‘Organic Pollutants’ Linked to Gestational Diabetes

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Women exposed to high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in early pregnancy have a higher risk of developing gestational diabetes, new research from Greece suggests.

These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting there is an association between these chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and metabolic health issues.

“As countries around the world, including Greece, deal with an increasing prevalence of gestational diabetes, the findings are important from a public health perspective as knowledge of environmental risk factors could help to reverse this trend,” the study authors said in a news release from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethene (DDE, a breakdown product of DDT) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) are man-made chemicals used widely as pesticides, while PCBs were used in many industrial processes. All the chemicals have been banned for decades, but they are hard to break down and linger in the environment. As a result, they can accumulate in the bodies of people and animals.

The researchers investigated the link between exposure to these persistent organic pollutants during early pregnancy and the development of gestational diabetes.

Gestational diabetes occurs to some women when they’re pregnant. Most of the time, it disappears after childbirth, but it can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes later on, according to the American Diabetes Association.

The study involved nearly 640 Greek women included in the Mother-Child Cohort in Crete. Women who became pregnant over a one-year period starting in February 2007 were asked to participate in this study. They were followed throughout their pregnancy and for up to seven years after they gave birth.

Study author Leda Chatzi, an assistant professor of nutritional epidemiology at the University of Crete in Heraklion, measured concentrations of several organic pollutants in the women’s blood. The women were also screened for gestational diabetes between their 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy.

Gestational diabetes was diagnosed in 7 percent of the women. After taking the women’s pre-pregnancy body mass index (a measure used to determine if someone is at a healthy weight for their height), the researchers found a 10-fold increase in total exposure to PCBs was linked with a 4.4 times greater risk for gestational diabetes.

Exposure to DDE and HCB during early pregnancy, however, wasn’t associated with gestational diabetes risk. Also, only an association and not a cause-and-effect link was seen between PCBs and risk of gestational diabetes.

“These findings suggest that women with high PCBs levels in early pregnancy had higher risk for gestational diabetes. Further studies are needed to replicate these results and to evaluate potential biological mechanisms underlying the observed associations,” the study authors said in the release.

“Our future research in this cohort will examine whether prenatal exposure to POPs is associated with alterations in glucose metabolism and diabetes development of the offspring in early childhood,” they added.

The findings were expected to be presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Stockholm, Sweden. Data and conclusions presented at meetings are usually considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

The American Diabetes Association provides more information on gestational diabetes.

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Filtered Sunlight May Be Effective Jaundice Therapy

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Filtered sunlight may be a safe, cheap and convenient way to treat jaundice, a common problem in newborns, a new study suggests.

“This research has the potential for global impact,” said study senior author Dr. David Stevenson, the Harold K. Faber professor in pediatrics and senior associate dean for maternal and child health at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, Calif.

“All babies can get jaundice. In settings with no access to modern devices, we’ve shown we can use something that’s available all around the planet — sunlight — to treat this dangerous condition,” he said in a university news release.

Jaundice occurs when newborn babies need time after birth to develop certain enzymes that allow the body to get rid of bilirubin — a compound naturally released during the breakdown of red blood cells.

Babies with a high bilirubin level may develop jaundice, resulting in a yellowish tint to their skin and eyes. If bilirubin is allowed to build up to very high levels in the blood, long-term brain damage may occur, or even death. Newborn jaundice leads to permanent brain damage or death in more than 150,000 babies in developing countries every year, the researchers said.

Phototherapy lamps that emit blue wavelengths can effectively treat newborns with jaundice. But hospitals and health clinics in developing countries may not have access to the electricity needed to run these lamps. They may also not have funding to purchase them.

The study included almost 450 mothers in Lagos, Nigeria, who had babies with jaundice at a large city hospital. The researchers randomly selected about half of the babies to be treated with at least five hours of filtered sunlight daily.

The mothers held their babies under specially designed outdoor canopies made with commercially available plastic films. The canopies filtered out the sun’s harmful ultraviolet, infrared rays but exposed the babies’ skin to blue wavelengths that help treat jaundice. The canopies used on sunny days were different from those used on cloudy days.

Study co-author Hendrik Vreman, a senior research scientist in pediatrics at Stanford, developed, built and tested the canopies. “Even with an overcast sky, we still get good light transmission and phototherapy,” he said.

During treatment, the babies under the canopies were evaluated hourly for signs of hypothermia, overheating, dehydration and sunburn.

The rest of the babies underwent five hours of conventional phototherapy each day.

