Should you be Drinking 8 Glasses of Water a Day?

Dr Sophie Newton reveals the truth behind whether you need to drink eight glasses of water a day.

Chatting to host Gabby Allen on the health and fitness show What the Health?!, the NHS GP said ‘This is a really good one to debunk because that is definitely not true. It all depends on how much you are eating as we have a lot of liquids in our food, how hot you are, how much exercise you are doing, if you’ve just been to a hot yoga class. So just listen to your body, when you are thirsty is when you need to make sure you are drinking and make sure you are drinking plenty of water rather than just caffeine and alcohol.’

Dr Sophie also gave her opinion on the latest social media trend which sees people drinking saltwater to improve their digestion ‘No I would not do that. Unless you’ve got diarrhoea or vomiting or excessively sweating then don’t do that. In fact, it may make you dehydrated.’

Later in the interview, the GP also discussed her recent visit to the House of Lords to discuss antimicrobial resistance ‘Essentially this is about how antibiotics may stop working, already we’ve seen that we’ve got strains of bacteria that no longer… we don’t have antibiotics that work for them. So it maybe that it comes a time when you’ll have an infection, and antibiotics no longer work which is kind of really dangerous. In fact, they think by 2050, more people are going to die from antimicrobial resistance than cancer so 10 million deaths a year.’

Dr Sophie went on to say: ‘So we are all using too many antibiotics because we too readily think ‘oh I’ve got a bit of a sore throat or a bit of a cough, better go get some antibiotics. So we just need to make sure that we’re being really sensible because they are life-saving when they are used appropriately. We need to make sure in humans and in animals, as doctors, as patients. Everyone is being sensible and aware of the risks of taking antibiotics when we don’t need to.’