wtf i'm browsing the migraine canada website and like......that's not true, right? this smacks of "adding 'unhealthy' ingredients deletes the nutrients from the food product" logic. i swear i had a doctor tell me once that all fluids are hydrating, it's just that some (like caffeinated beverages) can dehydrate you in other ways
@rigormorphis osmoles are a unit of measurement to determine how much of measurement to describe the concentration of solutes (stuff that dissolves in water) in a given solution. so just off the bat they’re definitely using it as pseudo-scientific babble bc units of measurements are not substances lmao
i suppose technically if water is 100% water and your juice is 95% water, then an 8 oz glass of juice contains like half an ounce less water and is therefore “less hydrating” but like. 1) 7.6 ounces of water you actually drink is better than 8 oz you don’t 2) this can be trivially solved by drinking very slightly more juice
@Satsuma this is all really interesting, thank you!!! lol i'm glad my suspicion that it was pseudoscientific (in the way they were using it) was right
@rigormorphis yeah there is a lot of fascinating science about hydration! but unless you’re currently sick with the flu or an edge case (high performance athletes & certain chronic conditions that fuck with hydration) your doctors advice is more than sufficient.
@rigormorphis certain types of high performance athletes DO find that they have to care about the osmolarity of liquids they’re consuming but this applies to like, marathoners and other endurance sports where they’re actively trying to consume large numbers of calories via fluids to keep them going through a race AND need to do it in a way that doesn’t hinder their ability to absorb water & electrolytes quickly (because they’re also loosing tons of those via sweat)
eg. here is a company popular with endurance athletes explaining why they’ve formulated their sports drink to about 4% carbohydrate solution, which used osmolarity in an actually scientific manner: https://www.skratchlabs.com/blogs/blog/sports-hydration-why-water-isnt-enough