The study found that the filtered-sunlight therapy was just as safe and effective as the blue-light lamps traditionally used to treat babies with this condition. Filtered sunlight was effective on 93 percent of treatment days. Conventional phototherapy worked on 90 percent of treatment days, the study reported.

Findings were published on Sept. 17 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study authors now plan to investigate how greenhouse-like structures that incorporate their filters might provide filtered-sunlight therapy in regions with rainy or colder climates than that of Nigeria.

“We’re excited that we can use our understanding of the biology of jaundice and adapt treatment to the local context of a developing country, and the resources that exist there,” Stevenson said.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics provides more information on jaundice.

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#NursesUnite After ‘The View’ Mocks Miss Colorado’s Talent

Photo: Getty Images

If you’re wondering why your nurse pals are posing proudly across your Instagram and Twitter feeds, you can point fingers at the hosts of ABC’s The View for their cracks about one Miss America contestant’s impressive talent.

While co-host Michelle Collins shared her thoughts on this year’s pageant during Tuesday’s episode of the daytime talk show, she brought up the fact that contestant Kelley Johnson wrote and performed a monologue about her nursing career for her talent portion.

“There was a girl who wrote her own monologue and I was like ‘Turn the volume up, this is going be amazing—let’s listen,'” Collins said. “She came out in a nurse’s uniform and basically read her emails out loud and, shockingly, did not win. I swear to God it was hilarious.”

Her co-host Joy Behar then chimed in, “Why does she have a doctor’s stethoscope on?”

Collins continued the cringeworthy commentary by telling the crowd, “She helps patients with Alzheimer’s, which I know is not funny, but I swear, you have to see it. Like, Google it if you can.”

RELATED: Why Everyone’s Talking About Miss Idaho’s Bikini Photo

Nurses across the country immediately rallied on social media to support the 22-year-old Miss Colorado, who has yet to address the comments publicly. Using the hashtag #NursesUnite, men and women began sharing photos of themselves in scrubs—and stethoscopes (yes, nurses do use them)—with fiery messages directed at the The View roundtable members.

This is great. #TheView #nursesunite http://pic.twitter.com/IZPluZfKx4

— magruba (@marliciousx3) September 16, 2015

The View should have listened to Dr. Bailey #NursesMatter #nursesunite http://pic.twitter.com/mxg7SWs5rx

— Kacee (@kaceesylene) September 16, 2015

 

RELATED: Nurse Trapped in Crashed Car Sets Her Own Broken Legs

What's my talent? I'm a nurse. (This is during a rare break-my stethoscope's in my locker.) #ProudNurse #NursesUnite http://pic.twitter.com/mfyGCnuiOL

— Jamie N. Otis (@jamienotis) September 16, 2015

#nursesunite NICU nurses with our "nurse stethoscopes". http://pic.twitter.com/TdFfJ2xDT4

— Darlene Watts (@bdarlenewatts) September 15, 2015

 

 

Collins and Behar definitely heard the message; the hosts addressed the controversy during their segment on Wednesday and assured that “We love nurses. We adore you; we respect you.” (Collins on-air apology came after she first quipped on Twitter about the “hidden anger you nurses possess” and advised them to “prescribe themselves a Valium.”)

“You guys are wonderful. You’re the most compassionate people,” Collins continued. “I was not talking about her as a nurse. We were talking about the talent competition, and it got misconstrued.”

She also added that all of the nurses deserve raises: “Give ’em more money. Give them everything. Give them my money,” Collins said.

Behar, on the other hand, said she wasn’t paying close enough attention during the segment and didn’t realize Johnson was in fact a nurse. Instead, she mistakenly thought a contestant was just in a costume. “It was just stupid and inattentive on my part,” Behar added.

Check out Johnson’s Miss America monologue below:

RELATED: ‘Scrubs’ Star Judy Reyes: Give Nurses the Props They Deserve

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What Do Brightening Products Really Do to Your Skin?

Photo: Courtesy of http://ift.tt/1ix1YG4 Images; Art by Elysia Berman

One of the most prolific questions I’m asked as a beauty editor pertains to the idea of “brightening.” I realized, after tons of explanation—each tailored to the specific person inquiring—that I wasn’t completely clear on the definition myself. What exactly is a brightening product? And what does it do to your skin? I enlisted the help of both Rachel Nazarian of the Schweiger Dermatology Group and celebrity dermatologist and acne expert Whitney Bowe to get down to the bottom of it all.

