How Much Water We Need to Drink a Day

I previously published a blog post ‘how much water we need to drink a day’ on Thursday December 10, 2009. Almost after 3 years now, I experienced few things which I felt were missing then. Instead of writing a separate blog post on the subject I decided to edit and update the same blog post with further more vital information that come to my personal experience.

For some time now I have been regularly providing some valuable information on water and its relationship with Man and Matter. Today I am about to discuss on the use of water on human body. The rule of blog goes; short and simple. But due to the context and importance of the subject, I took up the opportunity to go overboard in writing this blog. I request all the readers to be patient and go through this valuable information by Dr. Manthena Satyanaryana Raju on drinking water.

We all know that water is an important part of our life and therefore drinking more water is good for our health. But how much of water we need to consume a day is a matter of question to most of the people. You find a large number of conflicting and contradictory views on this subject. Some people say, eight glasses of water a day and some say three liters of water to be consumed a day. Where as most of the doctors opine that it is enough to replenish the water that is expended from our body. People are really confused at the conflicting views from different quarters. Let us dwell into the issue.

According to Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju, we need to consume around 5-6 liters of water everyday. I bet, many of you would think it is impossible to drink so much of water. At least a human cannot drink that much of water. Initially I too differentiated with his opinion and believed drinking 5 – 6 liters of water a day is highly impossible for a human. But when I heard his full theory, I realized how wrong I was? And when I started drinking 5 liters of water a day, I realized the joy of drinking 5  liters of water a day. It is really hard to explain. It can be better understood by experience. Believe me; you are going to feel as if you have cracked the mantra of life and definitely encourage others to follow this. No person in this world apart from Dr. Raju emphasized so much on drinking 6 liters of water a day. And when Dr. Raju says something there has to be some reason and immense study on the subject. As all of you know that Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju first learns, practices, experiments and experiences himself before preaching us. He never says anything which he does not follow himself. That is the reason why he is so close to the truth. Like all his other works, this theory of drinking 6 liters of water a day has a unique reason. Let us learn why he recommends drinking 5-6 liters of water a day so strongly and how to drink the same, when many scientists and doctors differ in their opinion.

According to Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju, our body contains 70% of water and about 2.5 liters of water is spent daily from our body through urine, excreta, sweat, digestion and respiration etc. 

The doctors who are well versed with physiology say that it is enough to replenish the spent water to maintain the normal level of 68% water in the body for good health. Therefore they are not wrong when they say drinking 2 to 2.5 liters of water a day is enough. According that calculation they are perfectly correct. There is nothing wrong in those calculations. But the calculations with people are completely wrong. With the kind of food we eat, the kind of work we do, the kind of environment we live in is making all the difference. Had we eat natural raw uncooked food completely like fruits, raw vegetables, raw sprouts etc all the time and exercised regularly and lived in an environment free from all sorts of pollution that much of water would have sufficient. 2.5 liters of water would be enough to purge the pollutants out, with no scope for bad smell from saliva, urine and sweat.

But the food we consume today is a complete junk tampering the natural nutrition of the food product by deep fries, electric baking apart from adding abundant quantity of oil, salt, spices, masalas and many other flavors and colors just to please the little tongue. Digestion of this kind of cooked food takes a longer time leaving large undigested matter for excretion. Only 50% of the waste matter goes out of the body with the help of 2.5 liters of water and the rest 50% is deposited in the body. From the accumulated waste inside emanate bad smell from saliva, urine, sweat and mouth. We can clearly observe that 2.5 liters of water is not enough to push out the stored waste matter. The odor is the better indicator to denote whether the water required by the body is sufficient or not. Most of the people suffer from this bad odor, which is only due to lack of water in the body. Secondly, the work we do these days is completely sedentary involving only the fingers. Moreover we don’t allow our body to sweat by sitting under the fans, coolers and air conditioners. It is quite natural that you drink more water when you exert physically. The polluted environment we live in is another culprit.

It is our responsibility to replenish the required amount of water spent from our body and to keep the body clean. Let us now think about what amount of water is necessary to meet these two requirements.

The very physiology of human body has given first preference to air, second preference to water and third preference to food. We are aware how important air is for us to live. Our body contains two third of water and one third of matter. It means that the property of the body tells us that two third of importance is to be given for water and one third of importance to food. This is the secret of health.

If a person weighs 70 kilos, water would be 43 kilos of it. The rest of 27 kilos would be the matter created by food (muscles, veins, bones etc). Let us assess ourselves; which one of them is given more importance in our daily life – water or matter? How many times and how much food we eat food how many times and how much water we drink?

Think for a while how we altered the necessities of the body. We have pushed water to the third place that should actually be given second place and gave second place to food instead of keeping it at third place. Ignorance in this regard would not help. In order to maintain the ratio of 2:1 we have to drink water two times more than the food we eat. How simple it is? “Greatest truths are the simplest”.

Symptoms of Thirst:

When the water levels in the body falls, our body indicates through certain signals which we usually call it a thirst. According to Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju the body sends us seven types of signals when you lack water in the body. We all are familiar with these signals or symptoms of thirst but we are never bothered to observe them. Let us try to understand what these seven symptoms of thirst are:

1.    The moment you notice the color of your urine is yellow, it means the water level in your body has been reduced. Your body is asking you for immediate replenishment of water. When you find this symptom you must immediately drink water. Your urine must always be white in color. You might question the color of urine is pale yellow, how can it be white? That’s true the color of urine is yellow but it has to appear white to the naked eye when it is flowing. 

2.    The moment you notice burning sensation while urinating, it means your body is in urgent need of water. This is the second signal your body gives you when it needs water. Instead of taking medicines and fruit juices drink water to replenish the lost water level.

