Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Getty Images stock

If you can't stomach the thought of guzzling down eight glasses of water every single day, here's some good news: You're off the hook, more health experts are saying. 

A new editorial in an Australian public health journal is the latest to bust the widely-repeated health myth we need to guzzle 64 ounces, or eight 8-ounce glasses, of water each day just to stave off dehydration. Actually, we get enough fluids to keep our bodies adequately hydrated from the foods we eat and the beverages we drink -- even from caffeinated drinks like coffee and tea. 

Turns out, the whole "eight glasses a day" thing "really is no longer the recommendation; the recommendation is drinking to thirst," explains Madelyn Fernstrom, a board-certified nutrition specialist and TODAY's diet and nutrition editor. Drink when you're thirsty! What a novel idea.

It's not a bad idea to consume 64 ounces of fluid a day, but it's not a scientifically proven idea, either. It likely comes from a 1940s recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which said that adults should ingest about 2.5 liters of water a day. 

"But the often ignored second half of that statement pointed out that most of the water you need is in the foods you eat," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, associate professor of Pediatrics and the associate director of Children's Health Services Research at Indiana University School.

"But that report wasn’t based on any solid evidence – it was just opinion," continues Carroll, who explored the waterlogged myth in the book "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!", which he co-authored with Dr. Rachel Vreeman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. "A number of years later, a famous nutritionist, Dr. Frederick Stare, said something similar about drinking eight glasses of water a day, but he, too, stated that it could be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, or even beer. He even said that fruits and vegetables are good sources of water."

But doesn't gulping down water help with weight loss? Kind of: It's true that drinking a high volume of water has been shown to work as an appetite suppressant, but consuming foods with high water content -- like watermelon, lettuce or grapefruit -- results in more weight loss than eschewing more foods for more (and more and more) water, writes the author of the Australian editorial, Spero Tsindos, of the department of dietetics and human nutrition at La Trobe University in Victoria. We've also heard that drinking lots of water helps ward off kidney stones and UTIs, but studies have shown that's only true for those who are prone to recurring episodes of either condition. 

Last summer, a paper published in the British Medical Journal grabbed headlines when it called the myth "nonsense" -- thoroughly debunked nonsense," for that matter, citing reports in 2002 and 2006 that couldn't find any "clear evidence from drinking increased amounts of water."

Yet the myth sticks around, likely because people have made a lot of money off the idea that we're all on the precipice of dehydration. (And we're definitely not -- government research on more than 15,000 people in 50 states show that over three years, the average American ingested 75 ounces of water a day, Carroll points out.)

"(B)ottled water and the entire health culture around drinking more water have been very lucrative," Vreeman explains. "Certainly, your body needs fluids and water is a healthy choice to meet those fluid needs, but many of us spend a lot of money, effort and guilt on forcing ourselves to drink more water than we really need."

So how much water should we be drinking? Whatever your body tells you it needs. Listen to your body, drink when it tells you to, and there's no need to drink more than that. (The idea that "when you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" is another myth.) 

Fernstrom notes that it's of course better to choose water over sodas, sweetened juices or other sugary, high-calorie beverages. There may not be any evidence that excess water is doing you any good, but it's not likely doing any harm, either. 

"The issue of too much water, that's only a problem for extreme athletes who are sweating profusely and drinking too much water without replacing their salt," Fernstrom explains. For us mere mortals, if you drink lots of water throughout the day, "you're just going to pee it out," she says. "The worst that'll happen is you'll learn where more bathrooms are in your community."

Related: 

• Ask Jenna Wolfe: What's the best way to lose belly fat?
• Does organic food turn people into jerks?

Related: 

• Why does blindness heighten other senses?
• Who hates cilantro? Study aims to find out
• How do blind people dream?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Christopher Polk / Getty Images

Call it the great one-day (we hope) lazy eye panic.

It started, apparently, with a story in the Australian tabloid Daily Telegraph, which quoted an Aussie eye doctor as indicting the hair-over-one-eye hairstyles of Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie (those of us into old movies prefer Veronica Lake), and countless emo boys and girls, as causing lazy eye, or amblyopia.   

Then the story made its way to The Huffington Post. By the time msnbc.com contacted Dr. Leonard Press, the New Jersey eye specialist who co-authored the clinical practice guidelines on amblyopia for the American Optometric Association, the assistant who picked up the phone said “You mean the hair-over-the-eyes thing?”

Press could barely suppress a chuckle.

