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On the 12th of July this year, Dr Margaret McCartney, a general practitioner in Glasgow, wrote in the British Medical Journal, in an article entitled Waterlogged?, that the amount of water the NHS and bottled water companies are advising the general public to drink is too much and could potentially lead to personal injury claims.
This may seem shocking, since humans are largely composed of water – about 92% of our blood, 75% of our brain and muscles, and 22% of our bones to be more precise.
However, it is important to realise that this practitioner is not saying that drinking water is not important, but that the advice to drink "six to eight glasses of water or other fluid" a day to stay hydrated and healthy is a myth.
Many people are aware that whereas human beings are particularly resilient to life without food, being able to remain alive without nutrition for over a month in some cases, the body cannot survive for much more than a week without drinking water.
Yet, surely this does not mean that we need to drink 2.5 litres, that's over four pints, of H2O a day?
Scientific research and reported medical cases have proved that human beings can in fact drink too much water, as well as not enough, and that a surfeit can cause low salt levels (hyponatraemia), water intoxication, and in some circumstances death.
However, many experts also say that healthy adult kidneys can process up to 15 litres of liquid a day and that it is not the quantity drunk that is the problem, unless it's more than 15 litres, but how quickly it is drunk.
The problem, lost in translation and diluted as new articles are written on the subject, seems to be that most of the water a human being needs is gained through the food that is eaten throughout the day and, therefore, drinking 2.5 litres is unnecessary.
At this point it may appear that Dr McCartney and her followers have won the argument, but what if people don't eat enough of the right food?
We're all aware of what's healthy and what's not – but that doesn't mean that we all eat our recommended amount of fruit and veg a day instead of one pizza with a handful of sweetcorn and a chocolate bar with nine lonely raisins somewhere inside.
Is six to eight large glasses of water still too much water if most of the food we eat during the day is dry and unhealthy?
Well, with Dr McCartney's article stirring up the medical world, and the NHS sticking to its guns and stating that the recommended amount of water, as far as its concerned, is still 2.5 litres, it seems that the general public should make their own choices until more definite answers are available.
Nevertheless, it may be that if a person follows the NHS's advice, or the advice of bottled water companies, and suffers personal injury, in the form of hyponatraemia or water intoxication, they could make a compensation claim.
A claim against the NHS would probably be filed under medical negligence, and one against bottled water firms could be seen as product liability.
Who knows, maybe the news will soon be filled with stories of personal injury claims by people who have drunk too little water on the advice of Dr McCartney...
