Gem of the Week: Forget 8 Glasses of Water a Day

| Fri Jul. 15, 2011 6:26 PM EDT

For many years, people have been told they should drink eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day. That's 64 ounces, or nearly 2 liters. This week,  Scottish practitioner Margaret McCartney is calling it "thoroughly debunked nonsense" in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.



The British National Health Service still recommends that everyone drink "six to eight glasses" a day, but in the US, the Mayo Clinic's site says that the eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day "isn't really supported by scientific evidence" and that "if you drink enough fluid so that you rarely feel thirsty" and produce enough clear or light yellow urine a day, you should be fine.