Your Nutritional and Vitamin Supplement Information Resource

posted by Ronald on Apr 30

Our bodies are composed of ninety percent water. To keep our skin, hair, and nails healthy, we need to drink water everyday. The origin of the recommendation to drink eight glasses of water per day is not clear. Eight glasses a day is a common mantra of health gurus, personal trainers and those promoting weight loss diets. It’s a common sight: people carrying water bottles at the mall, around the office, wherever they go. It’s enough to make you wonder whether dehydration is a major public health menace. Drink water, you are told even if you are not thirsty to improve your health, your ability to exercise, and to avoid the dire consequences of dehydration. But what exactly is dehydration, and is all that water really necessary?

Dehydration is the condition of having lost too much water from the body. Other than those who have no access to water, people who are most likely to become dehydrated are those who exercise without drinking enough and children or elderly people who are sick. For a child who is too young to drink on his or her own and too young to express thirst, adequate water intake may become a problem, especially if the child is losing excessive fluids from an illness. Symptoms of dehydration include thirst, headache, fatigue, and dizziness. Muscles may cramp or ache, especially if exercise is attempted or continued. Because blood pressure may fall, you may feel lightheaded when sitting or standing, and, in severe cases, there may be loss of consciousness, kidney failure, and death.

Fever leads to loss of body fluids through the skin and during breathing, a process called “insensible” water loss. As a result, an infection that causes fever, diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting is a powerful cause of water loss, especially in infants. A reduced sense of thirst in the elderly is thought to play a role for their vulnerability to dehydration. Why the thirst mechanism becomes less sensitive as we age is not entire clear. Another cause for dehydration in the elderly is that Medications that many people take as they get older that promote water loss (such as diuretics, or “water pills,” for high blood pressure) also increase the risk of dehydration.

But who does not get dehydrated? The vast majority of people who have access to water get plenty by what they ordinarily drink and eat. Though we don’t often think of foods as sources of water, they are. In fact, food contributes in a significant way to the average person’s fluid intake. For example, a carrot is 87% water, and broccoli is over 90% water. Dehydration is unusual in healthy children and adults who eat a balanced diet, drink when thirsty, and take some commonsense precautions when spending time in hot or humid environments.

The suggestion to drink eight glasses a day probably persists because it does not seem to be harmful and may have other benefits besides preventing the unlikely event of dehydration. For example, it may reduce hunger (and so promotes weight loss) by briefly filling the stomach. And to be fair, the suggestion to drink eight glasses of water per day is not wrong, it could be helpful to the person at risk for dehydration but it simply may be unnecessary for most people, and it gives the impression there is a problem when none exists.

Some people says that water affects our health more than any other nutrients. There are millions of people who get most of their fluids from tea without any ill effects. The scientists also looked at the theory that drinking more water makes people feel full and helps them lose weight. Some studies have shown that water intake affects the rate that kidneys clear salt and urea from the body.

Other studies suggest you drink alkaline water in order to wash out acidic wastes, the universal cause of many adult diseases. By drinking alkaline water, the aging process can be reversed and the wastes can be reduced in the long-term to a level of a much younger person. These waste products are compounded by the many hazardous chemicals and pesticides typically found in the body, due to tap water and food contamination. In order for toxins to leave the cells and nutrients to enter the cells, the cells must be in contact with water. The functions of the organs can be revived.

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