Nutrition

How much water do you need when you play? The answer might surprise you

Here's some good news if you like an ocassional beer when you play

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At some point in your life, you were probably told you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Some nutrition experts even have gone so far as to say it's a good idea to take your body weight, divide it by two, and drink that many fluid ounces per day. Golf Digest also is guilty of getting on this water-consumption bandwagon.

The intentions were good. Staying hydrated is important to good performance on the golf course. Everything from muscle function to concentration is impacted when the body is dehydrated. That being said, we might have overdone the message. Sorry.

According to new research published in the journal Science, there's no real benefit for most adults to drink eight glasses of water a day. There is more than one reason, including a person's size, activities of daily life, climate, etc., but one of the main points covered by the research is that most people get ample hydration through various things including other beverages and food.

While it's not a bad idea to take a resuable water bottle with you when you play golf, you don't have to keep refilling it every few holes or so. There is no harm in drinking a lot of water, but you better know the locations of each golf-course bathroom.

If you're wondering how much water you should drink, the Washington Post recently reported on a study (published in the National Library of Medicine) of 883 senior citizens and their water consumption. Of the 227 people in the study who routinely had less than six cups of water a day, there was no evidence any were dehydrated.

This is good news for those of you who still play at a golf course where plastic water bottles are in use. You can help save the planet, because there's no need to reach for one every time you pass an ice chest. Now, if by some luck there happens to be a beer in one of those chests, you can feel assured that grabbing it isn't going to do much one way or the other in terms of hydration. This study proves it.

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