This journal article reviews current knowledge about water's essential role in human physiology, health, and disease prevention. It highlights how hydration affects performance, cognition, thermoregulation, kidney and gastrointestinal function, cardiovascular health, and aging. The authors note that water intake patterns are shifting globally due to increased caloric beverage consumption, contributing to obesity and chronic disease. They emphasize the lack of standardized methods for assessing hydration status or fluid intake and advocate for further research, including population-level studies and improved metrics like water intake per calorie consumed. The review concludes that more focused attention on water intake is crucial for advancing nutrition and public health policy.
Author(s): Popkin, Barry M.; D'Anci, Kristen E.; Rosenberg, Irwin H.
Published: 2010
Language: English
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Additional Information
This review attempts to provide some sense of our current knowledge of water including overall patterns of intake and some factors linked with intake, the complex mechanisms behind water homeostasis, the effects of variation in water intake on health and energy intake, weight, and human performance and functioning. Water represents a critical nutrient whose absence will be lethal within days. Water’s importance for prevention of nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases has emerged more recently because of the shift toward large proportions of fluids coming from caloric beverages. Nevertheless, there are major gaps in knowledge related to measurement of total fluid intake, hydration status at the population level, and few longer-term systematic interventions and no published random-controlled longer-term trials. We suggest some ways to examine water requirements as a means to encouraging more dialogue on this important topic.