Should You Drink Water First Thing in the Morning

Water is essential to life, and your body needs it to function properly.
One trending idea suggests that if you want to be healthier, you should drink water first thing in the morning.
However, you may wonder whether the time of day really makes a difference when it comes to hydration.
This article reviews some popular claims surrounding the idea of drinking water right after you wake up to determine whether the practice offers any health benefits.

Water is essential to your body
About 60% of your body is comprised of water.
It’s also considered an essential nutrient, meaning that your body cannot produce enough of it through metabolism to meet its daily needs (1Trusted Source).

Therefore, you need to get it through foods — and especially drinks — to ensure proper bodily function.
All organs and tissues depend on water, and it plays numerous roles in your body, including: (1Trusted Source)
• Nutrient transportation. Water allows blood circulation, which transports nutrients to your cells and removes waste from them.
• Thermoregulation. Due to water’s large heat capacity, it limits changes in body temperature in both warm and cold environments.
• Body lubrication. Water helps lubricate joints and is an essential element of your body’s lubricating fluids, including saliva and gastric, intestinal, respiratory, and urinary mucous.
• Shock absorbency. Water acts as a shock absorber, protecting your organs and tissues by helping maintain cellular shape.

Your body loses water daily through sweat, breath, urine, and bowel movements. These are known as water outputs.
If you don’t take in enough water throughout the day to make up for these losses, it can lead to dehydration, which is associated with many detrimental health effects (2Trusted Source).
This system is known as water balance and implies that water inputs must be equal to water outputs to avoid dehydration (1Trusted Source).

Popular claims about drinking water on an empty stomach
Some people claim that drinking water first thing in the morning offers health benefits beyond those associated with drinking it at other times of the day.
Here are some popular arguments behind this claim and what science has to say about them.
Claim 1: Drinking water right after you wake up helps rehydrate your body
Because urine tends to be dark first thing in the morning, many people believe that they wake up dehydrated due to a lack of hydration during sleeping hours.

However, this is a half-truth, as urine color is not necessarily a clear indicator of hydration levels.
Claim 2: A glass of water before breakfast reduces your calorie intake throughout the day
Evidence suggests that high water consumption helps reduce your daily calorie intake, as it increases your feelings of fullness (6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source).
One study found that drinking water before breakfast reduced calorie intake at the next meal by 13%. Although, another study observed similar results when participants drank water 30 minutes before lunch (9Trusted Source, 10Trusted Source).

That said, both studies concluded that water’s ability to reduce calorie intake at the subsequent meal was only effective in older adults — not in younger ones.
Claim 3: Drinking water in the morning increases weight loss
The relationship between water and weight loss is partly attributed to its thermogenic effect, which refers to the energy required to warm up cold water in the digestive tract after consumption.

Studies show that water-induced thermogenesis has the potential to increase the body’s metabolic rate by 24–۳۰% in adults, and the effect lasts about 60 minutes (11Trusted Source, 12Trusted Source, 13Trusted Source, 14Trusted Source).
One study also determined that increasing your daily water intake by 50 ounces (1.5 liters) resulted in burning an extra 48 calories.
Though this claim appears to be backed by scientific research, no evidence suggests that this effect is limited to water consumed first thing in the morning.