Is coffee actually dehydrating?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “is coffee hydrating or dehydrating“
Is coffee actually dehydrating?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “is coffee hydrating or dehydrating“
I’s not the coffee itself, it’s the caffeine in it that is a diuretic. Coffee does have some health benefits so if you enjoy it (watch the cream, sugar and other additives) then drink it. As long as you continue to drink water as well as the coffee there would be no problem.
Drinking simultaneously provides the body with fluid for absorption (avoiding dehydration) and initiates urine production. Depending on the urine losses that occur following drinking, a beverage might be more accurately described as a “poor re hydrator” if large fluid losses result.
Is coffee dehydrating?
To put it simply: no, but the way caffeine functions may explain why this may seem to be the case.
Caffeine is known to have strong diuretic effects , especially when consumed in large servings. Certain food and drinks that contain this diuretic effect essentially wash out a large amount of salt and water from our bodies through urine. Other common foods that do this include tea, asparagus, garlic, and watermelon.
Due to its ability to get rid of sodium and water in our body, diuretic medication is often used to treat those with high blood pressure and heart failure. In other words: drinking coffee causes us to run to the restroom more often than usual.
An increased production of urine causes our body to lose more liquid, which eventually leads to dehydration. This may be the main reason as to why we often feel dehydrated (and use the restroom more often) after drinking coffee and tea.
Although this frequent urination can lead to dehydration, it doesn’t necessarily mean that coffee makes you dehydrated. It has even been suggested that a moderated and regular consumption of coffee can eventually lead to a tolerance against the diuretic effect .
Despite this, the overall benefits of coffee and caffeine still outweigh the diuretic effect it has. In fact, Dr. Daniel Vigil , a professor at UCLA, was quoted in a 2018 Time article saying that “you won’t lose more fluid through urine than you take in by drinking a caffeinated beverage.” In a related study , results showed that there was no significant difference in rehydration between caffeinated and non-caffeinated drinks.
A different study has even shown that coffee has “similar hydrating qualities to water.” Brewed coffee is made up of 95% water, afterall. The way you prepare your coffee also affects the results you get. For example, espresso uses significantly less water than brewed or drip coffee.
Of course, like all things in life, everything must be consumed in moderation. Replacing water with coffee isn’t exactly the solution, however there would ultimately be no harm in enjoying both drinks.
Read the full article here .
Cheers,
David
According to the FDA, caffeine has diuretic properties and advises its users to drink extra water to avoid dehydration especially during exercise in the heat. In certain health conditions where maintaining fluid balance is essential, extra caution should be taken regarding drinking coffee.
Though the underlying mechanism of caffeine-induced diuresis is not yet clear, it is postulated that methylxanthines in caffeine can inhibit phosphodiesterases in the proximal tubule of the kidneys. This results in the diure…
In that true “the more drink and the more thirsty” drinks list, you may find tea and coffee easily. It is true that caffeine is considered a mild diuretic, which means it makes your kidneys work harder to discharge water and Salt from the body. If you urinate often, it’s also logical to think that your body will be dehydrated?
“When you drink a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, you actually drink some water with that caffeine,” Although caffeine is a mild diuretic, according to Vigil, you won’t lose much water through urine than drinking caffeinated beverages. Your body can absorb the right amount of water it needs and excrete excess water, he said.
In a study comparing tea drinking and drinking water, volunteers were divided into two groups: one group only drank tea for 12 hours and one group only drank boiled water. The researchers confirmed there was no difference in the level of hydration between the two groups.
Meanwhile, tests on coffee often give the opposite result. Research has shown that people who abstain from prolonged coffee when drinking coffee again may increase their urine output by 41%. But this effect is suppressed when the body adapts to caffeine for 4-5 consecutive days of drinking coffee.
The researchers concluded that drinking coffee regularly did not cause chronic diuresis and dehydration.
In short, tea and coffee work to rehydrate the body, not to make you dehydrated. Therefore, Dr. Vigil said that they can and should be included in your daily 8-glass goal, although the problem of how much water to drink every day is still controversial.
If you find yourself having headaches or other symptoms after drinking coffee or tea, Vigil thinks the culprit is not because your body is dehydrated. You may only be sensitive to caffeine – or you are dehydrated for other reasons that have nothing to do with your tea or coffee habits.
The only case that makes coffee thirsty is when you have abstained from caffeine for a long time and suddenly drink again. In this situation, caffeine causes you to urinate about 40% more, so you should pay attention to rehydration.
