The Hydration Revolution

A certain phenomenon exists that is difficult to ignore. People in the past looked much older than people today at the same age. It starts somewhere roughly around 1997 or 2000 or so. Once you view media from before then and find out the ages of the people, it becomes clear. I’m not the only one who has pointed this out: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.

Some of the examples are very funny:

There is a popular youtube video about this subject that attempted to explain that this is just retrospective aging. Basically when we see people in the past, they are wearing outdated styles and we associate with older people. But that isn’t convincing to me. People really did look old in the past. There is research confirming that people are aging less slowly today than they did 20-30 years ago. But no one knows why.

Some people will immediately point to cigarettes for this reason. Yes, people smoke less today, but that doesn’t mean everyone smoked in the past, the person in the above photo is an athlete and didn’t smoke, and besides, this phenomenon is apparent even with high school students who didn’t smoke. It has to be something else.

Nutrition is better today, which is true, to some extent. I guess Whole Foods exists and if you want to eat that you can and some people certainly do. But 50% of Americans are obese, and probably 70-80% are overweight. For large swathes of the country, food may taste better today but they may not necessarily be eating healthy.

So why do people look younger now? Some say it’s the microplastics, or lower testosterone from an increasingly sedentary life with bad dietary choices. I think it’s something else

Water and Slowing Biological Aging

Today, I’m going to advance theory that the reason we look younger is the unprecedented increase in daily water consumption. People started drinking massive amounts of water during the late 90s/early 2000s in what I call the Hydration Revolution. At no time in history did people drink as much water as today. It isn’t even close. I posted a tweet about this that went viral and the responses from people were hostile. There is not much research on this topic. One study does state that drinking more than moderate amount of water makes you biologically younger than your chronological age, according to a National Institutes of Health study

We Didn’t Drink Water

There was a time when people drank water because they were thirsty. People in desk jobs didn’t give hydration much thought beyond refilling their coffee mugs. Throughout most of the 20th century, even marathon runners were discouraged from drinking during exercise for fear it would slow them down. This was how the world has been for a long time.

If you’re over 35, think back to your childhood and how much water you drank. If you’re a younger person, ask your older relatives about how much water they drank. You’ll be shocked. People mostly drank coffee, cans of soda and alcohol.

I mostly remember drinking a few sips out of a water fountain for the entire day. Maybe I’d have a glass of water if I had a headache at night. Stores didn’t even carry water bottles, they only carried soda. And then the late 90s/2000s came and everyone started carrying water bottles. Bottled water even became a common trope standup comedy up in those years.

Ancient Water

For most of history people probably drank the same amount of water, give or take, since Ancient Rome. You drink a little bit when you’re thirsty and you move on.

There’s a reason why so many villages, towns, and cities all have formed throughout history around rivers and ponds - they moved to where ever fresh water was. The Romans built their famous Aqueducts but that was mostly for bath houses and fountains. Cities in the Roman Empire were already water sufficient long before the Aqueducts.

How Important is Water?

Experiences vary but for me deliberately drinking a lot of water has had a huge positive impact. I almost never feel thirsty when I don't drink and so have to put in conscious effort to do it but when I do many aspects of my psychic experience change. I am more awake, think more clearly, have more energy, on and on. You can read the benefits of drinking water all day on medical journals and on academic websites. But I know this isn’t lindy. I know I am over hydrated. This is new. I’m not alone in thinking this.

The most famous anti-aging bio-hacker is 45 year-old Bryan Johnson. He spends $2 million to reverse his own aging process.

His fascination led him to adhere to a strict approach with the goal of reversing aging with the help of a team of 30 from nutritionists to MRI specialists. He undergoes daily body fat scans, routine MRIs, and often, invasive blood and stool sample tests to see the biological age of his organs. His whole life is dedicated to this crazy experiment. But even he is confused about how much water to drink.

He is trying to optimize his health, and most people would think constantly being hydrated would do that. But he doesn’t since he isn’t sure what the right water consumption is. He is doing all these experiments on himself but won’t engage with over hydration. I wonder why.

Dehydration and Over-Hydration  

We know living a life in a constant dehydrated state is pretty bad. For instance, If you keep mice constantly dehydrated their life span shortens. Sustained dehydration is also associated with poor health.

What about over-hydration? I’m not sure. It’s a new phenomenon. Sometimes you see stories like this:

Timothy Noakes wrote a cult classic book on hydration and ultra marathons. He charts the rise of marathon runner deaths to the increased emphasis on hydration by Gatorade which messes with sodium levels.

He points to historical examples like the early and mid-twentieth century practice of marathon runners not drinking anything during the entire race or the endurance hunting practiced in places as various as the Kalahari and the American Southwest, where you run an antelope to exhaustion and then kill it easily.

The Hydration Revolution.

The hydration revolution is one of those things that could only have happened in America. The groups represented here each have different interests but united for one goal: to make Americans drink massive amounts of water, preferably in plastic bottles.

Corporations and Dehydration. Companies like Gatorade, government and scientific literature pushed dehydration as a health risk. Americans were quitting cigarettes, exercising, eating better and now people wanted to feel healthier.

Tap Water Concern. There were numerous tap water contamination events during the 90s and 2000s which scared Americans. Corporations responded by advertising how clean and pure their source was, while also hinting at tap water being dirty.

The Corporations and Dehydration

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