How Much Fluid Should We Drink Daily? How To Get Rid Of Dehydration And Heart Palpitation?

Posted on Fri, 1 Feb 2013

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Fri, 1 Feb 2013 Answered on

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 Last reviewed on

Question : hi how are you? how much fluids should i drink per day? my family doctor says 8 cups on rest days and 10 on exercise days but my holistic health care practitioner says 12 cups on rest days and 16 cups on workout days. i thought it was 8 cups on rest days and 12 on workout days, which one is right? i usually don't drink more than 5 cups of fluids per day but i get dehydrated a lot also i get a lot heart palpitations. last may i had a 48 hour holter monitor test and the test result was that my heart skips a bit but it's a healthy heart. how can i get rid of my dehydration and balance my heart rhythm? thanks

Answered by Dr. Anantharamakrishnan (5 hours later)

Hi friend,
Welcome to Health Care Magic

Normal urine output is about 2 litres per day.
More than 3 litres is called Polyuria
Less than 500 ml is called Oliguria.

Minimum of 300 to 500 ml of urine is needed to excrete the wastes.
About 800 ml of water (400 ml from respiration and another 400 ml from the skin) is lost in a day, without our knowledge. It is called Insensible Loss.

So one has to take enough water to ensure urine output of about 1 ½ litres. [A cup is about 200 ml.] There is no fixed value for the amount of water to be taken by an individual.
[Some conditions (eg. Dilutional hyponatraemia) demand restriction. Some need high intake (eg. Diabetes Insipidus). If there is no disease, that is all the requirement. ]

Take care
Wishing speedy recovery
God bless
Good luck

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar