« Make healthy hydration the new norm »

5th Annual Hydration For Health Scientific Conference, Evian, July 2013

The 5th anniversary of Hydration for Health (H4H) Scientific Conference was celebrated in July 2013. The hydration scientific community gathered again this year in Evian to share the latest scientific developments in the field of hydration and health. Highlights of this conference, the Hydration and Obesity prevention session organized in collaboration with EASO (European Association for the Study of Obesity) and the Healthy Hydration Working Group and the second edition on the Young Researcher Award.

The conference was organized around two main sessions.

The first session was covering Hydration science and Kidney health, while the second session was focusing on Healthy Hydration and Obesity prevention. In the first session, Dr. Perrier reviewed the latest developments on the identification of the most adequate biomarkers of hydration in normal healthy subjects and Colleen Munoz, PhD candidate, assessed efficacy of these new hydration biomarkers in daily life activities.

Professor Roussel presented the latest evidence on the role of vasopressin and copeptin in the onset of diabetes, followed by Dr. Wang who gave a comprehensive review of the literature relating the medicinal use of water in the treatment of renal diseases.

To close the morning session, Professor Clark presented the results of a cross-sectional analysis of the NHANES data and Professor Correa-Rotter described a possible mechanism for dehydration being a cause of kidney damage.

The second session was organized jointly with EASO and the Healthy Hydration Working Group led by Professor Max Lafontan. Professor Gema Frühbeck and Professor Volkan Yumuk gave two lectures focusing on ways and challenges in tackling the obesity epidemics and the need to fight obesity as a gateway disease leading to numerous of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases diabetes and cancer.

The importance of preventing childhood obesity and changing behaviors at early stages was underlined by Nathalie Farpour-Lambert and the evidences for an effect of sugar-sweetened beverages consumption on body weight in children were reviewed by Professor David Ludwig. Janne de Ruyter, PhD candidate, presented the result of a sugar-free beverage intervention study. Finally, Dr. Jean-Michel Borys presented the EPODE methodology, a multi stakeholder approach to prevent childhood obesity at large scale and announced that EPODE includes now the promotion of water in its educational programme.

Strong moment of the conference was the second edition of ‘Hydration for Health Young Researcher Award’. The Expert Working Group of the Hydration for Health elected Christopher Taveau, PhD candidate at UMRS 872, INSERM, Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, Paris, France, under the supervision of Prof. Bouby. Christopher was invited to presented his latest research work on “Vasopressin: a new glucose player in glucose metabolism disorders” and received his award from Prof. L.E. Armstrong on behalf the Expert Working Group.

The conference closed with a roundtable discussion on ways to transfer hydration science into key educational actions for obesity prevention