The term “brightening” is used pretty loosely, and until you read the ingredients you can’t be sure what each product is doing. “‘Brightening’ might mean ‘lightening’, ‘fading’ or ‘bleaching’,” but not always, says Nazarian. Dr. Whitney Bowe adds, “Brightening products contain ingredients that act to block the production of pigment, or can actually help lift pigment out of the skin.”

Let’s start from the beginning. When someone has dark spots on their skin, it’s most commonly due to two reasons. “One is post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation —that’s darkening caused by some sort of irritation or injury, such as acne or picking at your skin. It’s a result of the cells releasing pigment and staining the skin.” The second most common cause of dark spots on the skin is the sun —radiation causes darkening, leaving sun spots and freckles. Dark spots can also be caused by air pollution and even hormones because they can increase the product of melanin, leading to pigment in the skin. Depending on the type of skin you have, you may have a tendency to react more dramatically and release more pigment than others (for example, dark spots are more common among Latinas).

Photo: Courtesy of MIMIchatter.com

Brightening products have ingredients that work to treat each condition. They work to block the production of pigment, or they help to increase cell turnover so that the darker-stained uppermost layers of the skin can exfoliate away, revealing lighter healthier skin.

“Hydroquinone is a common one,” says Zararian. “This ingredient is usually found in brightening creams and acts by bleaching the skin—or making it whiter. It’s safer for lighter skin tones, while darker skinned people need to be cautious they don’t lighten their normal skin accidentally (if they don’t apply it only to the dark spots).” Vitamin C is an antioxidant that’s safer to use because it works by decreasing pigment, and, Nazarian explains, “In this way, Vitamin C would be considered more of a ‘lightening’ or ‘fading’ cream.” Melanozyme and kojic acid are more recently used ingredients that have gained popularity because of their safety profile. They both help lighten sun spots and fade post-inflammatory stains without the risk of bleaching the skin, so they’re considered safe even on darker skin tones.

Once I fully understood exactly what dark spots were, and how brightening products help, I wondered what I should do next. In a market so massively oversaturated, how was I to pick a product that was right for me? Nazarian suggests, ” Elure Advanced Brightening Lotion is best for sunspots because it uses Melanozyme. I love Ambi fade cream (with hydroquinone) for old acne stains. Vitamin C is in SkinMedica Vitamin C + E Complex, which allows for overall cell turnover.”

Though it is doable to buy a product and brighten hyperpigmentation, that’s not the first step you should take in protecting yourself. Bowe offers, “Anyone with uneven tone or brown spots can benefit, but it’s essential to use sun protective measures as well. You can undo the damage with these creams but then you are fighting an uphill battle if you don’t protection your skin from whatever is triggering the pigment production in the first place (the sun, acne, etc). That’s why it’s so essential to wear sunscreen and make sure you’re working to treat the cause of the issue.”

This article originally appeared on MIMIchatter.com.

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Excess Weight Linked to Brain Cancer Risk in Study

By Emily Willingham
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Weight and physical activity levels may affect the risk of a certain brain cancers, new research suggests.

Excess weight was associated with a higher risk of a type of brain cancer known as meningioma. Obesity increased the risk of meningioma by 54 percent, and being overweight upped the risk by 21 percent, the study found.

On the other hand, people who were physically active reduced the risk of meningioma by 27 percent, the researchers said.

“There are very few known preventive factors for these tumors,” said study author Gundula Behrens, from the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of Regensburg in Germany. “According to our study, reducing excess weight and adopting a physically active lifestyle may help prevent meningiomas.”

The study also found that being heavier was not linked to the risk of a second, deadlier form of brain cancer called glioma. And while there was a weak association between more physical activity and a lower risk of glioma, the researchers said the finding wasn’t statistically significant.

While the study was able to show an association between weight and physical activity and the risk of meningioma, it wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

The findings were published online Sept. 16 in Neurology.

Meningioma and glioma are the most common types of brain tumors in adults, according to background information in the study. However, these tumors are still rare.

Annually, about five to eight people of every 100,000 will be diagnosed with meningioma. About five to seven of every 100,000 people will receive a glioma diagnosis in a given year, the study authors said.

At five years following a diagnosis, 63 percent of people with meningioma will still be alive. Glioma is far more deadly, with only a 4 percent survival rate at five years, the study reported.

Dr. Gowriharan Thaiyananthan, a neurosurgeon at the Brain and Spine Institute of California in Newport Beach, said, “The absolute risk of development of either a meningioma or glioma is small, but there seems to be a positive correlation with a slightly increased risk of developing meningiomas with obesity.

