Does Drinking Lots of Water Really Make You Look Younger?
Let’s be honest.
You’re at least slightly interested in the world of celebrities.
Especially when the stars are sharing their beauty tips on how to get incredibly clear skin to look young forever.
Because you never know—you might learn something new, right?
So when a bunch of celebrities promise you eternal youth by simply drinking lots of water, you’re all ears.
On top of that, there are so many articles out there that repeat one after another how drinking large quantities of water can do wonders for your skin and make you look young again.
But is it healthy to drink as much as some celebrities recommend?
And can water really make you look younger?
To find an answer to these questions, we researched a number of academic studies about the effect that drinking lots of water has on your body and on your skin in particular.
And we’ve also listened to what some experienced doctors have to say about whether drinking lots of water can make you look younger.
Let’s dive right into it.
How much water do some celebrities tell you to drink?
According to some pop culture sources out there, you should be drinking a gallon of water per day to make you look 10 years younger and cleanse your skin.
That’s right, a gallon.
Does that sound like too much water?
It should.
Let’s look at what popular “wisdom” has to say.
We’re sure you’ve heard of the “8×8 rule”.
This widely-spread rule recommends that you drink 8 glasses, of 8 ounces each of water per day (8 x 240 mL).
8×8. This number has been repeated over and over again.
But is it really the right amount of water for an average adult to drink daily?
A rigorous study conducted by Heinz Valtin from Dartmouth Medical School, published in the American Journal of Physiology, found otherwise.
In his research, he discovered that there was not a single study published in a peer-reviewed journal that confirmed the widely-parroted “8×8 rule”.
Instead, he found many studies that suggested that drinking 8 glasses of 8 ounces of water is too much for an average adult of any gender to drink under normal conditions in a day.
Valtin also carried out several consultations with nutritionists specialized in the field of hydration.
They, too, challenged the wisdom of the “8×8 rule” for healthy adults.
Valtin’s study concluded that, while people who are ill can often benefit from extra hydration, healthy people do not need to drink such a large quantity of water.
Surprisingly, he also found this.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a portion of one’s intake of caffeinated drinks like coffee and light alcoholic beverages such as beer may be counted towards a person’s daily liquid intake.
Of course this should be in moderation.
Now you know that for healthy people, the “8×8 rule” is likely to be too much water for your body.
So what is the right amount of water?
How much water should you drink a day in oz ?
To find out, let’s see what a researcher from the University of Connecticut stated in an interview with the blog “Health”.
Robert A. Huggins, PhD pointed out that “Fluid needs are dynamic, and need to be individualized from person to person.”
He observed that it is important to look at different factors instead of simply sticking to a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
So how do you know what “size” fits you?
If you want an uber-personalized way of checking whether you are really drinking the right amount of water, you can use an amazingly simple method.
Just monitor the color of your urine. If it is darker than lemonade, you need to drink more.
Now you know how much to drink for maintaining your health.
But what happens if you follow the celebrity advice of drinking huge amounts of water to make you look younger?
The biggest danger of drinking too much water
When it comes to water (like generally in life), it is best to avoid extremes.
Just like drinking insufficient amounts of water can be bad for you, so can drinking too much water.
According to Chris McStay, MD, the source of the problem with drinking too much water lies in your kidneys. They are not able to process more than a half liter per hour (2-3 cups or approximately 17 ounces).
The exact amount may vary from person to person and a number of factors.
If you drink more water than your kidneys can process at once, it upsets the balance between sodium and water in your body.
This causes your blood to transport too much liquid into your cells. As a result, your cells become waterlogged.
This is especially dangerous for one particular part of your body: your brain.
Here’s what Wolfgang Liedtke, a clinical neuroscientist at Duke University Medical Center, has to say.
While cells in other parts of your body have the room to stretch to accommodate a large volume of water, this is not the case with your brain cells due to the special constrains enforced by your skull.
If your brain cells swell because you drink too much water, the result can be “seizures, coma, respiratory arrest, brain stem herniation and death” says M. Amin Arnaout, chief of nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Other results of you drinking too much water may be headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and mental disorientation.
Joseph Verbalis, chairman of medicine at Georgetown University, furthermore explains that you can damage your kidneys if you expose them to an excessive amount of water.
Even if the amount of excess water you drink is not enough to damage your brain or kidneys, at very least it will make you have to go to the bathroom a lot more often, with no genuine health benefit.
And all of this to make you look younger?
Definitely not worth it.
Getting the amount of water right
So how can you tell if you are drinking the right amount of water—neither too little nor too much?
Verbalis says that as long as you are equipped with a healthy thirst barometer that has not been distorted by old age or medication, you should drink according to your thirst.
As simple as that.
Let’s sum up what you’ve learned.
Now you know that the “8×8 rule” does not apply to most people.
And you know that according to doctors and medical research drinking too much water can be dangerous.
So let’s move on and look at what research has to say about the claim that drinking lots of water makes you look younger naturally?
Does drinking lots of water really give you younger looking skin?
Before looking into whether drinking water give you a younger looking face let’s first look at what makes you look older.
In other words, what causes wrinkles?
In order for young skin to be firm and elastic, it needs a protein called collagen.
Once you hit the age of 20, your skin produces about 1% less collagen per year.
This makes young skin grow thinner over time.
As a result of your thinning skin, you develop more wrinkles.
This process is sped up by exposure to the sun, alcohol, and other factors that damage young skin.
Since aging is related to your skin getting thinner, this raises the question whether drinking water can thicken your skin thus making your wrinkles disappear.
The International Journal of Cosmetic Science published a study that answered exactly this question.
Among a group of research participants that drank 2.25 liters (9.5 cups or 76 ounces) of mineral water per day during the study, their skin thickness increased.
However, this was only the case because the participants had been drinking relatively low amounts of water before the study began.
In other words, drinking lots of water only makes you look younger if you were dehydrated.
Kenneth Ellner, a dermatologist, explains why. He states that dehydration can make your skin look more dry and wrinkled.
Yet, this can be fixed by simply increasing hydration to a normal level.
In other words, drinking water to solve the problem of wrinkles only works as a long-term solution if your wrinkles were caused by dehydration in the first place instead of aging or sun damage.
Ellner explains that once you exceed that level of normal hydration, all that happens to the additional water that you drink is that it gets flushed out through your kidneys.
These findings show that if you are already drinking a normal amount of water (as determined by thirst and the “color test” described earlier), your skin cells might get waterlogged enough to increase your skin thickness in the short term.
This makes it seem as if drinking water makes you look young naturally.
However, wrinkles will not go away by increasing your water consumption and you will not look younger in the long term.
No matter how convinced some of the stars are that they look younger from drinking water, there is no scientific evidence that it does more than hydrate your skin to a normal level.
One more thing though, before you go.
There’s one more step to drinking the right amount of water
Getting the right amount of water is important for your skin, and your entire body.
In order to get this right, here’s on final piece of advice.
It’s not only about how much water you drink.
Its also about what you eat.
You must know that certain foods contain a significant amount of water.
Actually, there are many ingredients that are made up of over 90% water—and that is liquid that counts toward your daily water consumption.
You should include such foods when you’re thinking about how much water your body is getting.