Water in a raw ZC diet

[TylerDurden]

One thing that has been said about the Inuit diet is that they drink a huge amount of water and it is explained that they have to excrete so much urea(derived from all the animal protein they eat) that they need this water to facilitate this process. Therefore, I'm curious to know if ZCers routinely drink large amounts of water.

[invisible]

I drink a normal amount. Maybe a bit less because I am not thirsty between meals.

Where was that said about the Inuit?

[wodgina]

I drank much more on SAD. It's a myth.

[carnivore]

Inuit ate a high fat diet, not so much protein.
If I don't eat enough fat, I am too much thirsty.

[PaleoPhil]

I agree with the above. I eat only meat/fat/organs and I actually drink LESS fluids on this diet than I did when I ate carbs (carbs and salt tended to make me thirsty) and my skin is LESS dry and my urine lighter! I had expected to get very thirsty based on what some others had said, but it didn't happen.

Also, I find water and tea to be more quenching that soda pop, milk, juice, etc., which tended to make me want to drink more.

I have seen other people say they get very thirsty on ZC, including some raw eaters, but I can't account for it. Maybe they can explain it. Lex might know.

Maybe cooked ZC makes people thirsty, because cooked ZCers talk about drinking fluids more than anyone.

I think it was Stefansson who said that the Inuit drank a lot of fluids, but I don't think he was right about quite everything, even though he's my favorite of the early low carbers.

[Edit: I later did find other sources confirming Stefansson's claims and have been trying to drink more water myself.]

[goodsamaritan]

I'm experimenting with a zero carb day today and I am drinking lots of ice cold water.

[Nation]

I've been drinking lots of water lately, it's definitely related to RAW ZC because when i was cooked-ZC for ~4 months, i didn't drink that much water, maybe 4 glasses. Now that i'm raw, i drink 8. Maybe now my body is healing and requires more water.. wishful thinking

[TylerDurden]

I'm experimenting with a zero carb day today and I am drinking lots of ice cold water.

I thought you'd given up given your last ZC experiment.

[majormark]

I noticed that if I eat a meal of 1:1 raw meat to fat ratio I get thirsty. If I drink water 1 hour later it does not stop the feeling. At least a glass of water doesn't.

If I eat mostly raw fat, I don't feel like drinking water at all.

[PaleoPhil]

While I did find other sources confirming Stefansson's claims and am trying to drink more water these days, I still don't get particularly thirsty for whatever reason. I do find that if I eat more fat I find water to be more pleasant tasting and thus consume more. I think my body is slowly getting used to being able to consume more water, but that could just be my imagination.

[miles]

Is urine, is the yellowness from high urea(, from high uric acid, from high amino acids) and the 'bubbles' from ketones?

Is the high amino-acid loss from: damaged tissue being broken down and replaced with the new amino acids being made from the freshly eaten food? If so, why does the body not re-use a lot more of its' amino acids/protein?

If the 'bubbles' are ketones, do keto-adapted individuals not get them? Just searched these, and doesn't seem to be ketones, but has a range of other possible explanations; all bad. =O >_+


How would the Inuit have got their water? Do they have to melt slow? If so, could the process of melting snow not make it seem as though they drink a lot of it?

On the days when I'd eaten a lot of fat(from lamb) and felt sick, drinking water made me feel worse. When I've been eaten other meat, with less fat, I haven't felt like drinking much water, but I've had dry-lips(which I had when I had the high lamb-fat meat anyway) and yellowy urine(as opposed to 'almost clear' which is generally said to be the best; is this true?). In the very short-term, drinking water has made my lips 'non-dry' but they soon return to that state if I don't drink more.

[djr_81]

I've seen Paleo Phil mention bubbles/froth in the urine is due to excess protein and my experiences do tend to agree with this. I'm not sure of the science behind it though.

[RawZi]

    Foam in the urine is protein.  Maybe there could be other causes, but both me and my son have had foam (this was all with no animal foods) and the doctors say it's protein.

    My urine was like water for years.  I was told this is good, by lay people.  My medical tests were not perfect and worrisome to the doctors.  They had looks in their faces like I was going to die or suffer but they didn't know how to tell me.  They were grateful I reassured them.  I never felt hydrated no matter how much I drank and I didn't feel good drinking water.

    Since I started eating some (high fat) RAFs, my urine is a little yellow, my bladder feels better, my kidneys feel better, I don't feel dehydrated and my kidney function tests have become normal.

      

[redfulcrum]

Urine is suppose to be yellow.  It has urea in it.  The more breakdown of amino acids the more urea.  Go work out hard or fast and watch how brown/orange it can actually get.  If you eat a lot of protein and your urine is clear that means you're retaining more amino acids, which is a good thing.  You shouldn't have amino acids in your urine, something is wrong with your kidneys if there are. 

[klowcarb]

I love to drink hot water so I drink cups of it all day...say 2 8oz. cups an hour on average. I could care less if I'm thirsty or not, but it is great as I'm not eating during the day. I only stop at a tiime when the next sip is unappetizing.

[Nation]

Urine is suppose to be yellow.  It has urea in it.  The more breakdown of amino acids the more urea.  Go work out hard or fast and watch how brown/orange it can actually get.  If you eat a lot of protein and your urine is clear that means you're retaining more amino acids, which is a good thing.  You shouldn't have amino acids in your urine, something is wrong with your kidneys if there are.  