“Exercise and loss of weight may help obese individuals decrease their risk of developing meningiomas,” said Thaiyananthan, who was not involved with the study.

The current research was a review of 18 previous studies involving more than 6,000 people. About half the patients had meningiomas, and the other half had gliomas.

Some of the studies compared patients with healthy counterparts. Twelve of the studies looked at body mass index and cancer risk, and six looked at physical activity and cancer risk.

The studies defined obesity as a body mass index (BMI) over 30 and overweight as a BMI from 25 to 29.9. Body mass index is a measurement that provides a rough estimate of body fat based on height and weight. Physical exercise was rated as high or low in the studies.

In addition to effects of weight and exercise on meningioma risk, the study authors found a 32 percent reduced glioma risk among underweight teens (BMI less than 18.5).

How excess weight or physical activity might affect the development of certain brain tumors is unclear. One possible explanation, the study authors said, is that people with excess weight produce excess estrogen, and estrogens promote meningioma development. Insulin levels could be a factor for the same reason, the authors speculated.

The relationship between meningioma risk and exercise may be more complicated. Behrens and her co-authors noted that brain tumor symptoms could have led some patients to reduce their normal physical activity even before their diagnosis. These patients might have reported low activity levels because their brain cancer slowed them down before they knew they had it, the researchers said.

Can someone who is already overweight or obese do anything to take advantage of this information? Thaiyananthan thinks so. “It’s plausible that exercise and weight reduction may help prevent the meningioma formation in persons already at risk for these tumors,” he said.

More information

To learn more about preventing obesity, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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Dog Owners Help Scientists Get Inside Pooches’ Minds

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Dog owners the world over are helping scientists get inside the head of man’s best friends.

Like humans, dogs have a unique set of mental skills they use to navigate their environment, the new research suggests. Some communicate well, others have better memories, and still others are better at taking their owner’s perspective, the Duke University study found.

“Most people think of intelligence as a glass that is more or less full. But intelligence is more like ice cream,” the study’s leader, Brian Hare, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology, said in a Duke news release. “Everybody has different flavors. Being good at one thing doesn’t mean you will be good at everything else.”

In trying to understand the inner-workings of dogs’ minds, the researchers turned to pet owners for more insight. They analyzed information compiled by 500 dog owners on a website, Dognition.com, developed by Hare, who is also the founder of Duke’s Canine Cognition Center.

These people played the same games at home with their dogs that researchers use in the laboratory, to learn more about a canine’s thinking and problem-solving abilities.

“They’re just games,” said Hare. “The owners love playing them, and the dogs love playing them. I realized more people could play them if they were online.”

In one experiment, dogs looking for hidden treats were found to rely more on their memory than on their sense of smell. The dogs watched their owner hide a treat. The owners then covered their dog’s eyes and moved the treat. Most dogs looked for the treat in the last place they saw the food and didn’t sniff out its location with their nose, the researchers said.

“Most people think dogs use their sense of smell for everything,” Evan MacLean, co-director of the Canine Cognition Center, said in the news release. “But actually dogs use a whole range of senses when solving problems.”

In five out of seven tests, the researchers found the “citizen scientists” produced results similar to their own and those of other researchers, they reported in the Sept. 16 issue of PLoS ONE.

More than 17,000 dog owners around the world have signed up through Dognition and are providing researchers with the results of their games, according to the news release.

“The data these dog owners are producing is quality data. It matches the results we see coming out of the top research groups all over the world,” said MacLean.

“So much is possible when you have this much data,” added Hare. “I’m looking forward to dog owners answering all the big questions that have puzzled scientists for decades,” he said.

More information

The Humane Society has more about dogs and their behavior.

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Caffeine at Night May Disrupt the Body’s Internal Clock

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A small and preliminary study suggests that caffeine does more than serve as an eye-opener: When consumed a few hours before bed, the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world seems to disrupt the body’s internal clock.

And this could cause jet lag-style sluggishness during daylight hours, the study authors suggest.

The research doesn’t say anything about how coffee consumption in the morning or throughout the day may affect the body’s internal clock. And the findings need to be confirmed.

Still, it seems likely that coffee at night “isn’t just keeping you awake,” said study co-author and sleep researcher Kenneth Wright Jr., a professor with the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It’s also pushing your [internal] clock later so you want to go to sleep later.”

At issue: The body’s circadian clock, which sets biological rhythms such as sleep/wake cycles. Every cell in the human body has a clock, Wright said.

