“If I’m not liplocked to a bottle of Perrier I’m drowning at the bottom of a teapot,” says Fear And Loathing In The Kitchen blogger Tracy (a “navel-gazer self-absorbed enough to believe that her ongoing battle with weight, body image, and food addictions and obsessions makes for interesting reading,” according to her bio). “I have no idea what it’s like to actually feel thirsty.” We know the feeling: Drowning in reminders to get that 64-ounces-a-day, my fingertips are never too far from a 1.5-liter bottle of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water.

Determined to find out whether we really truly require so much hydration, Tracy turned to Dartmouth researcher and kidney specialist Heinz Valtin, M.D. Her discovery:

“According to Valtin, when you start to get low on fluid your body will compensate by bringing fluid back out of your kidneys and by slowing the loss of water through your skin. Thirst begins when the concentration of blood (an accurate indicator of our state of hydration) has risen by less than two percent, whereas most experts would define dehydration as beginning when that concentration has risen by at least five percent - so you can absolutely rely on your thirst to tell you when to have a drink. He also found that coffee, tea etc are perfectly fine to drink and do count toward your fluid intake. And he found no studies at all showing that the magic 8 cups of water are necessary for health.”