Coffee vs. Water Argument

While at Cafe Mingo for dinner on Thursday the question was posed whether coffee was the same as drinking water. That is to say, because coffee is nearly completely water, wouldn't it stand to reason that you could consider the two interchangeable?

My answer was a solid and confident NO. I don't know about you other excessive coffee drinkers out there (this is the NW people, I know that is just about all of you) but I usually need a glass of water around 10:30-11:00am after a morning of hearty java drinking. It has been my belief that the caffeine in the coffee dehydrates us at the same time as the water hydrates us, essentially negating each other and leaving us needing real water after several hours.

But was I right?

A little research led me to this. Health authorities at the American College of Sports Medicine and the Institute of Medicine have both come out with studies that in fact, the caffeine in coffee does not dehydrate us. The caffeine tells our kidneys to flush our body of excess water but it does so for only a brief amount of time, not enough, they say, to dehydrate us. We retain more water than we lose when drinking coffee or any caffeinated beverage for that matter.

Is this enough to convince me?

While I can concede that coffee does not directly dehydrate drinkers, I still believe that drinking only coffee leaves you feeling like your cells are somehow depleted. Maybe it is all in my head. Maybe I have been fed this myth so long that know my body believes it. I'm not sure. But I am a little less worried about those days that I come out of my shell around 3pm and realize I haven't had anything but six cups of coffee since waking up. Sounds like the experts say I will live.