hydration

what you eat affects how much you need to drink, dried and dry snacks will require extra water to digest, protein takes four times as much water to digest as carbs. fat takes ten times as much water... typical food like nuts raisings, salami and cheese will suck up a lot of water when you eat them and make you thirstier..

@waynowski. There's a difference between supplementing a deficiency vs mega- / overdosing ?.

@JETNZ - great idea with the paper towels. So simple, feel silly for not thinking of it. I would never bother with a flow meter unless you're some pro-athlete who needs to accurately measure. I basically just keep sipping a little more often than I think I need to, which ends up being about right. It's always been longer than I thought since the last sip and I get to a point in the day when I'm convinced that each sip will be the last and it will be empty but it's always more full than I had guessed and goes longer. I keep a 1L bottle at my desk for work and every few hours just chug half of it, so sipping through a bladder on trail I'm getting less water each time for much more effort and my brain tells me I've drunk more than I actually have. Hence drinking a little more often than I think I need to, to counteract my brain :)

if you haven't been diagnosed with a deficiency then you may be taking b vitamins for no good reason, if the supplement you take has several times the recommended daily allowance you've going to excrete most of it, unless you have a severe deficiency, multi be's normally make your pee a bright yellowy green colour. unless you're on a junk food diet you're unlikely to be very deficient if deficient at all in b vitamins, they are water soluble you cant store them long you need a little often, not a lot in one big hit. and when you take excess they are a diuretic and they take water and minerals with them when you pee them out. the "stress vitamin" supplements that have massive amounts of b vitamins in them are a problem esp if you take them regularly, it can adversely affect your nervous system and over rev it making you feel MORE stressed lack of b vitamins can make it harder to cope with stress, but there is no scientific evidence that over dosing on them will help your nervous system, its just been assumed and marketed that way.. Recommended daily allowances for B vitamins http://www.acu-cell.com/bx2.html in the long run you stand to unbalance your mineral levels taking b vitamin supplements http://www.acu-cell.com/bx.html

I buy a tube of Berocca about twice a year. Have one occasionally when feeling run down. My trick is I put it in a litre of water rather than gulping down in 1 cup. Doesn't taste fantastic because it's so watered down, but (science or science-fiction) I feel like my body will use more of it being taken in over a morning rather than one go.

B1 is a problem, its a stimulant for the nervous system in mega doses which is common in supplements because they want you go feel more energy on the supplements as a selling point. look at this http://www.berocca.com.au/products/berocca-performance/ it has around ten times the RDA of B1... when the b vitamins taken aren't in balance according to the bodies needs you can start skewing the b vitamins in the body as well as high amounts of one can reduce absorption and increase excretion of others... I know I get hyperactive on most be vitamin supplements if taken with any regularity. and then my energy crashes.

I'll steer clear of vitamins then. On the plus side, I do add ice to my gin & tonic.

as long as its shaken and never stirred...

Logged back in to 'delete' and apologise for being flippant in your thread, but will pocket that for another day. Skipped the advertorials & went to PubMed. They say there's no emperical support for supplementing some B vits, despite clinical suggestion of deficiencies in requirements for elderly, endurance athletes & on restricted/poor diets. As I only have one feed of OSM per day when tramping, this senior will look forward to his orange morning glass of fizz when hutting it !. Cheers !,

OSM's have the recommended daily allowance of B vitamins and nothing like the amount of a lot of th vitamin B pills