How much water should I drink?
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you know how much you should drink?
Many global guidelines recommend approximately 2 litres a day for women and 2.5 litres a day for men, including food.
But scientists say there is actually huge variation in how much each of us need as individuals.
Ruth Alexander speaks to Professor John Speakman at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who explains why your age, sex, weight, and other environmental factors such as air temperature, humidity and altitude all make a difference.
Dr Nidia Rodriguez-Sanchez, senior lecturer at the University of Stirling in Scotland, explains why our bodies need water and what happens if we drink too little, or too much.
That happened to Johanna Perry in the UK, she tells Ruth what happened when she drank too much water whilst running the London Marathon in 2018.
Presented by Ruth Alexander.
Produced by Beatrice Pickup.
(Image: a woman holding a plastic bottle of water. Credit: Getty Images/ BBC)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. The Hunger Game, |
| 0:05.9 | a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. It's been an incredible |
| 0:10.7 | story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:15.1 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:26.2 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.8 | Do you know how much water you drink? |
| 0:35.9 | Do you know how much water you should drink? If you're |
| 0:39.0 | anything like me, you'll have very little idea. This is the food chain from the BBC World |
| 0:44.3 | Service. I'm Ruth Alexander and this week we're finding out how to hydrate. |
| 0:49.6 | Water is a nutrient and many times it's forgotten. We'll be discovering how much we need. |
| 0:55.6 | So the variation is absolutely enormous. |
| 0:58.5 | Which drinks are the most thirst quenching? |
| 1:01.0 | What happens if we don't drink enough or too much? |
| 1:04.2 | I had literally just drunk so much water that I had washed out of myself all the salts and nutrients that you need to function. |
| 1:15.3 | And we'll hear your tips for getting it right. |
| 1:21.5 | As you can probably hear, I'm in the office and so far today I've had one cup of coffee, one and three quarter cups of tea |
| 1:30.1 | and I'm on my third glass of water. I don't normally track how much I'm drinking but today I'm |
| 1:36.4 | going to and something I've noticed in the office I think quite a few people do monitor how |
| 1:42.0 | much they're drinking judging by the large water bottles on |
| 1:45.7 | people's desks with markings on them. Now here is Gideon, my colleague. Gideon, every time I sit |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.