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Does posture matter while drinking water?

Biology Asked on November 11, 2021

I have heard a lot of people (where I am from, India) say that one must drink water sitting, not standing. Recently, I also came across a video that said the same thing (link). The reason given is that when you drink water standing, it goes to the colon too quickly, whereas while sitting, the water is better absorbed by the organs. Is this true? Is there a biological basis for why I should drink water sitting?

I tried to find literature on this matter, but apparently there isn’t a whole lot. I found this paper where they tried to see the water passage rate in the GI tract of rabbits, mentioning how the water goes from stomach to cecum to proximal large colon, but obviously did not study posture.

Note: I think this question belongs here better than Skeptics.SE as I am looking for a biological explanation

2 Answers

The stomach is equipped with the pyloric valve to regulate transpyloric flow to the duodenum.

Both cold and warm drinks stimulate a pattern of motility associated with retardation of transpyloric flow.

enter image description here

The pyloric valve is responsible for acidifying water that you drink, and if the body's guard against amoeba's and dysentery depended on body position, it would be low survival performance, given that sedentary posture is associated with poorer health outcomes, including an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. You will benefit from minimizing time spent sitting each day, and from breaking up periods of time spent being sedentary, as often as possible. It's aperture at rest is 3mm, so it's of minimal difficulty for the stomach to hold water as required for optimal health. It's highly likely that water is kept for enough time to expose it to stomach acids, regardless of body position, and then it's transmitted. Water doesn't flow straight through the stomach like a straight tube when it's empty. enter image description here

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1382811/pdf/gut00528-0043.pdf

Answered by DwayneDeSouza on November 11, 2021

First off: pure, reverse osmosis treated, bottled water HAS NO NUTRIENTS. Secondly, of everything you swallow, nothing goes too fast on it's way to the colon. The small intestine is a network of twisted tubing, around 20 feet long. Nothing is going through there "Too fast".

Sources: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/smalllarge-intestine-length-ratio

Answered by Rowan Lerowsky on November 11, 2021

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