Fact Check: Drinking Water In The Morning Does NOT Cause Diabetes

No Correlation

Can drinking water as soon as you wake up in the morning cause diabetes? No, that's not true: Research has found no correlation between the two events.

The claim originated from a video (archived here) published by @danyulrecipe on Tiktok, on August 25, 2023, under the title "아침에 일어나자마자 물1잔 마시는 거는 건강에 좋다고 알고 계시죠? 하지만 위험하다는 점 지금 바로 확인하세요!" or "You might think drinking water first thing in the morning is good for your health, right? But check this out, it is dangerous."

(Translations from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff).

It opened:

[Unexpected cause of Diabetes] 5. Germs in your mouth when you wake up.

This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:

(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Sep 1 01:37:05 2023 UTC)

The TikTok advises not to drink water without brushing your teeth first, claiming this can cause diabetes, from a pancreatic infection:

When you drink water without brushing your teeth first, gum-disease-causing germs can get into the pancreas and break your insulin-generating cells.

Pancreatic infection can cause pancreatitis, and pancreatitis can cause diabetes. However, there is no evidence that drinking water without brushing your teeth first can cause pancreatitis or a pancreatic infection. Lead Stories searched on September 5, 2023, the phrase 'drinking water without brushing teeth first can cause diabetes' in Google News' index of thousands of credible news sites and did not find any results supporting the claim. The phrase 'drinking water first in the morning can cause diabetes' also did not yield any substantial results. Moreover, research has shown that drinking water is not considered a risk factor or a direct cause of pancreatitis.