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The Health Benefits of Drinking Water
Your body needs water every day to stay in good health – but how much? Well the average adult uses up around 2.8 litres a day and the shortfall that you need to drink in 24 hours is around 1.5 litres as we get a certain amount of water from food. That’s around 8 glasses a day to stay healthy. 8 glasses of water is really the minimum amount – if it’s hot or if you exercise you will need more because you will sweat more. Now for some facts: Our bodies are two thirds water, around 16% of the water in your system right now is being stored in muscles, which will become soft and flabby if you are dehydrated. When you realise that the saliva glands alone use up to 3 pints a day in keeping your mouth moist, you can see how easy it is to become dehydrated. The solution is simple – you need to increase the amount of fluids you are drinking. The trouble is, most people prefer drinks like tea, coffee, soft drinks and alcohol, and these are not exactly the right kinds of fluids to remain healthy! Alcohol forces fluids out of the body, causing dehydration that is responsible for the worst hangovers. Soft drinks are packed with sugar and unhealthy empty calories and also make you more thirsty. This is because your blood sugar levels are too high, and as the body craves more liquid to dilute the glucose which can be toxic to cells, you drink more. A lot of people can be addicted to drinks like coke, so it seems the soft sugared drink industry has it sewn up here to keep you drinking their products all day long! So what should we be drinking?In an Ideal world all our tap water should be fit enough to drink but tap water in some areas are full of chemicals or simply don’t taste too good. Some bottled waters can pose more health problems than tap water as tap waters have to pass more stringent tests for purity than mineral water does. So the best water for taste and purity is natural mineral water from glass bottles.Some studies have concluded that water in bottles made of soft plastic may contain chemicals that are residual from the process of making it and tests have shown they can mimic the effect of oestrogen in the body and disrupt hormone balance. Even true spa waters may have been polluted. So what to do? One answer may be to invest in a water purifying system. This can be fitted to your water supply or by a jug filter preferably made of glass but a hard plastic one would be fine. These filter out the chlorine taste and other impurities and make the water taste much nicer than straight out of a tap. These are not really that expensive – and can cost as little as twenty pounds or less. Replacement filters last quite a long time. Tea and coffee are traditionally discounted as these contain caffeine. Caffeine does cause a loss of water, but only a fraction of what you are actually drinking. Recent studies suggest that for every cup of tea or coffee we drink, two thirds of that is water you are actually absorbing. The purpose of the study was to find out if caffeine drinks were dehydrating in healthy people drinking normal amounts. However although tea and coffee do hydrate you more than was at first thought, they can have other effects on health. Too much tea and coffee can rob your body of minerals, can make you “wired” and suppress the immune system so moderation seems to be the key. Water is still the best drink for health. If you feel you cannot drink as much as 1.5 or 2 litres of water a day, try flavouring it with lemon, lime, ginger or mint. Fruit and herbal teas and diluted fresh fruit juice are also very good for you and count towards the daily amount of fluid we need to drink each day to stay healthy. Soya milk flavoured with fresh soft fruit and liquidized in a blender to make a smoothie is another good choice.
What happens if we don’t get enough water?Even mild dehydration can lead to constipation, headaches, lethargy and mental confusion. It can also make you more prone to kidney stones and infections of the bladder. When just one percent of body fluid is lost, body temperature goes up and concentration becomes more difficult. The thirst mechanism kicks in when you’ve lost between 1 and 2 percent of body water. However, sometimes the thirst reflex is often mistaken for hunger. If we ignore it or mistake it for hunger, dehydration can continue to around 3 percent, where it seriously affects mental and physical performance. A test you can try: Pinch the skin on your hand or forearm between your thumb and index finger. Does the skin spring back straight away like elastic? If it doesn’t spring back in an instant or leaves a small impression then you need to drink more as there is not enough water in your tissues. How else can we tell how much water we need?Any combination of these symptoms might help you become more in tune with your body’s need for water: Are you prone to constipation? Another way to tell whether you need to drink more is by checking the colour of your urine. If it is very strongly coloured, then you are not drinking enough. Ideally it should be a healthy light, straw coloured yellow. If your urine is often clear, like water, then you are drinking too much and not taking in enough nutrients for health. Drinking too much can be equally dangerous as not drinking enough. Too much water taxes your kidneys and taken to the extreme can kill you. A man died recently after drinking 10 litres in a few hours. Far more people, however die or have poor health because they are drinking too little.
Further reading
The healing benefits of water as Hydro-therapy
What about the benefits of sunshine?
How does drinking alcohol, coffee, tea and cow's milk affect us? Read further about the use of hormones in milk and meat production here
Contains articles and facts pertaining to the need to drink good quality water. Covers water borne diseases, their severity, spread, history and treatments. Explains how and why water should and can be enhanced to add to its importance to the health of the body.
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