Hydration for Health Conference

Paula and I were invited to attend the Hydration for Health Annual Scientific Conference in Evian, France, funded by Danone Waters and Danone Research. The location was the Hotel Royal Evian, and the conference made the most of beautiful views from the hotel over Lake Leman, with cocktails and canapés on the terrace. This was the most relevant conference for our research and, with all the leaders in the hydration field present, provided a great opportunity to network. It was also a really sociable conference.

The programme considered hydration and thirst, kidney health, trends in fluid consumption, and ways to improve hydration status. While there were no papers specifically on hydration and cognition, all of the talks gave us lots of ideas for studies or different approaches to analysis. There were two sessions that particularly stood out for us.

Talks on the thirst mechanism addressed the question, “Why are we here if the thirst system works perfectly?” and asked, “what happens if we don’t drink?” and “why don’t people drink?” Suggestions were that unlike animals, which are adept at drinking when they are thirsty, humans have become dishabituated to the feeling of thirst. Consequently people do not drink enough which over a long period could lead to health problems. Experimental evidence on thirst was reviewed, including ways in which manipulating the way that we satiate thirst, such as consuming large amounts of fluid or regular sipping, affect exercise performance. Evidence on hydration in older adults, who are a high risk group for dehydration, was also presented. Some of the reasons for this high risk were discussed, including fluid preference, lifetime hydration habits and the ageing process, including diseases that influence hydration.

A session on how to improve hydration status was really useful to us because of its focus on measuring hydration using assessment of urine osmolality, which is one measure that we are currently using.  These were complex studies involving strategies for behavioural change aimed at increasing water consumption in adults, which seemed to have a good level of success. As well as providing useful technical information, it gave us ideas for ways to present data figuratively that Paula is likely to use in her PhD.

The poster stands were really varied. Of particular interest to us was a set of posters by Joan Gandy, a UK dietician and nutritionist, who reported data on worldwide fluid intake studies. The methodological detail on how this was achieved was particularly useful for us. There are clear differences between countries in the types of beverages consumed. In the UK most of our beverages are taken in the form of hot drinks, suggesting that we really are a nation of tea drinkers, along with Poland, Germany, Japan and Uruguay (or perhaps coffee drinkers…).

Caroline and Paula