I found tea and coffee. One common advice is to not drink tea or coffee when thirsty, because they “suck” water from your body and make you thirsty.
However, experts say the truth is not so. Coffee or tea does not dehydrate you, except for a special case.
Daniel
Danielmachine
No.
Well, if coffee was the ONLY think you were consuming, then maybe. Because yes, it doesn’t contain any iron. So it would techincally contribute to your anemia. But beyond that, what you’re probably looking at is a whole host of bad dietary decisions.
So instead of looking for one simply thing that you can blame your situation on, maybe take a step back and do a proper evaluation of your lifestyle as a whole.
Victor Allen’s
It is a diuretic that means it helps to drain extra water from your body so yes it dehydrates you. You should compensate it by adding en extra glass of water for every cup of coffee.. I am myself trying to follow this but due to busy schedules all day its becoming difficult.
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise, so athletes tend to be heavy coffee drinkers.
But drinking coffee rehydrates you, right?
If so, are the benefits of caffeine outweighed by the negative effects of the dehydration on your performance?
Let’s find out…
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise.
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise, so athletes tend to be heavy coffee drinkers.
But drinking coffee rehydrates you, right?
If so, are the benefits of caffeine outweighed by the negative effects of the dehydration on your performance?
Let’s find out…
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise.
Not enough dehydration to worry about.
Hydration 101 | Beverage Institute
Regular caffeine intake (for four to five days) created a tolerance to the diuretic effect, so that over a milligram per kilogram of body mass (one cup of coffee) was needed before an effect was detected. This suggested that regularly consuming caffeinated drinks wouldn’t lead to chronic dehydration.
It might seem simple to you that if you pee more means you lose more liquid from the body and logically this will cause dehydration. But things do not work like this.
When you drink coffee, you also take that amount of fluid along with caffeine. So, you won’t lose more fluid from the body through urine. Your body can absorb as much fluid as it needs and expels the rest. Coffee actually balances out the diuretic effects. However, make sure that you are having enough liquids (read: water) otherwise too!
If I were stuck in a desert with only coffee to drink I would definitely drink it.
Coffee is known to be a diuretic agent which increases excretion of water from the body but there would still be a ‘net gain’.
Peet’s
No, coffee is not dehydrating .
Caffeine ingestion and fluid balance: a review. found that in people who haven’t been exposed to caffeine the days before exposure to 250-300 mg of caffeine, the equivalent of 2-3 cups of coffee or 5-8 cups of tea would result in a short lived stimulation of urine output, not in those regularly exposed to caffeine, so
The most ecologically valid of the published studies offers no support for the suggestion that consumption of caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle leads to fluid loss in excess of the volume ingested or is associated with poor hydration status. Therefore, there would appear to be no clear basis for refraining from caffeine containing drinks in situations where fluid balance might be compromised.
This study found no differences between caffeinated and non caffeinated beverages on hydration status The effect of caffeinated, non-caffeinated, caloric and non-caloric beverages on hydration.
This overview found no effect of caffeine on the hydration status No Evidence of Dehydration with Moderate Daily Coffee Intake: A Counterbalanced Cross-Over Study in a Free-Living Population
I got an A2A on this, so someone’s not happy with the “consensus”. See the response of Liang-Hai-Seng. It even has decent links.
In lay terms (I am neither a scientist nor do I play one on the internet), the problem is with a misunderstanding of “diuretic”. A diuretic gets your kidneys to process more salts out of your body and thus has the well-known, to use the medical term, I Gotta Pee Effect. There are at least a dozen different substances that are diuretics and on the higher end of the “effects” scale, they can process out higher amounts of potassium and salt then you want, but those are combined diuretics used in medicine, not the diuretic in coffee.
“Diuretic” means “gotta pee”.
“Dehydration” means “body excreting far more water than it’s taking in.
Coffee acts as a diuretic. It does not dehydrate you. There is almost an equal amount of water taken in (that brown liquid…. we call it “coffee” but it’s really water with lovely oils, acids and proteins suspended in it).
I can remember reading some science blog a few years ago that traced this back to a very poor study done in the 1920s. Poor controls, five subjects, a test designed to PROVE A CONCLUSION rather than to VERIFY A HYPOTHESIS. But the power of Dr. Mom has carried the legend to this day. Like “don’t smoke, it’ll stunt your growth”… but on a lower level. Folk knowledge got passed off as actual knowledge for centuries. There is no scientific basis for the claim.
