre-hydrate and hope they hold out. I've been in this situation many times on big mountains (not on Everest though), and thankfully, I trained for it.

[Thirsty DPD]

Ok.. there are 2 components to what I'm talking about

Physical: That's mainly what I wonder - can you change the body?

Mental: By practicing regular periods of tolerating thirst beyond the point where you'd normally drink you can cultivate the ability to hike further than normal without water and without as much mental distress You're not *really* going to die - you're just torturing yourself mentally for 2 hours until you get to the water. THAT is what I'm talking about - the not torturing yourself mentally part.

Very similar to marathon training. If you're working up to 20+ mile runs you have to run through discomfort that make someone who isn't training immediately stop. Yeah, it might be what the body wants but you'll never run a marathon that way.

Physically: The body does change, I'm not certain we can change the body.

Mentally: Not without water, but with less water. In competition 5-11 hrs. I used to drink, drink, drink. I've found that depending on temp., I need 23-28 oz. per hr. I feel much better during the later hrs of a race if I stay that course, even though mentally I want to drink. Hammer Nutrition has quite a bit to say on the subject, google them.

[Kerosene]

Well, you could always lay down and cry.

No Sniveling! --Sgt. Rock

[Pedaling Fool]

To me, it's obvious that we can change the body, or at least make it more efficient at its use of water resources, just as we can make it more efficient in going further on a given amount of oxygen or food or we can make it tolerate temperature extremes or run further. The only question is, to what degree?


If it were not for evidence such as the Ice Man http://www.theblaze.com/stories/dutc...-extreme-cold/ or these people that change their skin's surface temp http://www.todayifoundout.com/index....gh-meditation/ many would think these feats impossible.


So many posts here are simply repeating conventional wisdom, but as has been shown time and time again our conventional wisdom is kind of dim.




Interesting article on running and water conservation http://runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=12467

Excerpt:

"However, new research suggests drinking too much — especially in the hours or days leading up to a race — can reduce your body’s ability to conserve water during a race and cause a drop in performance, not to mention serious health issues.

This research suggests, in fact, that to achieve optimal training and racing results, no matter if you’re a medal contender on the track or a middle-of-the-pack marathoner, you need to condition your kidneys to conserve water with periods of moderate dehydration just as you train your muscles with periodic bouts of anaerobic training."


Based on the above excerpt, it sounds as though one is actually harming themselves more if they drink "adequate" quantities of water as opposed to forcing moderate dehydration on the body.

[hikerboy57]

in some respects the body can change the way it uses water. certainly some people seem to sweat more than others, would need more water, and you can to an extent control your metabolism by pacing yourself , so i would think that you can reduce the amount of water loss through proper conditioning.

[mamamiapdx]

I can do with less water, but not drinking water concept is insane and deadly.

[atraildreamer]

Please replace word details with daytrips. My phone thinks it knows what I mean and changes the words for me.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

Shut off the auto-correct function in your phone. The option has to be somewhere in the settings menu.

[pnkwolfe]

Much of what's been said here implies the obvious point that everyones body, and hydration needs, are different. I agee with the others; it doesn't change the fact that the human body, while being able to operate on a wide range of hydration levels, functions at peak levels at optimal hydration. And while I would also acknowledge that you can acclimate yourself to less than optimal conditions, I prefer to keep physically functioning better over saving a little pack weight.