Are you hydrating enough?

There are now so many ways to get and track your fluids – from customisable Stanley tumblers to in-home IV services to apps that remind you to chug a few extra ounces every hour – that it’s easy to worry you’re not getting enough.

But is it possible to be too hydrated? And what happens if you are?

That’s what Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s Am I Doing It Wrong? podcast, asked Colleen Muñoz, director and co-founder of Hydration Health Center at the University of Hartford.

“[Drinking too much water] is a real thing,” Muñoz, who is also an associate professor of health sciences at University of Hartford, said. “[It doesn’t happen] as often as you would think, relative to somebody who is underhydrated – that’s definitely a more common scenario – but it’s something we need to pay attention to.”

The main issue with ingesting too much water or other fluids is that it can dilute the electrolyte content of our blood. Electrolytes (in this case we’re mostly talking about sodium, but also potassium, magnesium, chloride and calcium) must remain “in balance in order to maintain healthy blood, heart rhythm, muscle function and other important functions.”

When these electrolytes “get out of whack,” it can cause nausea, vomiting, headaches, muscle cramps and even death.

“If they get too dilute, we start to have some pretty severe ramifications, largely related to our nervous system … [including] brain swelling, coma, [and then] death … and pretty quick,” Muñoz warned.

This happened to a woman in Los Angeles in 2007.

“It was pretty soon after the first Nintendo Wii came out and one of the radio stations had some competition – I think it was called like ‘Pee for a Wii’ or ‘Wee for a Wii’ – and unfortunately they didn’t consult anybody before they did this,” Muñoz said. “Whoever could drink the most amount of water in one day won the Nintendo Wii and a woman died.”

However, Muñoz noted that overhydration is less common in the general population and typically more worrisome for athletes.

“[It’s happened to some athletes and] it’s scary. It happens quickly and it’s not always easily detectable. So, a lot of times, unfortunately, they keep drinking water thinking that they collapsed due to dehydration,” she said.

It’s also a risk for recreational exercisers, like marathon or triathlon participants.

“[These people] might not actually be working out as intensely as they might suspect, and they haven’t really done a lot of homework into an individualised hydration plan, so they just assume, like, the more water the better,” Muñoz said.

“They’re actually not sweating that much, you know, or they’re not losing as much salt as they think, so they start chugging water and that’s a lot of times when this happens, unfortunately.”

Muñoz said that most people need between 2 and 4 litres of water a day depending on body size, activity level, and other personal factors, like how much someone sweats, but checking in with your doctor or a medical professional about your specific needs is always a good idea.

She also noted that it’s possible to achieve proper hydration by drinking fluids other than plain water – including coffee, tea, sports drinks, juice and seltzer – and through the foods we eat.

One good way to tell if you’re properly hydrated is easy and free: take a look at the colour of your urine.

“I’m not saying that that’s a perfect marker, but it’s a very easily accessible one and it actually gives us a lot of good information,” Muñoz said. “We’re normally looking for, like, a light yellow colour – like lemonade or a straw kind of colour.”

Despite what you might think, completely clear urine is not necessarily a good thing because it can mean you’re overhydrated.

“That’s one of those things that I still have a lot of people tell me,” she said. “People who are well educated in biology will tell me, like, ‘My urine was clear today, so that’s good, right?’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ You know, there is such a thing as drinking too much water.”

For lots more hydration tips and tricks, listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have a question or need some help with something you’ve been doing wrong? Email us at AmIDoingItWrong@HuffPost.com, and we might investigate the topic in an upcoming episode.

It’s time to dust off your biggest and comfiest pants, cook up some blue soup and warm up your pipes for a Céline Dion sing-a-long because a very special anniversary is just around the corner.

This month marks 25 years since Bridget Jones made her big screen debut, diary in hand, introducing the world to one of 21st century British cinema’s most iconic and beloved characters.

Bridget Jones’s Diary has gone on to become one of the most enduring and game-changing romantic comedies of its time, going on to gross hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, spawn three sequels and even earn its leading lady Renée Zellweger her first Oscar nominations (she’s since gone on to win two, as it goes).

A quarter-century later, you might think you know Bridget inside and out (and love her “just as she is”), but we bet there’s still plenty about the enduring movie classic that you still don’t know.

