Ace Your Hydration
With World Water Day being highlighted on March 22, The CG Zest Wellness team also wants to bring to your attention the importance of fresh drinking water when it comes to your health.
The human body is explained as being made up of 60% water. This means that more than half the body requires water for its hour-by-hour metabolic process like new cell formation, movement of food through the gut, creation of digestive juices, breathing, and most important blood flow. We have to take hydration very seriously or we run the risk of exposing our bodies to chronic disease and premature aging.
There are many ways we can consider to improve our daily water intake. There are many ways we can consider to improve our daily water intake. Some examples include:
Choosing your favorite water jug/mug and taking the initiative to fill and drink each hour.
Make ice cubes, with or without fruits, to suck on throughout the day or simply add to a glass of water.
Consuming the recommended 5-6 servings of fruits and vegetables as these food supply a valuable serving of water in each serving.
Drinking water the instant you wake up and another glass before bed.
Consider other beverages you consume and measure the volume and quantity of those beverages against your water consumption.
Add cucumbers, mint, and/or lemon to water should you not like the taste of water.
Clearly, there are many ways we can improve our daily water intake but it takes one’s ability to be aware of how much water we consume and stay consistent at consuming the recommended volume of water every day. Research tells us that every human being should consume a specific volume of water based on their weight. While others tell us that by ensuring we consume an accurate amount of water we not only regulate our body temperature and function but also our body’s metabolic response to control weight. How much water each of us should drink depends on one’s health, how active our daily routines are, and our geographical locations.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that adequate daily fluid intake is:
* About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids for men.
* About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women.
For years we have all heard the recommendation to drink eight 8oz glasses of water today. While this recommendation might be easy for wellness enthusiasts it’s sometimes challenging for non-enthusiasts. However, meeting this minimum recommendation of eight 8oz’s per day serves as a baseline for every individual. If you are consistently reaching this recommendation then I encourage you to challenge yourself to drink even more.
A comment heard by nutritionists when we suggest an increase in water consumption is that, “drinking more water forces me to go to the bathroom more often.” While this is a fear for many, an increase in urination or defecation due to sufficient water consumption serves as a reminder from our bodies that our bodies are getting the required amount of water and are functioning in a healthy manner. This also helps to indicate that cells are getting an adequate amount of water to perform their needed mechanical processes to support major organs like the brain, heart, bones, muscles, and gut. A good guide to understanding your level of hydration is monitoring the color of your urine. The clearer it is means you are well hydrated but a yellow, orange or red color indicates that your hydration levels are not healthy. See the chart below:
As a recommendation to you, drinking water at the top of each hour of the day ensures that we don’t miss out on our water recommendations and that we are protecting our bodies from disease and aging. However, like an old proverb tells us “We can only take the horse to the water, we can’t make them drink it”. You are in control of your own hydration!