The new study aims to understand how caffeine may affect the body clock. Other research has suggested that caffeine disrupts body clocks in other organisms and species such as algae, fruit flies and perhaps mice, he said.

Wright and his colleagues examined five people who were studied over 49 days. Three hours before their regular bedtime, they were assigned to consume a capsule of caffeine equal to a double espresso — with the amount adjusted to their body size — or a placebo capsule. They were also exposed to either bright or dim light. Bright light can reset the body clock and make people want to go to bed later.

The researchers found that the caffeine appeared to delay the body clocks of the study participants by 40 minutes, about half the delay linked to exposure to bright light.

The amount of caffeine was small, the equivalent of about a double espresso or medium cup of coffee for most people, Wright said. “We’re not talking about a lot of caffeine here.”

The study suggests that caffeine affects signaling within cells, disrupting a “core component” of the cellular circadian clock.

Sleep researcher Jamie Zeitzer, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, praised the study, noting that it suggests caffeine has an effect beyond making people feel more alert by reducing or masking the need for sleep.

But, he added, the number of participants in the study was very small, making it hard to apply the findings to people in general. And the effect of caffeine itself seems to add little to the effects of bright light therapy, which may limit “this as a typical countermeasure for jet lag or shift work,” he said.

If the new study findings can be confirmed, what do they mean for people who get caffeine through coffee and other drinks and foods? The research seems to confirm what coffee fans already know: Don’t down a cup of joe when it’s late if you want to avoid feeling sluggish the next day due to lack of sleep.

“Removing coffee from your diet or just having it in the morning might help you achieve earlier bedtimes and wake times,” Wright said.

But caffeine before bed isn’t necessarily a bad thing for everyone, he said, since people’s sleep cycles vary. And, Wright added, the research raises the prospect of a medical advance: It’s possible that caffeine could be used to treat jet lag since it seems to have the power to adjust body clocks.

Zeitzer, the Stanford researcher, cautioned that using caffeine to combat jet lag “would need to be done judiciously and only in those people in whom caffeine does not have a negative impact on sleep.”

The study appears in the Sept. 16 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

More information

For more about caffeine and sleep, visit the National Sleep Foundation.

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Heating, Cooking Are Top Contributors to Air-Pollution Deaths Worldwide

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2015 (HealthDay News) — While traffic exhaust and power plant emissions are the leading causes of air pollution deaths in the United States, that’s not the case worldwide, a new study reports.

Instead, smoke spewing from wood-burning stoves, and ammonia wafting from fertilizer and manure are the world’s two biggest sources of deadly air pollution, according to results from a computer model of pollution’s effect on human health.

“Residential energy use is an inefficient form of fuel combustion that causes a lot of smoke, and is the foremost source of premature air pollution-related mortality in Asia,” the region most affected by outdoor air pollution, said lead author Jos Lelieveld, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

Deaths because of outdoor air pollution will double globally by the year 2050 unless nations improve their clean air policies, Lelieveld and his colleagues concluded.

Nearly 3.3 million people across the world died in 2010 from illnesses related to outdoor air pollution, according to findings published Sept. 16 in the journal Nature.

That will rise to 6.6 million people by 2050, mainly due to very large increases in air pollution-related deaths in South and East Asia, Lelieveld said.

In their study, researchers combined a global atmospheric chemistry model with population data, health statistics and satellite imagery to estimate the damage done to human health from different sources of air pollution.

The investigators found that China suffers the most air pollution-related deaths, with an estimated 1.35 million in 2010. The other top nations include India (645,000), Pakistan (111,000), Bangladesh (92,000) and Nigeria (89,000).

The United States came seventh in the top-ranked countries, with an estimated 55,000 deaths linked to air pollution.

Dirty air mainly kills by affecting the heart and blood. “Strokes and heart attacks are responsible for nearly 75 percent of air pollution-related mortality,” Lelieveld said. The remaining deaths are largely due to respiratory disease or lung cancer, he said.

Newer research tends to further implicate dirty air in health problems, said Dr. Norman Edelman, a senior consultant for scientific affairs with the American Lung Association.

“We didn’t know until a few years ago that particulate pollution was a risk factor for lung cancer, but we know that now,” he said. Tiny particles containing soot, metals and chemicals in auto emissions can be inhaled deep into the lungs.

But while traffic accounts for about 20 percent of air pollution-related deaths in the United States, it only contributes to 5 percent of such deaths worldwide, the study findings showed.