To commemorate its 25th anniversary, here are 25 behind-the-scenes facts you probably never knew about how Bridget Jones’s Diary was made…

Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding said back in 2001: “Jane Austen’s plots are very good and have been market researched over a number of centuries so I decided simply to steal one of them.”

“I thought she wouldn’t mind,” Helen quipped. “And anyway, she’s dead.”

“Colin always had to be Mark Darcy,” producer Eric Fellner put it around the film’s release. “As the story unfolds, and the audience comes to understand Mark Darcy, he transforms from a seemingly snobby and cold intellectual into a thoughtful and sensitive man.”

The publishing house where Bridget Jones works is called Pemberley Press, a subtle nod to Mr Darcy’s estate in the Austen classic.

When Bridget walks in on the woman that Daniel Cleaver has been cheating on her with, she’s covering herself with a Pemberley Press portfolio, sporting an image of a stately home not unlike Darcy’s.

In fact, the role first went to Toni Collette, who turned it down because she was appearing in a Broadway play at the time filming was due to get underway.

She told Watch What Happens Live in 2023: “I have no regrets – life happens as it’s meant to.”

The casting process apparently took around two years before producers found their Bridget in Renée Zellweger.

Of course, the decision to cast an American actor as such an iconic Londoner wasn’t exactly met with unanimous praise, but Renée pulled it out of the bag and won over her detractors in the end.

Right before Renée worked with Barbar Berkery, the dialect coach had helped Gwyneth Paltrow on her way to winning an Oscar for Shakespeare In Love.

Before that, she’d also coached Gwynnie while she was playing a Londoner in the 90s classic Sliding Doors.

“She came in, doing quite a good British accent, but it was Princess Margaret,” Hugh recalled in the 2020 documentary Becoming Bridget Jones. “That was a little startling.”

After the suggestion that she “loosen it up a bit”, Hugh claimed that Renée’s next attempt was more “Princess Margaret having a stroke – but a week later, it was bang on”.

Sally Phillips once told Lorraine: “I’d made quite good friends with her during the filming [but] I realised towards the end, when she suddenly lost a stone in the last week, and started talking in a Texan accent at the wrap party, I’d made friends with Bridget, not Renée.”

For the second Bridget Jones film, Renée opted for prosthetics rather than gaining the weight back, and by the third and fourth films, it was decided that the actor and her on-screen counterpart should be the same size.

“A young work experience woman came into the office and introduced herself as Bridget and we were all a bit bemused by the fact that Bridget seemed to have really nice clothes (not smart, just a lot better than our outfits) and a transatlantic accent,” Mary Mount – who was working as an editorial assistant at Picador at the time – recalled last year. “I thought she looked vaguely familiar but in that way that you can’t really place.”

One of the future Oscar winner’s tasks was cutting out any press clippings about Picardo at the time.

Unfortunately, the big story surrounding Picador at the time was the fact that a Bridget Jones movie was in the works, meaning “her job was literally to cut out nasty articles about herself”.

“She kept her cool,” said Camilla Elworthy, who oversaw Renée during her work experience. “But [she] did scribble ‘rubbish’ in the margins of one piece.”

“The only reason for that was because I didn’t feel they had the script quite right for a long time,” he admitted in the lead-up to its release. “And I kept saying, it’s not working. Just get Richard Curtis to come in and help rewrite it.”

Hugh had already worked with Richard Curtis on Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill, with the two later reuniting on Love Actually and the second Bridget Jones movie.

“As soon as Richard came on board, I signed on the dotted line,” the Bafta winner added. “So, that’s all it was.”

Bridget Jones’s Diary was filmmaker Sharon Maguire’s feature-length directing debut, although she did already have a connection to the source material

Sharon was close friends with Helen Fielding, and was heavily rumoured to be have been the inspiration for “Shazzer”, the character played on screen by Sally Phillips.

“I’m delighted to be in the book, especially as Shazzer is so much wittier than me,” Sharon once told The Telegraph. “The only thing is that you go to parties and you worry that people will expect you to be funnier than you really are.”

“Helen was just writing about our lives – hilariously,” she later told the LA Times in 2016, adding: “Thirtysomethings had come out of long relationships in their 20s and realised they hadn’t ended up married or with children. We were in our 30s, behaving like we were 17-year-olds and having a great time but still floundering around asking questions about relationships, careers, biological clocks.”

“For me, it was very simple,” he told Texas Monthly in 2001. “Helen Fielding, the author of the book, is an old pal of mine, and she asked if I’d come along and make a fool of myself, and I said, ‘Why not?’.”

