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2 liters of water and glucose drops within an hour! Experience?

D

Daniel_Libre

Member
Hi!

This is something I have experienced many times but is having a hard time finding text/research to support.
I have read that drinking a lot of clean water can lower your HBA1C (longterm blood sugar value "health of cells" sort of).
BUT, what I have experienced is that f I have high blood sugar and drink maybe 1-2 liters of water, my bloodsugar starts going down in maybe an hour after doing that. Its quite quick.
Can the water really that fast go out in my bloodstream and make my blood less "thick" with sugar?
Has anyone else experienced this?
Anyone got any article to link if this is documented?
It seems odd that it is not talked more about if it is that a potent way to lower sugar in the present.
Best regards!
 
Like it is said so often- maybe test and see if this works every time- like HSSS said maybe you were dehydrated or maybe it would have come down anyway. Maybe water does have some part to play but I'm not convinced without doing my own testing or hearing from others that have tested that it is a major contributor- happy to be convinced.
 
VashtiB said:
Like it is said so often- maybe test and see if this works every time- like HSSS said maybe you were dehydrated or maybe it would have come down anyway. Maybe water does have some part to play but I'm not convinced without doing my own testing or hearing from others that have tested that it is a major contributor- happy to be convinced.
Click to expand...

I have had type 1 since 1990 so I have had some time to try different things.
I am almost 100 sure that when I drink alot of water (1-3 liters) at the same time. Like during 15 minutes or so, well then the blood sugar dives. Sometimes it goes fast so fast I go into hypo and have to eat someting.
The thing is you never know if its correlation or causation. I usually inject insulin at the start, but I KNOW that it drops faster with lots of water. Even without insulin it starts going down with lots of water. I am almost completely sure.
My thing is I have a hard time believing something if I dont know the underlying mechanics or someone else can support my finding.

One thing I am 100 % sure of is that if I have high sugar. Like 21 mml. my whole body feels weird. Blood "feels thick", sort of have pain, feel like I am functioning in syrup. But, after I drink like 2 liters of water that sort of the releases the feeling of tension. I have to pee of course, but it sort of makes me feel lighter somehow. Its hard to describe. Its like I can feel that my sugar is "fat" and the water almost immediately dilates it.
 
HSSS said:
Does it go down quicker than it would have anyway?
Were you dehydrated to start with?
Click to expand...

Pretty sure it is faster yes. I think it even makes a turn.On my libre it can have a slight uppward arrow and after drinking it goes down.
I might have been dihydrated without knowing it and that might be what releases some of the feeling of tension when I drink. Dont know.

I just know this is something I have noticed for decades now, but not really verbalized or tried to understand the underlying mechanics of.
 
Hi and welcome,

Most adults have around 5 litres of blood.

If you drink 2 litres within a v short time, your blood volume is going to increase significantly.
Impossible to do more than estimate, because we don't know how fast your body absorbs water through the intestinal wall, or how fast your kidneys will be filtering urine (and glucose) out of the bloodstream to your bladder. But assuming your blood volume temporarily increases by 1 litre, and you pee it out, and then another litre, which you again pee out, then you have diluted the glucose in your blood by 5+2 litres, instead of 5 litres.

So yes, that is going to drop your blood glucose test results significantly even if the same amount of glucose is still circulating.

In addition, when bg rises above approx 11mmol/l, it can trigger the kidneys to filter excess glucose out of the blood and into the urine. The higher the bg, the more glucose is filtered out. This is why T1s often have raging thirst and endless peeing before diagnosis. The body is prompting them to drink more to enable glucose dumping.

So the bg will drop for that reason too.

Healthcare professionals have advised people with high bg and high ketones to drink lots of water for decades.
So I am not seeing anything unusual about your observations.

However, it won't be lowering your HbA1c. It will be lowering your fingerprick tests on that particular day.
 
Last edited:
Daniel_Libre said:
But would that go so fast? If I drink 2 liters my sugar can go for a quick dive in just one hour.
Can my kidneys work that fast?
Click to expand...

Thanks to @Brunneria for her input.

Hmm, am guessing that if your blood sugar is that high then a test on your urine would give a reading of "over 2%", but lets call it 2. (When I was a child there were no glucometers, just a chemistry kit to determine the level of sugar in your urine. Over 2% wasn't that rare. :)), So if you peed out 1L of water that could be 20g of sugar....

A blood sugar of 20mmol/L is 360 mg/dL, or 3.6g/L. So 5L of blood would contain 18g of sugar, while a body with a blood sugar of 10mmol/L would only contain 9g. So you've only got to get rid of 9g to get back to levels where you'd no longer excrete sugar. ( This math also suggests that if you drink and pass the water quickly then the urine will have a much lower % than 2 of sugar, maybe only 1%.)