Medically, dehydration occurs when the body loses 10/15% of its water. This is far higher than the mild diuretic effect from coffee. But it can be compounded if all you have is a cup of coffee and then go for a ten mile run in the midday sun. You’re not losing fluids because of the caffeine… you’re sweating(and breathing) out far more.
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise, so athletes tend to be heavy coffee drinkers.
But drinking coffee rehydrates you, right?
If so, are the benefits of caffeine outweighed by the negative effects of the dehydration on your performance?
Let’s find out…
Pretty much all credible sports scientists agree can boost performance, especially during longer bouts of endurance exercise.
In my knowledge, any other drink besides water is passed through the body.
I am very bad that I do not drink much water, a real lot of Coffee, and I am usually dehydrated with very dry skin.
As I have managed to reach well over the 60 year mark, I really do not bother about it.
Saying that I know a person that drinks more water than a fish and they are dehydrated.
So is it what we drink or our genetic make up? There is always going to be a difference of opinion and as I always say each person is an individual not a group of just being human beings.
It will all depend on what you need as far as water is concerned or if you just, like me, drink coffee/tea all the time and it does not become a dehydration that needs hospital treatment, ie: a drip.
It really is a thing that you will see how your intake needs are met and what is good for you to do to stay hydrated if you live in hot climate.
This is the way I have looked at it and as long as I did not find any one that was dehydrated badly enough to be sent to hospital.
Filter/drip coffee is almost entirely water. In fact it is 98.6% water and 1.4% dissolved solid (if brewed to proper strength).
In a 235ml (8oz) cup of coffee, only 3.3ml of this is a coffee solution (less than a teaspoon!).
One of my doctors says it’s approximately a wash. The amount of water in the cup is excreted, no more, no less.
Tea and alcohol are dehydrating though: You excrete more water than you drink in normal circumstances.
As a couple others have said, coffee does not dehydrate you. People used to believe it did, but that’s been disproven in numerous studies.
As to your severe anemia, I would see a doctor if taking regular iron supplements isn’t helping. You should also be wary of drinking milk or other calcium carrying foods when you take iron, as calcium blocks both heme and non-heme iron absorption.
Eight O’Clock
Um, excuse me, what? Of course coffee dehydrates you. Of course caffeine dries out your skin, gives you headaches, and causes you immense guilt for choosing cold brew over cold water. Right?! Wrong. After a quick Google search and a flip through my rolodex of doctors, I discovered that my dude was actually correct: Caffeine doesn’t dehydrate you.
Dunkin’
Coffee is a diuretic (which means it makes you pee out more water than you take in.)
It’s also an appetite suppressant and generally not necessary for good health. I’m not saying that coffee is really bad. but it’s not necessary.
I have given up coffee for the past 2 or 3 years. The last time I have had coffee was when I was in the hospital, meal tray, when it was the only liquid available, and I drank it.
My parents are coffee fanatics. They drink multiple pots a day. I’m not saying it’s horrible, but you do need to consider a few things:
The electrolyte balance of water in the body
The way it affects your productivity. Because you can get accustomed to it.
Personally, I never drank any coffee during my years in university, and they were the most productive of my life. I am not categorically saying coffee is bad, but if you can do without it, then do without it.
It’s true that caffeine is a mild diuretic, which means that it causes your kidneys to flush extra sodium and water from the body through urine. If you’re peeing frequently, and thus losing lots of liquid, it’s logical to think you could become dehydrated — but it actually doesn’t work that way, explains Dr. Daniel Vigil, an associate clinical professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles.
Coffee is dehydrating or not it is still a controversial question. But it is diuretic and kidneys have to do a lot more work. In case you are in a desert it is better to plan with plain water than to depend on coffee. Moreove,if coffee is available in desert water should also be available because coffee cannot be made without water.
While caffeine is a mild diuretic (i.e. it increases one’s urination overall), it is a very mild one and we can only consume so much (i.e. we generally do and can take much less than would be significant in diuretic effect).
It’s a myth. Caffeine is a mild diuretic but when taken in a drink it doesn’t act as a diuretic. A cup of coffee or tea will hydrate you as well as water. A study using caffeinated soft drinks actually had better hydration in the subjects taking caffeine than then non caffeinated controls. However this study was financed by the drinks industry. You can look it upon google.
If it dehydrates, the amount that it is doing is very small so you needn’t worry about staying hydrated. If you feel you should drink, you drink. Listen to your body.
The only reason that I can think of why it could dehydrate is because it stimulates you meaning you use more energy and thus need more water. But nothing to worry about really concerning hydration. I would be more concerned with the coffee’s effect on your blood pressure.