As for sharing the screen with the movie’s leading lady, the author added: “Renée was wonderful, I thought, and at the premiere we had a little joke. I told her that my performance is what held the film together – and she agreed. She thought it was a pivotal role.”

The Globe Tavern, to be exact, which was already notable as it’s rumoured to be the location where the Great Train Robbery of 1963 was planned.

Because of this, several locations in Snowshill, Worcestershire had to be covered in fake snow to make the setting more believable.

Colin told Entertainment Weekly in 2020: “The set was lit at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit; it melted candles and desiccated the turkey curry. I almost tore the jumper to pieces pulling it off between takes – I probably lost about 15 pounds. I had little love for it by the end.”

“We sent out the knitting challenge to approximately 20 or 30 knitters,” Sharon Morgan also told Entertainment Weekly for the same piece. “At first, none of the designs worked. They were lovely, but they just weren’t funny. So eventually we decided it had to be a moose, not a reindeer.”

“I never noticed it was a moose,” Colin added.

“There had been an earlier idea to make the fight look sexy,” Colin told the LA Times. “We were going to be buff and our shirts were going to be ripped off.

“I looked at myself and said, ‘You’re certainly never going to get that type with me’.”

“We both realised that the last time we fought was when we were 10. A playground fight,” Colin quipped. “So, we made a decision largely based on logic and common sense to make it more playful.”

He pointed out the characters are “two very ineffectual, frightened, angry yuppies going at each other – pulling hair and wanting to run away at the same time”, which needed to come across on screen.

During a video interview with Vanity Fair, Hugh later claimed: “The big fight was to stop stuntmen getting involved. They always want to come in and choreograph the whole thing and say, ‘mate, it’d be great if you swing a right hook and his head’ll go back’.

“I just thought, ‘yeah, in action films, cowboy films, whatever, that’s great, but these are two middle-class Englishmen, and they don’t fight like that’. I’ve seen them fight, and it’s shit.

“So, we managed to ban the stuntman. I think the last thing he contributed was probably the dustbin lid, and after that, it’s just me and Colin messing about.”

That’d be the bit where Mark and Daniel fly through the front window of a Greek restaurant, which they thought they’d better leave to the pros.

“Renée did it on wires – it was her backside that came down,” stunt performer Dani Biernet told Time Out in 2017. “But I did all the lining up and the wide shots without a wire.”

Dani also had to step in to play Bridget during the moment when she drunkenly tumbles out of a black cab.

“When I first did it they were all like, ‘Bloody hell, did that hurt?’. But as a stunt person, you learn how to fall,” she said.

“I remember doing it about six times and, to be fair, by take five you’re a bit bruised. But that’s part of the job.”

While it was once commented that Bridget “smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother”, fortunately Renée didn’t quite need to copy her character’s habits.

Instead, the cigarettes she was supplied to play Bridget were herbal, rather than tobacco-based.

Here in the UK, after Bridget and Mark’s big kiss, the credits roll and we’re treated to scenes of different characters being interviewed about their love story, while Robbie Williams’ rendition of Have You Met Miss Jones? plays.

Across the pond, though, the credits are interspersed with “home video footage” of Bridget and Mark as kids, recreating the paddling pool scene we hear so much about over the course of the film.

“I heard some rumour that Hugh Grant kept the pants – the big pants,” Renée Zellweger told British Vogue while promoting the fourth Bridget Jones movie in 2024.

“But I don’t know if that’s true,” she quickly clarified. “We’ll have to ask him.”

Bridget Jones’s Diary is currently available to stream on Now.

Six years after the much-loved Schitt’s Creek finale, Dan Levy is returning to the TV world with his new Netflix series.

The Emmy winner has teamed up with Bottoms and I Love LA writer Rachel Sennott to create Big Mistakes, an exciting eight-part series that’s part comedy, part heist, part caper and part gritty crime drama.

As well as co-creating Big Mistakes and writing select episodes, Dan also takes the lead as a priest who lands both himself and his sister in hot water when some petty thievery grabs the attention of a criminal organisation.

He’s joined by an impressive cast of recognisable faces in Big Mistakes, many of whom you’re sure to recognise from their TV, movie and stage careers.