3.    The moment you notice an interrupted flow of urine, it means your body needs to be replenished with water. The urine should always flow free and uninterruptedly.

4.    The moment you notice a bad odor in your urine, it means the water level in your body needs to be replenished immediately. Pus cells are formed resulting in bad odor and other urinary infections when you lack water in the body. 

5.    The moment you notice heavy sweating for every little physical effort you put in, it means you lack water in your body. The body is asking for replenishment of water level. I observed many people have this tendency of over sweating. They drink even less water instead of drinking more water. People suffering from over sweating also find the above 4 symptoms in them if they observe. 

6.    Frequent headache is another symptom of lacking water levels in the body. When there is not enough water in the body, all the waste remains in the blood stream. This effects the functioning of central nervous system. When the central nervous system is disturbed you get severe headaches.

7.    The last and final symptom of lacking water levels in the body is dry throat. Every one of us is familiar with this symptom. Only when our throat dries we think we are thirsty and drink water. None of us bother about the six other symptoms of thirst. 

How Dr. Raju derived on the theory of drinking 6 liters of water:

Since Dr. Raju is a medico in Naturopathy, he started experimenting by drinking water according to the opinion of doctors. Let us recollect what most doctors opine about the volume of water to be drunk a day. As discussed earlier, most doctors opine that it is enough to replenish the water that is expended from our body. Now the question is how much water we expend a day? It is learned that 2.5 liters of water is excreted from our body in the form of urine, excreta, sweat and digestion etc. Therefore Dr. Raju started his experiment by drinking 2.5 liters of water a day. When consumed 2.5 liters of water he noticed 6 out of seven symptoms of thirst in him. After couple of days he started drinking 3.5 liters of water. Here he noticed a few changes. Couple of symptoms of thirst vanished. Again couple of days later he consumed 4.5 liters of water. He noticed a positive change but another couple of symptoms were found intact. He then consumed 5 liters of water; he felt better but not satisfied enough. When he consumed 6 liters of water he finally noticed none of the above symptoms were available. He thus cracked the secret of required water levels in the body. Dr. Raju is the only person in the world who claims and preaches to drink around 5 to 6 liters of water a day. Dr. Raju doesn’t mean what doctors said was wrong. In fact, they are absolutely correct but on a condition that we eat all natural and healthy food. Thanks to the effects of modernization and change in our life styles we are becoming a slave to the junk fast food culture. If we eat all natural food, 2.5 liters of water a day is well enough.

After examining the effects of drinking 6 liters of water continuously for a long period of time, he came to a conclusion that he is been able to maintain the right balance in food and water.

Who should drink how much of water?

As discussed above we need to maintain 2:1 ratio of water and food according the nature of our creation.

If we assume one third of food and two third of water, how many liters of water is necessary? We need food and water every day according to the physical labor we put in. The people who have to do physically exert needs more food. The people whose physical labor is less need less food. How do we decide the quantity of food and water? Basing on the intake of food or intake of water? Since we all love to eat, let us first decide the quantity of food and then decide the quantity of water. The amount of food intake differs from person to person. Right from a teenager to an Adult of any age normally takes about 2 kilos of food in a course of the day. So what should be his intake of water? The simple answer is two times more water than the amount of food. So five to six liters of water would do. If we want to keep our 68% water is in our body clean drinking 2 liters of water a day is not going to work. The ancient saint Charaka Maharshi mentioned to drink 2.5 liters of water in the empty stomach early in the morning in his book ‘Charaka Samhita’ 3000 years ago. Try to drink 5 – 6 liters of water from tomorrow onwards and see the difference. Don’t include the soft drinks, coconut water, juices, butter milk etc in this count. There is a specific way of drinking these 5 – 6 liters of water recommended by Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju. If you drink these 5 liters of water at your will or all at one time then it does more harm than good. Please follow the following link how to drink 5 - 6 liters of water a day? to know the procedure of drinking 5-6 liters of water recommended by Dr. Raju and also take the following factors in consideration.

   

1. Children Aged between 1 to 15 Years: Make them drink 1 to 4 liters of water in a day according to their age.

2. Aged 16 to 60 : Drinking 5 liters of water is enough.

3. Aged above 60: Drinking 4 liters of water is enough.

People working hard under the burning sun and people like industrial, construction and agricultural laborers etc can drink 6 to 7 liters also. People suffering from constipation can drink upto 6 liters.

I would like to add one more thing here. One of my friend from Boston, USA always used to say that it is very difficult to drink 5 liters of water in those weather conditions. I used to insist her to drink luke warm water. Still she used to find it difficult because the weather remains so chilled that the body doesn’t seek water. Once I happened to visit Bellur village of Karnataka on a yoga camp during winter. The temperature was around 8 to 12 degrees Celsius. Until then I didn’t realized the trouble in drinking 5 liters of water under such conditions. Couple of days I followed my old regimen of drinking 5 liters; instead of doing good it harmed my body. Third day I took only 3 liters of water; 1 liter early in the morning and 2 liters rest of the day. I realized none of the above symptoms of thirst were prevalent. Then I stick to 3 liters till I was there in Bellur. I would like to tell all the readers to observe your body and its behavior when you follow this water therapy. Compare the symptoms of thirst above. If you don’t see any of the above symptoms with whatever the quantity of water you drink, you stick to that. Though it is working on most of the people, it might not work on others. Like I observed in Bellur many factors like weather, food, environment you live in etc might influence this theory of Dr. Raju. Use your discriminative intelligence and follow the regimen for safer concerns.