Drowning: How much water should one person drink in a day?

It’s well known that drinking too much water can lead to effects like nausea, vomiting, headaches or death in rare cases.

But whenever I hear about anything like this, I always wonder “What’s the limit?” 

According to US News, the “traditional” answer is that you should drink about one ounce of water for every two pounds you weigh, also called the 8×8 rule. But it sounds more like a myth rather than actual health science. It feels like there should be more things taken into account, like activities and how much water you drink at a time.

I decided to answer all these questions in the only logical way possible – by drinking way too much water over the course of three days.

I made sure not to drink a ton of water all at once, as I drank a bottle of water every 30 minutes to an hour, and also made sure not to go too far over 70 ounces – I wasn’t sure how much water was going to be too much.

On the first day, I drank 104 ounces or about 3 liters of water, 34 ounces more than the recommended amount, 70 ounces.

It definitely had side effects.

After about 70 ounces my stomach began to feel extremely bloated, which is a symptom of overhydration, according to the Cleveland Clinic. My stomach felt like a build-a-bear as it’s being stuffed with cotton.

Thankfully, the feeling went away after only 10 or 15 minutes and it didn’t come back for the rest of my experiment.

The only other significant things I noticed on the first day was the extreme exhaustion that started as the bloating faded.

It wasn’t anything severe, it just felt like I needed a nap at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, which is abnormal for me, but not concerning. The exhaustion still went away after about an hour.

I didn’t feel anything else unusual for the rest of the day. So at the time, I thought maybe the rule wasn’t so unbelievable. Although going a little over the limit is not going to kill you, it could still have some side effects, so it’s best to stay below the limit.

However, the second day had totally different results.

I drank 101 ounces of water on the second day of the experiment, and nothing happened. No exhaustion, no bloating. Nothing.

The biggest difference between the two days was that drinking more water in a shorter time span generally reaped worse side effects. However, when I split it up more I didn’t feel as bad.

So now, I was thinking that maybe I had debunked the myth – as long as you don’t do anything really dumb like drink a ton of water all at once, you should be okay.

So on the final day of the experiment I drank around 60 ounces of water before noon.

Huge mistake.

This time, instead of just being a little tired, I felt a little nauseous and began to feel disoriented, which are both more severe symptoms of overhydration according to Healthline. After that I got slightly worried and stopped drinking water for the rest of the day. The symptoms went away an hour after that.

After this, I decided I didn’t want to take any more risks and ended the experiment there. 

The 8×8 rule isn’t the most accurate way to determine how much water you should drink, but I strongly advise that you pay attention to it.