For those who’ve already been enjoying the new show, here’s your quick guide to where you’ve seen the cast before…

As mentioned above, Dan Levy was a co-creator and star of the beloved sitcom Schitt’s Creek, in which he starred as David Rose alongside his famous dad, Eugene Levy.

The Canadian star initially got his start in TV presenting rather than acting, working on the likes of MTV Live, The Hills’ “after show”, the Canadian version of Great British Bake Off and the cooking show Dismantled.

Since Schitt’s Creek, his acting work has included Modern Family, Sex Education, The Idol and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

He’s also acted in films like Disney’s Haunted Mansion, the Christmas comedy Happiest Season and the dark comedy Good Grief, the first offering to come from Dan’s deal with Netflix.

Dan’s on-screen sister in Big Mistakes is played by Taylor Ortega, who Succession fans might remember for her one-episode stint as Greta, before she was cast in the US remake of the British comedy Ghosts.

You could have also seen her in Love Life, Welcome To Flatch or Netflix’s The Four Seasons, as well as films like Another Simple Favour or Wine Club.

Meanwhile, if you were a Kim Possible fan back in the day, you might be interested to hear that she played Shego in Disney’s 2019 live-action movie based on the classic cartoon.

Laurie Metcalf won three Emmys for her work in the sitcom Roseanne, but you might also recognise her for her Oscar-nominated performance as the mum character in Lady Bird.

Over the years, she’s also made memorable appearances as a murderous supermarket shopper in the iconic Desperate Housewives episode Bang, Sheldon’s mother in The Big Bang Theory, Augusta Gein in Monster and exhausted tour manager Weed in Hacks (for which she won her fourth Emmy).

Her film work includes everything from Uncle Buck, Toy Story and Leaving Las Vegas to Scream 2 and Runaway Bride.

We’d be remiss not to mention her stage career, too, as Laurie is a six-time Tony nominee (and two-time winner), treading the boards as everyone from Misery’s Annie Wilkes (opposite Bruce Willis’ Paul Sheldon), A Doll House’s Nora Helmer and Hillary Clinton.

With a screen career spanning 40 years, it’s tough to know exactly where to start with Elizabeth Perkins.

Over the decades, she’s appeared in films like The Flintstones, Miracle On 34th Street, Finding Nemo and, more recently, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and The Housemaid.

She’s perhaps best known for her TV work, though, which includes playing Celia in Weeds, Janet Malone in This Is Us, Birdie in Glow and Jackie O’Neill in Sharp Objects, which earned her a Critics’ Choice Award nomination.

Horror fans might be familiar with Abby’s performances in the likes of Knock At The Cabin, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things or Hell Of A Summer.

Abby has also had minor roles in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women adaptation, the sinister Black Mirror episode Arkangel, the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul and the 21st century revival of the sitcom Mad About You.

Between 2015 and 2018, Mark Ivanir had a recurring role in the thriller Homeland, playing Ivan Krupin, an SVR agent.

His other notable TV roles have included the Netflix political drama Zero Day, the dark comedy Barry and Amazon Prime’s original series Transparent.

As for his film work, he has appeared in Schindler’s List, The Terminal and the critically-panned musical Emilia Perez.

A comedian as well as an actor, Jack Innanen rose to prominence in the early 2020s thanks to his viral TikTok videos, landing him roles in the Canadian series The Dessert and The Office Movers.

Since then, he’s appeared in the main cast of the sitcom Adults, and recently hinted at a possible role in the next season of Heated Rivalry.

Originally hailing from Turkey, Boran Kuzum’s work primarily consists of shows and films in his home country including Wounded Love, Bihter: A Forbidden Passion and Magnificent Century: Kösem.

Before being cast in Big Mistakes, he also played a pivotal role in another Netflix series, Kimler Geldi, Kimler Geçti (known in English-speaking territories as Thank You, Next).

Joe Barbara’s career began in the late 1990s, with roles in US soaps like Another World (which he appeared in over a four-year period) and All My Children.

More recently, he’s acted in FBI, Blue Bloods and lent his voice to the Grand Theft Auto games series, playing crime boss Ray Boccino.

Comedian, writer and actor Josh Fadem’s stand-out work has included playing Phil Busby in the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, Pat Stanley in On Becoming A God In Central Florida, Simon Barrons in 30 Rock and Joey Dixon in Better Call Saul.

