I recently noticed a Facebook post on a renowned individual who claims to be a leading authority on nutrition, that drinking water at certain times of the day can benefit our health.
Really? There was me thinking drinking water generally was good for my health; I didn’t realise if I drank it before going to bed it would help me avoid strokes or heart attacks.
So before putting inflicting 3am toilet trips on myself, I thought I’d do a bit more research into these claims. As it turns out, while it is true that drinking water is important for overall health, there is no credible evidence to support drinking water at certain times of the day will benefit your health.
The website hoax-slayer points out that although some versions of this post (there is an emailed version too) refer to a cardiac specialist, the specialist is unnamed. I thought about it some more. Claiming that two glasses of water in the morning active your internal organs is just ridiculous. If your internal organs are not active in the morning, I’m pretty sure you’d be dead.
Hoax-slayer goes on to point out that ‘drinking a glass of water 30 minutes before a meal is unlikely to have much effect at all on digestion. Water passes through your system quite quickly, so it is doubtful that one glass of water 30 minutes before eating would still be around in enough quantities and at the required point in the food digestion process to be of any significant help. In fact, even when water is taken with the meal itself, its impact on digestion is not likely to be very significant. Moreover, unless you have specific health problems or have a very poor diet, your body is likely to do a terrific job of digesting your food without any water at all.’ And it supports this statement by citing Dr. Braden Kuo, director of the GI Motility Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.
You can read how drinking water at set times claims are dispelled by reading the whole article.
Returning to the person who posted the information; this individual claims he is one of the world’s leading orators. His passion is health and well-being. His Facebook page is liked by over 1 million people so his reach is immense. However for me, from now on I’ll be taking what this individual shares with the proverbial pinch of salt.
Social media is a great platform for positioning yourself or business as an expert in your field which is why it is important to share information which may be of interest to followers and potential customers. But unless that information is correct, you lose all credibility and trust. You might as well just put your hand up and say I’m an idiot and I have no idea what I’m talking about.
When I studied journalism, it was drummed into us to always check the facts and in today’s world of Chinese whispers becoming viral, it’s more essential than ever; that moment of clicking and sharing without checking the facts can not only lead to loss of reputation, but also potentially lead to law suits. (Check out the case of Lord McAlpine’s McAlpine’s suing for a libellous tweet which was shared by many.)
My advice to you is to think before you click. Spend a few minutes checking the facts from credible sources before sharing it – it will be worth it.