I'm still not convinced we should be drinking these vast quantities of water. I've been trying to up my intake but it doesn't feel right if I'm really having to force myself to do it!
It's been difficult for me to increase it much further than I was already doing too. Anything over 2.5 liters seems to result in an overload on my bladder, though if I spaced it out more evenly over the day it might not--but that's difficult to manage on workdays.
I'm still currently using salt, gs, on my vlc regime.
Interestingly, an Inuit study population had the lowest levels of chlorides ever measured, the lowest dietary intakes of sodium chloride ever measured, and the highest sensitivity to tasting salt ever measured among any population. The scientists couldn't find any negative effects from the low chloride levels in their bodily fluids or the extremely low dietary intakes of salt. They had unusually high magnesium levels.
I seem to recall reading that much of the sweating was done in their igloos with the internal temperatures becoming sufficiently hot. Likewise, I'm really struggling to up my intake and am still only managing to drink 1-1.5 ltrs per day.
Interesting. I wonder if they did a sweat-lodge sort of thing and if that enabled them to drink more water and thus keep their uric and oxalic acid levels low despite heavy consumption of meat? I should probably do more reading on the Inuit--not for re-enactment, but because they followed a near-ZC/carnivore WOE for much longer than I have, and thus I might learn some more from their experience.
Lex, I'm sure you've already considered this but perhaps the development of your stones took place during previous inappropriate diets and are only being shifted now by the body as it's given the nutrients and conditions to repair itself? The water factor could be a total red herring?! I think the above discussion (particularly when read in context of the whole article) gives a clue to what the root cause of the stone development may have been initially.
Possible, and I am open-minded as usual, but then there's also Yuri's experience with uric acid stones on ZC and the deepening color and increased bubbling of my urine since going carnivore. On the other hand, I did find a report that the urine of the Inuits in one study was apparently notably yellow in color--apparently more so than avg. So I'm also not convinced that clear urine is a necessary sign of good health, as I've seen some vegans claim, and a somewhat deeper-than-avg color is probably OK. But I try to be a bit more careful than the avg person, given my history of chronic UTI's and kidney stones. I don't want to experience the pain of stones again if I can avoid it.