We can stay alive for days without eating food but it’s impossible to survive without drinking water for a few days. The reason is water is a vital part of various vital organs and total body weight. Staying hydrated is the green signal for our body to perform a lot of critical functions. Besides assisting in important body functions, sufficient water intake ensures several health benefits, such as improving digestion and metabolism, promoting physical performance, supporting weight loss, and protecting cognitive health.
Facilitates Digestion
Drinking water while eating a meal ennobles the gastric acid secretion that helps to break down the food you eat. Water also dissolves water-soluble vitamins, like vitamins C and B vitamins, and transmits them to the rest of your body for use. Moreover, sufficient water intake can help you avoid and get rid of constipation.
Supports metabolism
Various studies and research said, that drinking water can significantly boost our metabolism. No one wonders to hear that water is life and drinking the required amount of water can easily help our metabolism by up to 25% immediately after one hour of drinking it. So, what it indicates is that drinking some water every 60 minutes will keep our metabolism absolutely well. The metabolic benefits may also play a role in enhancing exercise performance and weight loss.
Stay hydrated during physical performance
It’s mandatory to ensure that your body is well-hydrated while doing physical exercise, especially for athletes and ones who take intense physical training exercises. Our well-hydrated body helps gain positive effects during physical exercise by improving the blood flow in muscles and skin. It also improves our cardiac functions and the volume of our blood.
Promotes weight loss
According to several research reports, sufficient water intake can impel thermogenesis (the heat production in our body), which results in weight loss. It has been recorded by research on 50 obese girls, who were taken through a special experiment to drink water 16 ounces three times a day for eight weeks. As the study was over, girls not only reduce weight but also developed a better body mass index (BMI) and healthy body composition. A similar experiment was done on adult women that also showed satisfactory results.
Protects cognition
Our cognitive functions are basically brain-based skills. Our water intake greatly affects our cognitive capabilities. It’s possible, that mild dehydration can negatively influence our frame of mind and cognitive functions. Furthermore, drinking inadequate water can leave deleterious effects on short-term memory loss, intentness, alertness, skills to solve puzzles and mathematics, and psychomotor skills.
Easy way to identify the dehydration
The best way to identify dehydration in our bodies is to check the color of the urine. If you find it clear or faded yellow, then congratulations… you’re possibly well-hydrated. But in case it is noticed in dark yellow color, that’s an indication of dehydration. So, go ahead and drink up water.
The best water to drink
• Tap water
Tap water is good if a filter can be added to improve the taste of the water.
• Spring water
We must be alert. A lot of business houses sell spring water as bottled water, but many popular brands of bottled water contain disinfectant by-products, industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs, and bacteria.
• Distilled water
They can be drunk but they lack beneficial minerals in them.
• Electrolyte water
The potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium in electrolyte water are beneficial for the ones who are suffering from vomiting or diarrhea and mainly living in hot climate areas. It is equally beneficial for those who live in a hot climate or work out intensely for an hour or more.
• Alkaline water
Alkaline minerals are contained in alkaline water and are very effective as a pro-oxidant or an antioxidant. But we need more and more research to conclude its actual benefits and efficacy.
• Mineral water
Mineral water is rich in minerals like magnesium, sulfur, calcium, and other benefits. The source of mineral water is underground mineral springs. According to research reports, mineral water can lower blood pressure in people with low magnesium and calcium levels and drinking mineral water can also improve our bone health.
A few tips to stay hydrated:
1. Anytime you feel thirsty, is a signal that you are dehydrated.
2. Alcohol and soft drinks are dehydrating by nature, therefore avoiding them can help us maintain an ideal hydration level.
3. Adding hydrating foods to our diet can be helpful.
4. For an all-time easy access to water we can carry a water bottle to quench our thirst we need it as and when.
