I’m sure you have heard from someone at some time about the importance of proper hydration. Your body is about 75% water and your brain is about 85% water, so it would make since to replace the water we lose through respiration and sweat so that the body can function properly. “But what does that really mean? Just, why is it so important? And how much water should you drink?” Opinions vary, but I’ll give you my take on it.
Let me first explain what happens when we get dehydrated. When we work out hard enough to break a sweat, we lose water from our skin and muscles. To replace that water, the body will pull water from it’s inner spaces (between organs) and from cells and organs. So, you kinda dry out in the inside. Once you stop sweating, your body will try to balance out it’s fluids. But if you don’t replace the fluid you lost, you end up being a little dryer inside, if that makes since. Your cells and organs won’t have the necessary amount of fluid to function properly, so your body process slow down. Here’s a fun fact for you too. If you go to bed dehydrated, you wake up even more dehydrated from loss of water through respiration. You don’t magically regain necessary water when you sleep. So it is very possible to be chronically dehydrated, which causes a rainbow of problems. Let me name a few. Arthritis, Back Pain, Angina, Migrains, Colitis, Asthma, High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, High Cholesterol…. I could keep going. Let me give you a personal story to back that up.
My husband, a wonderful man, had a life long condition of not drinking enough water. So you could say he was chronically dehydrated. He didn’t notice the effects of it until we moved to the dry climate of Colorado. We both enjoy running and heavy weight training which provokes sweat and adds severity to chronic dehydration. He started feeling some respiratory difficulty when jogging. What was a normal, easy run, soon became more and more difficult for him. The shortness of breath soon turned into tightness in the chest and then progressed to extreme pain in the chest and down the arm. Does that sound like a heart attack or what!?!?! So, he went through the battery of tests… not a heart attack… Bless his heart (no pun intended), he is so fit that they couldn’t get his heart rate over 120 in the stress test. Because of the inaccurate stress test they wanted to do a Heart Cath and treat with meds and this and that… Anyway, before he resigned himself to that, he started doing his homework. I had just finished a short class on hydration and started dropping hints that that might play a roll in his condition. So, he did some research on water and found his answer! He found this web site www.watercure.com It confirms everything I believe about water. I encourage you to visit the site for an explanation on how water cures the above mentioned illnesses. But for what my husband WAS feeling… He was so dehydrated that his blood had become viscous (thick) and is was hard for his heart to pump it through veins and arteries, hence the pain in his chest when his heart rate became elevated. He immediately started drinking enough water and within two days he suffered NO more angina! And you know what’s really funny… my husband used to call me the peeing machine, because I drink so much water…. now he’s a peeing machine too!!!
To answer the question, how much water should you be drinking; a good rule of thump is to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water. So if you weigh 200lbs, you need 100oz of water per day. But, don’t just take my word for it, please visit the above mentioned web site for more details!
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