Blood pressure reduction tips sometimes include the recommendation to drink more water. However, authoritative websites such as those from the Mayo Clinic and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute make no mention of drinking water in their discussions of lifestyle changes needed to treat high blood pressure.
What explains this discrepancy, where some articles indicate that drinking water is beneficial in lowering blood pressure, while others do not? A likely source of the idea that drinking water will lower blood pressure seems to be the thought that when copious amounts of water are consumed, sodium will be flushed out of the body.
With lower sodium levels in the body, it is anticipated that the blood pressure would drop. After all, several classes of diuretic drugs are very effective at reducing blood pressure. These diuretics act to increase the loss of sodium from the body through an increased volume of urine leaving the body.
This fluid removal reduces sodium in the blood and also decreases the volume of blood. Both factors lead to decreased blood pressure.
At first glance it would appear that if drugs lower blood pressure by working to increase the volume of urine and the amount of sodium in that urine, then drinking more water should effective provide the same benefit. However, there is a problem with this reasoning that drinking more water serves the same function as the diuretic drugs.
To understand why, it is necessary to understand that the body maintains tight controls over the fluid levels and concentrations of important ions such as sodium and calcium. For optimal functioning, the body has evolved a wide range of control processes that act to keep many ions and fluid levels stable within a narrow range.
Diuretics act on parts of the system that control sodium concentrations. For instance, thiazide diuretics bind to and thus inhibit a protein known as the Na/Cl symporter (Na=sodium, Cl=chloride) that acts to control the amount of sodium that gets reabsorbed back into the blood from urine that is being generated.
This result in the body recovering less sodium from the urine as it is being formed, leaving more sodium to be lost in the urine. In this way diuretics modify a response of the body's regulatory system.
In contrast, water has no impact on the regulatory systems of the body, so the total amount of sodium in the urine stays the same. Water also has no impact on blood volume.
Drinking more water simply acts to increase the amount of urine, as the body regulates fluid levels to maintain a stable volume of blood. Additionally, the same amount of sodium (and other ions) in a larger volume leads to the urine being more dilute.
Consider the color of urine leaving the body. If the body has not ingested much fluid, or if the body has been doing a lot of sweating, there will a small quantity of bright yellow urine, with the color caused by urobilin. However if the body is well hydrated, there is a greater volume of pale colored urine. Sodium acts in the same way as the color intensity of urine.
For a healthy individual, a larger volume of urine due to increased fluid consumption means a lower concentration of sodium in the urine. As a general rule, increasing the amount of water consumption does not decrease blood sodium levels, so no blood pressure reduction can be expected.
In fact, drinking water actually causes a very short term increase in blood pressure in some people, particularly those people with specific types of very low blood pressure. This increase is only temporary, and has no long term impact on blood pressure. Proper hydration is good for overall health, but increasing hydration in hopes of lowering blood pressure has no benefit.
There are many benefits you can enjoy from drinking lots of water daily. If you are a fitness enthusiast, it is even more important you drink plenty of water to keep your body hydrated.
If you work out in the gym regularly, apart from drinking water, you need to consume a balanced diet. But how do we know when we are eating a balanced meal?
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