 Drinking Tips For Healthy Hydration
Start your morning’s right:
Morning is when you are most full of toxin and dehydrated. Reach for a big glass of water first thing in the morning – even before coffee or tea. This water in the morning really gets the blood flowing.
•Drink a glass of water when you get up and another when you go to bed.
•Take regular water break breaks.
•Avoid relying on sodas to provide your fluid need.
•Drink water before and after food; ideally drink a glass of water half an hour before you eat your meal and half an hour after the meal. You can drink water with meals, and drink water anytime your body feels like it.
It is very important you balance your sodium intake with your water consumption.
Take 1/4 teaspoon of salt per litre of water - every 4-5 glasses of water. Be sure to get sea salt. The best is Celtic sea salt or Himalayan sea salt, both of which are readily available at any health food store.
You should always drink water prior to eating and after eating, to support the digestive process.
The stomach depends on water to help digest food, and lack of water makes it harder for nutrients to be broken down and used as energy. The liver, which dictates where all nutrients go, also needs water to help convert stored fat into usable energy. If you are dehydrated, the kidneys turn to the liver for backup, diminishing the liver’s ability to metabolize stored fat. The resulting reduced blood volume will interfere with your body’s ability to remove toxins and supply your cells with adequate nutrients.
Keep an ECOtanka by your side at all the times and carry it with you everywhere, to the gym, in your car, to your office.
Start by adding water to your daily routine, small amounts at first during the first week and then incorporate more as needed. The point is not to wait until you’re thirsty to drink. In no time you will be drinking a number of litres per day.
Don’t forget to balance your water intake with sodium intake. Drink at least 1 litre of water for every 60 minutes of exercise. Drink more if it’s hot. During exercise, such as playing sport on a hot summer day, you can lose up to 2 litres per hour of fluid per hour. Water and a balance salt intake is your best bet to keep healthy and hydrated. During exercise, it is recommended to replenish fluid at least every 20 minutes.
The benefits of drinking water could easily number in the hundreds. But the most popular reason for drinking water may not be widely known. If this one fact was common knowledge, everybody would have water bottles attached to their bodies.
What is this great benefit of drinking water?
Drinking Water Speeds up the Metabolism
German researches reported that after test subjects drank two cups of water, their metabolism soared by 30% and stayed elevated for 30-40 minutes.
Drinking 10-12 glasses of water a day can help you lose weight. Now how is that for a benefit?
What that means in weight loss terms is that drinking water increases the calories you burn while exercising. After your exercise session is completed and you drink more water your body continues to burn calories.
Who would have guessed? The better news is for couch potatoes. The metabolism is still affected in a positive way by drinking water, even if you don't work out.
Drinking Water is the Ultimate Anti-Aging Ingredient
Water is the ultimate anti-aging product. Water plumps up the skin and smoothes out some facial wrinkles. Water is the only true moisturizer. The common sense reason to drink water is that our bodies are made up of mostly this substance.
Water is Fuel to the Body
We lose a certain amount of water each day through urination, respiration and perspiration. We must replace this fluid to remain healthy. The body is estimated to be made up of from 60-70 percent water. So to keep our bodies running smoothly, we have to replace the water on a daily basis.
Water regulates the temperature of the body. If you are prone to chills or hot flashes, try drinking more water. You can't get your body in balance without giving it all the liquid nutrients that it requires. Since our blood is over 50% water, we need the blood flowing smoothly to take nutrients to our organs. Every organ in the body needs water to operate properly.
Water is Brain Food
If you are having a fuzzy day, and the brain does not seem to be working properly, drink a glass of water. The brain depends on the water flowing through your body to work efficiently. Drinking sufficient amounts of water to keep your body running smoothly is the best gift that you can give yourself.
Water's lost from the body through urine and sweat, and must be replaced through the diet. If you don't consume enough you can become dehydrated, causing symptoms such as headaches, tiredness and loss of concentration. Chronic dehydration can contribute to a number of health problems such as constipation and kidney stones.
The body gets its fluid from three sources:
•Drinks, either plain water or as part of other beverages including tea, coffee and squash
•Solid foods, especially fruit and vegetables (even foods such as bread and cheese provide small amounts of fluid)
•As a by-product of chemical reactions within the body
•Most healthy adults need between one and a half to three litres a day, so aim to drink six to eight medium glasses of fluid daily. Beverages such as tea, coffee and fruit juices count towards fluid intake, and may bring with them other nutrients or benefits.
•You may require more fluid if you're very physically active or during periods of hot weather.
•You can judge whether you're drinking enough by the colour of your urine. If it's a pale straw colour then your fluid intake is probably fine. If your urine is dark yellow, you probably need to drink more.
Bottled Water
Spring water is collected directly from the spring where it rises from the ground, and must be bottled at the source. UK sources of spring water must meet certain hygiene standards and may be further treated so they meet pollution regulations.
Mineral water emerges from under the ground, then flows over rocks before it's collected, resulting in a higher content of various minerals. Unlike spring water, it can't be treated except to remove grit and dirt. Different brands of spring and mineral waters have differing amounts of minerals depending on their source.
The drinking water available from UK taps is perfectly adequate to replenish fluid loss, and undergoes many processes to bring it up to the standards set out in the UK Water Supply Regulations. However you may wish to consider having a simple water filter or a reverse osmosis system to ensure you have the best quality drinking water.
Summary
Water is involved in all bodily functions: digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, maintaining temperature (homeostasis) integrity and the strength of all bodily structures. Today, the water is polluted with hundreds of toxins and impurities. Authorities only test for a small number of them. Your body, being primarily water, requires sufficient daily water replacement in order to function efficiently. Water treatments, that are aimed to render our drinking water bacteriologically safe, have been proven ineffective and the presence of certain pathogenic bacteria like giardia and cryptosporidium are just some of the many examples. Viewing the effects of individual chemicals, inorganic minerals and their by-products, you can see a link to today's major diseases. If you drink devitalised, impure water how can you expect vitality and health. Dehydration, due to the offensive taste of the water and the introduction of commercial sugar loaded beverages, has become another contributing factor to disease. The advice of Dr Batmanghelidj to stop treating thirst with medications holds lots of merit. Mineral water may be wonderful to bathe in, however, the presence of inorganic minerals makes it undesirable. Pure water may become the medicine of the future. 'Oxygen enriched and free of radioactive and chemical compounds' may be what appears on the label of our bottle water in the next millennium. At this stage Reverse Osmosis is the best available option for us the general consumer
Further reading www.watercure.com/index.html
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