‘Debunking the medical myths’ by Jane E Brody, International Herald Tribune, 24/07/2008
This issue introduced some of the medical myths that are false. This was a casual read.
Drink eight glasses of water a day- Many of us probably think we should do so in order to keep our body hydrated and prevent constipation. However, researchers have not been able to find scientific support for it.
Recently, the Institute of Medicine noted that you can meet your body’s need for liquids in several ways, including drinking coffee and tea (with or without caffeine) and eating fruits and vegetables with a high water content.
Two signs that show you need to drink more are thirst and the colour of your urine (which would be dark if you are dehydrated).
If you are physically very active, it is important to take in a lot of fluids but you will also need to replace the salts lost in sweat, e.g. by drinking a diluted sports drink or eating foods with salt and potassium.
I’ve heard that in the UK, the average adult should consume 2.5 litres of water per day. The British Dietetic Association recommends that, of this 2.5 litres, 1.8 litres (6-7 glasses) of water should be directly obtained from beverages per day.
If people had to drink 8 glasses of pure water a day….gosh, imagine the number of times you will be needing to visit the toilet. If it’s summer, it’s understandable. But in winter, you probably won’t feel you need to drink so much.
I wonder why they say you should drink a diluted sports drink to replace the salts lost in sweat? Is there really a need to dilute it? Aren’t sports drinks already created to contain the required level of salts? Or does it mean that all sports drinks contain a lot more salts than one should have…?
In this issue of the International Herald Tribune, the Health and Science section covered one whole page. Within this page, the picture accompanying the lower article probably grabs the most attention (a woman surrounded by large mosquito models). The article I discussed is placed on the top half of the page and each myth is separated under different headings, making it an easy article to read. One could probably pick parts of the article they are interested in and skip through parts, rather than having to read the whole article to understand the story. The picture inserted in the middle also breaks the article up.
The topic of the article is also light hearted; something that one doesn’t need to think too hard about.
