We see the necessity of water in the world around us daily. Trees and crops need water to grow. Rain replenishes the streams and streams feed the biggest and smallest creatures in our environment. We see what happens when there is a drought like what the west coast is currently experiencing. Less life, limited life, death. Why then do many of us imagine the case will be any different if we deprive our own bodies of water?
Water is needed for nearly all the essential functions of the body. You’ve likely heard that over 60% of the body itself is made up of water. Did you also know that your blood is more than 90% water? Meaning the highway by which every system in your body receives nutrients and takes out the trash is, almost entirely, water. Imagine for a moment attempting to wash a dirty car without water. You could scrub away and even apply soap but without water, you’d still have a mess. Your body is essentially the same way. Your major organs, such as the kidneys, liver, colon and skin work pretty hard to get rid of trash whether it’s through defecation or sweating. Garbage that yields no nutrients to the body and could actually be quite harmful if it hung around is ejected through one mechanism or another and all of it requires a good deal of water. This built in detoxification system that runs on water is really the baseline of every gimmicky “detox” plan you might see. Before one spends a ton on a special pill or powder to cleanse one’s body of toxins, one might try simply increasing one’s daily water intake for a month instead. You might be surprised at the difference just that small change can make. There is no magic amount of water intake that everyone should drink but a good starting point is your weight in ounces divided by 2. So for example, if you weigh 150 lbs, that would be 150/2 = 75 ounces of water. It’s also important that a person pair an increase in water intake with a balanced diet so that they maintain the level of nutrients they need as they increase their body’s ability to use them.
There are also a number of additional factors that could determine how much water you drink. Exercise requires more water as sweating, one of those very important toxin-flushing systems we mentioned, also dehydrates you. So, if you sweat for a while, you need to replace the water lost. The same is true of crying, bathroom use and even bleeding. Certain foods can also require more water to process or cause you to flush water from your system faster. American culture has readily incorporated a coffee habit into common, daily life. You may have heard that coffee is a diuretic, albeit a relatively mild one. That said, coffee, while a liquid, may actually increase your overall need to drink water as you excrete fluids more often. These dietary and lifestyle adjustments are usually pretty minimal but if you find them overwhelming, regularly consuming the recommended amount of water for the day is an excellent beginning!
Below are a few links regarding the importance of water consumption if you’d like some additional reading. Later, we will talk about water quality here in the U.S. and if it’s still a relevant issue today!