Does Coffee Dehydrate You? Science Says No

We all have heard about—and most likely experienced—the diuretic effects of coffee. Second to the flavor, it’s my favorite part. Well, there’s a nearly 100 year-old wives’ tale that says coffee is such a good pee-pee producer that it will make you dehydrated. According to an article by MSN, that has been proven false.

The myth is based in “science”, but 1920’s science, to an article titled Tolerance and Cross-Tolerance in the Human Subject to the Diuretic Effect of Caffeine, Theobromine and Theophylline. The study comes in hot:

Coffee and tea drinkers in general seem to believe that they are less susceptible to the action of caffeine, including its diuretic effect, than are persons who do not indulge in these beverages.

Sick burn. It goes one to suggest that all this extra pee is going to deplete your body of water. But a new study has shown that to be false and that excess urination won’t dehydrate you. As MSN explains it:

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Take water for example. When you drink large volumes to hydrate, you urinate more. And guess what: You’re still hydrating yourself—you’re not in danger of becoming dehydrated.

Makes sense to me. And coffee is 98% water, sooooo…

MSN corroborates this idea by noting that you can in fact hydrate with water and include it as part of your daily fluid intake, but the article does note that coffee has one of the “weakest replenishing effects” out of all the beverages examined, which includes beer.

So enjoy a cup of coffee with the full confidence that it won’t reduce you to a dusty, desiccated husk of your once magnificent self. That’s what desk jobs are for.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.