Does drinking water before bed prevent heart attacks? Fact Check

A long winded message claims to list the many untold benefits of drinking water, namely the claim that drinking a glass of water before bed can reduce your chances of heart failure or stroke.

FALSE

The message, which is most frequently titled “heart attacks and water” has been spreading across social media for a number of years. A common example of the message can be seen below.

HEART ATTACKS AND WATER !
How many folks do you know who say they don`t want to drink anything before going to bed because they`ll have to get up during the night.
Heart Attack and Water – I never knew all of this ! Interesting…….
Something else I didn`t know … I asked my Doctor why people need to urinate so much at night time. Answer from my Cardiac Doctor – Gravity holds water in the lower part of your body when you are upright (legs swell). When you lie down and the lower body (legs and etc) seeks level with the kidneys, it is then that the kidneys remove the water because it is easier. This then ties in with the last statement!
I knew you need your minimum water to help flush the toxins out of your body, but this was news to me. Correct time to drink water…
Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist!
Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body
2 glasses of water after waking up – helps activate internal organs
1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal – helps digestion
1 glass of water before taking a bath – helps lower blood pressure
1 glass of water before going to bed – avoids stroke or heart attack
I can also add to this… My Physician told me that water at bed time will also help prevent night time leg cramps. Your leg muscles are seeking hydration when they cramp and wake you up with a Charlie Horse.
“Life is a one time gift”

Despite the claims in the message, they are false. Of course, drinking water is an important step that any human must do in order to remain alive and healthy, and drinking the recommended amount of water every day has a number of health benefits.

But water isn’t a “catch-all” type of treatment as seemingly implied by this message. Most of the claims made in the message above are simply vague tosh or plain false.

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For instance, the claim that 2 glasses of water “activates the internal organs” doesn’t really make any sense. Our internal organs don’t need “activating” in the morning since they’re perfectly capable of working throughout the night. If one’s organs did need activating (whatever that really means) that person would certainly have a serious health issue that is unlikely to be cured simply by drinking tap water.

There is no credible evidence that drinking water has any negligible effect on digestion, and also no evidence that drinking water has any negligible effect on your blood pressure – the British Heart Foundation for instance, does not list drinking water in its list of tips to lower blood pressure.
 
And finally there is no evidence that drinking water before bed has any effect on our chances of suffering a heart attack or stroke. We could not find this advice on the website of any organisation specializing in heart health (of course, keeping hydrated in general is still important.) In fact, drinking too much water just before a person goes to sleep could potentially have the reverse effect on their health. The more water someone consumes increases the chances and number of times a person needs to urinate throughout the night. This could lead to sleep deprivation which in turn is linked to a number of adverse health issues, including high blood pressure and weight gain, which both directly affect a person’s heart health.

As such, we don’t recommend circulating this message since it contains mostly false information.