Will I get dehydrated if I drink too much coffee?

by Mark
(Austin, TX)

Coffee? Dehydrate you and make you thirsty? I don't think so...

QUESTION:

I remember back in school a teacher told us that drinking coffee makes you dehydrated. I took it as fact at the time. But since then I haven’t heard the same warning from others, particularly on websites like yours.

Is this true? Should I be careful drinking coffee on hot days? Will it just make me feel more thirsty?

ANSWER:

Mark, hi

This is a bit of a myth. I don’t know how old you are, but if you were at school around 20 years ago, there was plenty of talk about coffee dehydrating your body.

You haven’t heard much about it since, because it’s not really a big deal. The story grew from the fact that coffee is a mild diuretic. In other words, it makes you want to pee.

From there the story grew into this big fear that drinking coffee would make you want to go to the bathroom so much you’d become dehydrated.

But the science doesn’t support the myth.

In fact, nutritionists now count the coffee you drink as part of your daily fluid intake. Yes, it’s a mild diuretic. But the operative word is “mild”.

According to Halle Saperstein, RD, of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital in Michigan, “We tell people to drink eight 8-oz cups of fluid per day, and we always thought you couldn’t include coffee. But now studies show otherwise. It’s OK to count coffee as part of your fluid intake.”

When you drink coffee it adds much more fluid to your body that it expels through its diuretic properties.

So... that’s another coffee myth busted!

Whether or not it’s a hot day, drinking coffee is a perfectly good way to add to your daily fluid intake.

And no, it won’t dehydrate you or make you feel thirsty.

Best wishes,

Nick