Amblyopia, a condition of reduced vision in which the brain does not recognize some or all of the information the eye sees, is indeed a serious eye problem, he said, and one of the reasons it’s serious is that, if left untreated in children younger than 7 years old, a very concerted, sometimes difficult, effort has to be made to correct the lazy eye. That’s because after about age 7, the neural and optical mechanisms involved have been well established, and changing them is tough going.

That’s exactly the reason why Nicole Richie is safe.

“The story would only be true,” he explained, “if you had somebody young enough, and if that person never looked out of that eye -- if it was blocked 24-7. The reason it’s false is that you don’t have that constant deprivation.”

The visual system, Press said, “is so well-established” after childhood, that “combing your hair over your eye will not do anything to that system.”

So don’t worry all you emo boys and girls. By the time mother and father give in to whatever hairstyle you want, any eye problems won’t be the result of your comb-over. Laser lights, well, that could be another story.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young, PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com)  to be published Sept. 13.

Related: 

• Can eating too much make your stomach burst?
• Fact check: Do leggings really make you fat?
• Myth, busted: You only use 10 percent of your brain

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Getty Images stock

Can you actually eat yourself to death?

"I ate so much I'm about to burst!"

Someone at your Thanksgiving table will likely say some version of this tomorrow, after you've all stuffed your faces with turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and the rest. But how much would you have to eat in order for your stomach to actually burst? Is that even possible?

"Interestingly enough, you can rupture your stomach if you eat too much," says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!" and assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. "It is possible, but it's very, very rare."

A handful of reports over the years document the tales of people who literally ate themselves to death, or at least came dangerously close: Japanese doctors wrote in a 2003 case report that they believed it was a 49-year-old man's "excessive over-eating" that caused his stomach to rupture, killing him. And this 1991 case report describes a similar "spontaneous rupture" in an adult's stomach "after overindulgence in food and drink." 

Normally, your stomach can hold about one or one-and-a-half liters, Vreeman says -- this is the point you may reach if you overdo it tomorrow, when you feel full to the point of nausea. Pathologists' reports seem to suggest the stomach is able to do OK handling up to about three liters, but most cases of rupture seem to occur when a person has attempted to stuff their stomach with about five liters of food or fluid. (One of the reports Vreeman came across described the sad case of a woman whose stomach contained 12 liters of stuff.)

It takes a certain amount of misguided determination to manage to override your natural gag reflex and continue to eat (and eat and eat), which is why, not surprisingly, reports of ruptured stomachs caused by overeating are most common in people with some sort of disordered eating, or limited mental capacity, Vreeman says. 

"They have unusual eating habits to an extent that their bodies’ reflexes no longer respond as they normally do," Vreeman explains. "Their bodies’ reflexes have been ignored or abused for so long that they no longer vomit at the appropriate time. And then once the stomach gets to this extremely distended point, the stomach muscles are too stretched out to be strong enough to vomit the food out."

Speaking of strong stomachs, you'd best have one in order to read this next paragraph. If vomiting isn't happening, all that food and fluid still has to go somewhere. The increasing volume of stuff in the gut puts pressure on the stomach's walls, so much so that the tissue weakens and tears, sending the stomach contents into the body and causing infection and pain, Vreeman says. Surgical intervention is necessary to repair a ruptured stomach and save the patient's life. 

In particular, she says, anorexics or bulimics may be at risk. In fact, Cedars-Sinai, the non-profit hospital in Los Angeles, actually lists this as a "symptom" of bulimia: "In rare cases, a person may eat so much during a binge that the stomach bursts or the esophagus tears. This can be life-threatening."

Other reported cases of spontaneous stomach rupture happen in individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome, a congenital disease that is characterized by, among other things, a kind of disordered eating: an "intense craving for food," resulting in "uncontrollable weight gain and morbid obesity." according to the National Institutes of Health. In a 2007 study examining the deaths of 152 individuals with the condition, 3 percent of those deaths were the result of gastric rupture and necrosis. 

The takeaway here: This really happens, sometimes! Also: This is probably not going to happen to you. 

"Even if you're starting to feel a bit sick or tired and overwhelmed from eating so much at Thanksgiving, you're still far, far away from the scenario where you're going to make your stomach actually explode," Vreeman assures. 

Related:

• Are 'competitive eating' contests a terrible idea?
• The strange eating habits of Steve Jobs
• Can eating too much spicy food kill you?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.