So, start at 5L blood with 18g sugar. Drink 2L so end up with 7L and 18g of sugar, or 14mmol/L. You'll pee out the excess 2L fairly quickly, but the sugar in that urine will bring you back down to 10mmol/L. As the urine only contains sugar if you're higher than 10mmol/L I'm not sure why you'd go lower than 10 through water drinking, though. But 20 to 10 is pretty fast.... Of course, if your blood total is temporarily at 6L say (before second L goes out to bladder but after first litre has reduced levels to 10), then that could temporarily reduce your sugar level down to 8...

Bear in mind that very fast drinking of too much water can be medically dangerous though.
 
Brunneria said:
Hi and welcome,

Most adults have around 5 litres of blood.

If you drink 2 litres within a v short time, your blood volume is going to increase significantly.
Impossible to do more than estimate, because we don't know how fast your body absorbs water through the intestinal wall, or how fast your kidneys will be filtering urine (and glucose) out of the bloodstream to your bladder. But assuming your blood volume temporarily increases by 1 litre, and you pee it out, and then another litre, which you again pee out, then you have diluted the glucose in your blood by 5+2 litres, instead of 5 litres.

So yes, that is going to drop your blood glucose test results significantly even if the same amount of glucose is still circulating.

In addition, when bg rises above approx 11mmol/l, it can trigger the kidneys to filter excess glucose out of the blood and into the urine. The higher the bg, the more glucose is filtered out. This is why T1s often have raging thirst and endless peeing before diagnosis. The body is prompting them to drink more to enable glucose dumping.

So the bg will drop for that reason too.

Healthcare professionals have advised people with high bg and high ketones to drink lots of water for decades.
So I am not seeing anything unusual about your observations.

However, it won't be lowering your HbA1c. It will be lowering your fingerprick tests on that particular day.
Click to expand...


Thank you for thorough answer. :)
Yes they have said that for decades, but I think that it has mainly been for other reasons. Helping the liver etc.
Maybe I have only had clueless doctors, but I have never had it explained to me that water could lower the blood glucose in real time that fast.

Well if this method of lowering helps me lower my blood glucose in real time each time I notice it, wont it lower my HbA1c as well over long time? I mean it will be fewer hours over those months my sugar is higher than it is supposed to be.
 
EllieM said:
Thanks to @Brunneria for her input.

Hmm, am guessing that if your blood sugar is that high then a test on your urine would give a reading of "over 2%", but lets call it 2. (When I was a child there were no glucometers, just a chemistry kit to determine the level of sugar in your urine. Over 2% wasn't that rare. :)), So if you peed out 1L of water that could be 20g of sugar....

A blood sugar of 20mmol/L is 360 mg/dL, or 3.6g/L. So 5L of blood would contain 18g of sugar, while a body with a blood sugar of 10mmol/L would only contain 9g. So you've only got to get rid of 9g to get back to levels where you'd no longer excrete sugar. ( This math also suggests that if you drink and pass the water quickly then the urine will have a much lower % than 2 of sugar, maybe only 1%.)

So, start at 5L blood with 18g sugar. Drink 2L so end up with 7L and 18g of sugar, or 14mmol/L. You'll pee out the excess 2L fairly quickly, but the sugar in that urine will bring you back down to 10mmol/L. As the urine only contains sugar if you're higher than 10mmol/L I'm not sure why you'd go lower than 10 through water drinking, though. But 20 to 10 is pretty fast.... Of course, if your blood total is temporarily at 6L say (before second L goes out to bladder but after first litre has reduced levels to 10), then that could temporarily reduce your sugar level down to 8...

Bear in mind that very fast drinking of too much water can be medically dangerous though.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your answer. :)
So, I never do urine tests myself (only blood). I do them like once a year at the hospital, but at home its only phone scanning with the libre.
Before that I did fingersticks.
You gave such a professional answer with the math and all. :)
But the conclusion is that fingerpick at 14.00 with fingerprick showing 20 mml -> 2-3 liters of water drinking -> fingerprick at 15.00 = my blood glucose reduced significantly? My hypothesis was correct?
This forum is great. Is it members from all over the world or just the UK?
 
Our bodies are designed to absorb water fast, even some in the mouth before swallowing.
The system that tells your kidneys to filter out excess water in the bloodstream takes about 30 mins to activate.
But using water to reduce blood glucose is risky because you will be losing essential minerals too, and your blood pressure will be swinging up and down if you rapidly shift from dehydration to excess water.
 
TriciaWs said:
Our bodies are designed to absorb water fast, even some in the mouth before swallowing.
The system that tells your kidneys to filter out excess water in the bloodstream takes about 30 mins to activate.
But using water to reduce blood glucose is risky because you will be losing essential minerals too, and your blood pressure will be swinging up and down if you rapidly shift from dehydration to excess water.
Click to expand...

Thank you :)
Would be interesting if anyone found a scientific article about my question. I have a hard time finding one.
1-2 liters is not that much on a 180 cm 95 kg man, right.
I wonder if it is good or bad for the kidneys.
 
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