My urine is usually pretty clear except when i eat liver, why would that be? The color changes to a weird yellow/green.

[RawZi]

... Go work out hard or fast and watch how brown/orange it can actually get.  If you eat a lot of protein and your urine is clear that means you're retaining more amino acids, which is a good thing.  You shouldn't have amino acids in your urine, something is wrong with your kidneys if there are.  

    When I said it was like water, I mean that, in every way (taste, smell, colorlessness, cloudlessness).  Eating RAF it is still cloudless, but it smells a little like the familiar urine from before I went vegan (not bad but healthy), and like I said: the tests normalized and it has a color, sometimes even orangy when I get dehydrated (which is rare only like you say when expected)

    Anyone ever have an oily film on top of it?

[William]

My urine is usually pretty clear except when i eat liver, why would that be? The color changes to a weird yellow/green.

My guess is it's the B vitamins in liver.

[PaleoPhil]

Is urine, is the yellowness from high urea(, from high uric acid, from high amino acids) and the 'bubbles' from ketones?

The yellow color in urine comes from pigments called urobilins. Bubbles come from protein. Both increase when I eat more meat. I don't have any other symptoms, like cloudy urine or flank pain, so I'm not overly concerned yet.

How would the Inuit have got their water?

Melting glacial ice in the winter and rivers and lakes in the brief summer.

could the process of melting snow not make it seem as though they drink a lot of it?

Not according to any of the reports I found--they all indicated that the Inuit Eskimos consumed a lot of water--way more than the avg for Americans.

'almost clear' which is generally said to be the best; is this true?). ....

Most mainstream sources claim that this is not true. Doesn't guarantee they're right, but I'm not concerned about having yellow urine myself.

In the very short-term, drinking water has made my lips 'non-dry' but they soon return to that state if I don't drink more.

Eating lots of animal fat and minimizing carbs cleared up my chronic dry lips issue. YMMV

[William]

For how the Inuit got drinking water in winter, I assume they used snow.
When was there, I dug a sled full of ice with a special tool called an ice chisel, for drinking, because it tasted a lot better than snow water.
However in pre-contact times the snow water might have been OK, since I was told by one scientist that the reason for the bad taste was fallout from air pollution from Siberian heavy industry.

[PaleoPhil]

For how the Inuit got drinking water in winter, I assume they used snow.

As I mentioned above, my sources said they got it from very pure glacial ice, and one source said it was the job of the men to travel quite a distance to get it (and scientists later discovered that the men are better tasters of salt--they seek out the lowest-salt-containing ice, to make sure they aren't getting frozen seawater that would taste nasty and make them nauseous from hypernatremia). I've never seen big chunks of ice in Inuit videos, though, so hopefully I'll come across more info on this to clear up this mystery further.

The Inuit have developed the most refined ability to taste salt ever tested, by far, so scientists claim it is a biological ability that developed over many generations. Inuit also reportedly have the lowest consumption of salt ever measured, which surprised me, because they eat sea animals that I figured would have significant salt in them.

When was there, I dug a sled full of ice with a special tool called an ice chisel, for drinking, because it tasted a lot better than snow water.

Yes, you learned what the Inuit apparently know--that snow doesn't make good drinking water. I imagine they used snow for boiling food, though.

[Paleo Donk]

I've heard that you dehydrate much quicker in extreme cold temperatures and perhaps this is the reason why the Inuits drink so much water.

It was actually on man vs wild when bear grills was in some arctic area that was well frozen, he mentioned the risks of dehydration but also that you couldn't eat snow for water.

[William]

I've heard that you dehydrate much quicker in extreme cold temperatures and perhaps this is the reason why the Inuits drink so much water.

True, and it's from breathing so you don't lose any salt or other blood electrolytes. Guess that's why they never consumed salt. No sweat.

It was actually on man vs wild when bear grills was in some arctic area that was well frozen, he mentioned the risks of dehydration but also that you couldn't eat snow for water.

Never noticed the taste when I sampled snow directly, but read that eating snow cools the body more than any benefit, so you might get hypothermia before slaking the thirst.

[RawZi]

... it was the job of the men to travel quite a distance to get it (and scientists later discovered that the men are better tasters of salt--they seek out the lowest-salt-containing ice, to make sure they aren't getting frozen seawater that would taste nasty and make them nauseous from hypernatremia). I've never seen big chunks of ice in Inuit videos, though, so hopefully I'll come across more info on this to clear up this mystery further.

The Inuit have developed the most refined ability to taste salt ever tested, by far, so scientists claim it is a biological ability that developed over many generations. Inuit also reportedly have the lowest consumption of salt ever measured, which surprised me, because they eat sea animals that I figured would have significant salt in them.

    I don't know what the Yanomama eat, but they are said to be long lived, as tribal peoples go.  They don't eat salt. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/1/110  Maybe they eat plant food and get sodium that way.  They live in the jungle in Brazil.

    For many years I didn't use salt (nor salt substitutes etc).  It wasn't generations though like these tribes.  And I ate carbs, not refines ones though.

[nummytummy]

Eating lots of animal fat and minimizing carbs cleared up my chronic dry lips issue.

After a few days of eating a lot of animal fat (mostly cooked so far) I've also noticed that my chronically dry and peeling lip skin seems to be almost normal. Amazing. I guess my body really needed that fat.