Are You Drinking Enough Water?

 How much water do we really need to drink? Research on this varies, with different recommendations depending on who you ask. We checked out a couple of respected sources to get their take on it. First of all, there's the Mayo Clinic site,  which gave three options:

• the replacement approach, where you put back the amount of water than you lose each day, which could be around 2.5 litres
• the 8 x8 rule, where you drink eight 8oz glasses of water a day (about 1.9 litres)
• following dietary recommendations from the US Institute of Medicine which suggests around 3 litres for men and 2.2 litres for women.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has similar recommendations,but suggests a higher requirement for anyone doing manual labour in high temperatures. While for most of the year, we don't have to worry about that in the UK, it's certainly a concern when there's a heatwave. In these circumstances, the WHO recommends drinking 4.5 litres of water a day. For pregnant women, the WHO recommends drinking even more water - 4.8 litres a day during pregnancy and 5.5 litres a day when lactating. So ladies,  make sure you spend plenty of time round the water cooler when you're at the office - the WHO says it's OK!.

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