Stoves used to cook and heat homes — what the authors refer to as “residential and commercial energy use” — are the world’s largest contributor to deadly air pollution, researchers found.

Of the 3.3 million deaths linked to outdoor air pollution, about 1 million are caused by the smoke from these stoves, the study authors reported.

People burn all sorts of things in these stoves — wood, coal, compressed peat moss, and even animal dung — and the smoke that billows out can do serious harm to the human body both indoors and outdoors, said Michael Jerrett, chair of environmental health sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Smoke from wood-burning stoves causes half the air pollution-related deaths in India. It’s also the leading cause of these deaths in China, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, according to the study.

But efforts to replace dirty-burning stoves in India and China with cleaner, more efficient stoves have met with resistance. “The tradition is that you use particular methods as you’ve been taught by your parents and grandparents,” Lelieveld said.

Agriculture is the second-biggest contributor worldwide to deadly air pollution, and it appears to make a serious impact on air quality in the eastern United States, researchers found. Ammonia wafting from fertilizer and manure combines with power plant smoke and car exhaust to form clouds of pollution from tiny air particles, Lelieveld said.

“In the eastern United States, simply more people are concentrated in a smaller area, so you have more people being exposed to air pollution,” he added.

Agriculture serves as the top contributor to air pollution-related deaths in a number of developed countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Japan.

“That finding surprised me,” said Jerrett. “I don’t think many people have that on their radar screens as a source of particulate matter.”

More information

For more on air pollution, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Why This Fierce New Ad Is a Major Fashion Game-Changer

The Amount of Water You Actually Need Per Day

 

Eight, 8 oz. glasses of water a day: it’s a rule that’s been burned into our brains for years as the ideal amount of fluid to drink each day. Yet no matter how many times experts say that’s not quite accurate, many still believe “8×8” is the magic amount.

The truth: How much water you should drink each day really, truly depends on the person, Robert A. Huggins, PhD, of the University of Connecticut explained to Health. “Fluid needs are dynamic and need to be individualized from person to person. Factors such as sex, environmental conditions, level of heat acclimatization, exercise or work intensity, age, and even diet need to be considered.”

What this means is that simply listening to your thirst is the best way to gauge when to drink. Another way to monitor hydration is to look at your pee before you flush. You want it to look like lemonade; if it’s darker than that, you should down a glass.

RELATED: 7 Easy Ways to Drink More Water

But what about exercise?

To gauge how much water you specifically should take in during exercise, Huggins recommends doing a small experiment on yourself.

First, before you work out weigh yourself wearing with little to no clothing. “If you can, [make sure you’re hydrated beforehand] and avoid drinking while you exercise to make the math easy,” Huggins says. But if you get thirsty, don’t ignore it: drink some and make sure to measure the amount.

After you’re done exercising, weigh yourself again. Then, take your first weight and subtract the second weight, and you’ll end up with how much fluid you lost. Convert this to kilograms (if you search it, Google will return the number for you or try a metric converter), then drink that amount in liters. (If you drank some water during exercise, subtract the amount of water you drank from your final total.)

RELATED: 14 Surprising Causes of Dehydration

This is your “sweat rate,” Huggins says. It’s the amount of water you should drink during or after your next workout to replace what you’ve lost. (You can also use an online calculator for sweat rate; just plug in your numbers.)

Complicated much? We agree. Huggins estimates that most people lose between one to two liters of sweat for each hour of moderate intensity exercise. But ultimately thirst should still be your guide.

Why it’s important to get the right amount

You already know that dehydration can be dangerous, but over-hydrating may actually be just as bad.

RELATED: 12 Reasons Why Dehydration Is Bad for Your Body

In fact, a new consensus report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that many athletes are at risk of exercise-associated hyponatremia, which is an electrolyte imbalance that can be caused by drinking too much liquid. This can lead to nausea and vomiting, headaches, fatigue, and in serious cases, coma and even death.

While it was previously thought to only be a concern for long-distance athletes competing in events like marathons and Ironmans, the paper (which was funded by CrossFit, Inc.) concluded that many athletes are actually dangerously over-drinking during events as short as 10K races and even bikram yoga classes, Tamara Hew-Butler, PhD, lead author of the paper, explained to Health.

Because “it is impossible to recommend a generalized range especially during exercise when conditions are dynamic and changing, there is not one size that fits all!” she adds.

So the best method to keep you in that sweet spot between over- and under-hydrated is, as with many things, to listen to your body.

RELATED: Fat Water Is Now a Thing

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