The Importance of Staying Hydrated

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Today’s food market has greatly expanded the amount of drinking options for people to choose from, from energy drinks to carbonated drinks. While the vast majority of these are only sugary alternatives, people mostly choose these types of beverages over others, often forgetting to consume the most important fluid we should be consuming; water.

The human body is made up of two thirds water and each tissue within it requires proper amounts of water in order to serve its role. Water is an essential part for maintaining overall health and every individual needs it. But, despite it’s importance, many people still overlook the importance of staying hydrated. Because every function of our bodies depends on some form of water in order to work properly, when we lack the necessary amount of water our body needs to undergo through each function, these can be greatly affected or altered.

It’s not uncommon for people to occasionally catch a cold but a lack of proper hydration can actually make you feel sick. Dehydration can cause headaches, a lack of energy, ultimately making you feel lethargic, and even cause gastrointestinal issues such as aches, cramping, constipation, and diarrhea, which can all be caused from improper hydration as well. The body requires water to transport nutrients into our cells but when there is an insufficient amount of water, these processes don’t occur. By not drinking the appropriate amounts of water, the digestive tract slows down and all of the absorption processes are back-tracked, and the absorption of nutrients is greatly reduced. These problems occur simply because of a lack of water.

Poor hydration can also affect the kidneys because when we lack water in the body, the kidneys actually start working harder than they should to filter out the blood. The kidneys usually are the ones to alert us when we are thirsty but by this point, chances are our body is already dehydrated and we should be drinking more water to replenish what we need.

The standard daily intake of a proper amount of drinking water is eight 8 ounce glasses of water per day. While that might seem difficult for some people to achieve, it’s a target amount of water we should all be striving to consume in order to improve our health and maintain all the proper functions within our body.

By Dr. Alex Jimenez

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