He also repeatedly portrayed Sean Penn in the sketch comedy series The Midnight Show and Adolf Hitler in The Crossroads Of History, in addition to roles in Reservation Dogs, Tulsa King, Minx and Adventure Time.

Playing Tareq in Big Mistakes is definitely Jacob Guttierez’s biggest TV role to date, but he has appeared in the TV series A Crime To Remember, Bull and Dear Edward in recent years.

He’s also acted in short films, including A Night Off and It’s Not You, It’s Her.

Big Mistakes is now streaming on Netflix.

A child psychiatrist has opened up about a pattern she sees routinely where a neurodivergent child will struggle at school, and the adults around them mistake their symptoms for poor behaviour or a bad attitude.

Dr Anya Ciobanca, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at The ADHD Centre, says children who appear disengaged, inconsistent or emotionally volatile at school may be experiencing something far more complex than just a bad attitude.

“Behaviour is never the whole story,” she says. “When we approach a child with curiosity rather than judgement, everything changes.”

Conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can go undiagnosed for years because there are often misunderstandings over symptoms. For example, people might think kids who have it are just hyperactive, but there are also more subtle signs that can show up, like day-dreaming or emotional dysregulation.

Girls in particular are likely to remain undiagnosed until later life. Reviews suggest ADHD is identified more often in boys in childhood at a ratio of 3:1 (males to females), while the ratio appears to even out in adulthood at 1:1.

Experts previously told HuffPost UK this happens largely because there’s a gender divide in how ADHD symptoms are expressed (girls tend to demonstrate more inattentive symptoms), and social expectations on girls can lead to them keeping quiet, carrying on, and developing sophisticated masking strategies (sometimes at detriment to their mental health).

“There is a version of ADHD that looks, from the outside, like daydreaming or simply not caring,” says Dr Ciobanca. “But internally, that child may be working extraordinarily hard just to keep up. The effort of masking is immense, and it has a cost.”

In classrooms, children are often doing the best they can with a nervous system that’s working against them, but there are certain signs they might be fighting a hidden battle and need more support.

1. Avoidance of school or specific lessons – this might look like persistent reluctance or distress around certain subjects or transitions.
2. Difficulty starting or completing work – this is often mistaken for laziness, says Dr Ciobanca, but rooted in overwhelm or difficulties with executive function.
3. Emotional outbursts or withdrawal – this can look like frustration, tears or shutting down, particularly after school (also known as after-school restraint collapse).
4. Chronic tiredness or physical complaints of headaches, which can be linked to anxiety or sensory overload.
5. Low self-esteem, negative self-talk, and appearing to cope at school (masking) while falling apart at home.

One child Dr Chiobanca worked with had been labelled by her school as inconsistent and difficult to motivate. But in reality, she was overwhelmed and had developed a profound sense of shame around her difficulties.

Girls with undiagnosed ADHD are “more likely to blame themselves, turning their anger and pain inward”, according to the Child Mind Institute, which noted they’re also more likely to experience depression, anxiety and eating disorders than those without ADHD.

“Once we understood the underlying picture – the interaction between her ADHD, her anxiety and her environment – we could make meaningful changes,” says the psychiatrist. “She no longer had to spend every day just fighting to survive it. That freed up an enormous amount of energy for actually learning.”

With one in 20 children thought to have ADHD, Dr Ciobanca wants to see earlier intervention, more flexible teaching, and emotional wellbeing placed at the centre of education rather than its margins.

“Too much support comes too late. We cannot expect children to learn well when they do not feel safe,” she adds.

If you think your child might be neurodivergent (research suggests around 15-20% of people are), it’s worth exploring this subtly with your child. Dr Chiobanca advises parents to ask their children: “What’s the hardest part of your day?” as this can reveal more than questions about effort or behaviour.

It’s also worth speaking to your child’s school – specifically their class teacher or SENCO (a special educational needs coordinator) – if you notice a pattern of distress or avoidance. Months of avoidance or emotional dysregulation are a signal worth acting on, she notes.

The psychiatrist also urges parents to separate the behaviour from the child, as “struggling children often already feel like failures; they need to know you’re on their side”.

While NHS waiting times for diagnosis can stretch for months, it might also be worth considering a professional assessment. “ADHD and anxiety remain significantly underdiagnosed, particularly in girls,” says Dr Ciobanca.

Yet when children feel safe and understood, “they are far more able to learn and grow,” she adds. “That is the kind of education system worth working towards.”