“Drink 8 glasses of water everyday”. This is one of the recommendations where you can see from various dietary guidelines. However, the amount of water you need might be more or less than the recommended, where there are many factors that will affect every individual water consumption amount. The factors that will affect water consumption are: gender, body size, activity level, weather, illness, pregnancy or breastfeeding.
- Gender: according to U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the average recommended daily water intake from both food and drinks for men are 3.7 liters and for women are 2.7 liters.
- Body size: people who have bigger body size will need more water than those with smaller body size.
- Activity level: higher activity level or carry out more exercises can causes more water loss.
- Weather: hot weather causes water loss through sweating; cool weather causes water loss through increase urination.
- Illness: fever, vomit or diarrhea will cause water loss, which is necessary to increase water intake to prevent dehydration.
- Pregnancy or breastfeeding: women who are pregnant or breastfeeding need more water to stay hydrated.
This is a truth that it is not necessary to drink 8 glasses of water everyday, but you need to drink as much as your body need to prevent dehydration and maintain healthy body function. A human body consisted at least 60% of water, while it is more than 70% of water in a baby’s body. Water are much more important than food, where human can survives for several days without food but unlikely to be survived more than three days without water.
The important roles of water in human body:
- Maintain the body temperature. Water is important in regulating the body temperature. Sweating is one of the ways to regulate the body temperature. When the body temperature increase, sweat gland release sweat to skin surface, where the evaporation of sweat helps to cool down the body temperature.
- Flush out toxin waste from the body (urination). Water acts as the vehicle that helps to excrete the toxin and waste out from the body. Besides, it also helps to balance the body electrolyte level (sodium, potassium, and etc.).
- Aid in digestion and absorption of food. Water is the main component of saliva, which act as a solvent that helps to breakdown food for digestion. Water is also important for delivering the food through gastrointestinal tract and for better absorption in intestine.
- Increase body metabolism. Drink more water can speed up metabolic rate, where it increase amount of calories burned, which also increase the resting metabolism (resting energy expenditure).
- Mucus consisted about 95% of water, it provides protection against dust and microorganism. Water is important to maintain and moisten the mucosal membrane, which will also affect the viscosity of mucus.
- Blood consisted about 80% of water, it helps to deliver nutrients and oxygen to different parts of body. Besides, drinking water is also helpful to maintain blood pressure at the proper level.
- Synovial fluid contains about 30% of water, it helps to lubricate joint, which also reduces the friction between bones.
Signs and Symptoms
Drinking water is absolutely important to maintain your body health, but how do you know your whether body is lacking of water or not? Your body will tell you with signs and symptoms of insufficient water intake:
- Dry mouth and thirsty
- Fatigue or headache
- Less and dark color urine
- Constipation
- Inflammation
Signs and symptoms mentioned above is possibly occurs during insufficient water intake, but it is possible that signs and symptoms occurred are due to nutrients deficiency or other health problems.
Ways to Increase Daily Water Intake
Drink plenty of water every day can be one of the targets in practicing a healthy lifestyle. This might be a problem for those who wanted to practice healthy lifestyle but always have insufficient water intake. Here are some ways to increase your daily water intake:
- Set a target. Always bring your own water bottle (filled with water please), you may draw line on your bottle as a target of amount of water you want to drink by time.
- Download apps such as Drink Water Reminder, Daily Water, iDrated, and etc. These apps may help to remind you and keep track of your daily water intake.
- Always bring water (in bottle or cup or glass) to your working place. Keep it within arms reach or at your eye level will be the best.
- Make it a habit. Drink a glass of water immediately after wake up and drink a glass of water before every meals.
- Eat more fruits and vegetables. There are many fruits and vegetables with high water content (watermelon, cucumber, tomato, oranges, etc.), which can increase your water intake from food.
- Make your own fruit infused water. You can put your favoured fruit into a bottle of water, keep it in fridge and enjoy it by the next day.
There are many other ways to increase your daily water intake, but always remember, plain water is the best choice. The intake of beverages such as coffee, tea, or other caffeinated drinks should be avoided, because caffeine have diuretic effect which increase urination and causes more water loss from body.
- Tap water: In some countries, their tap water is treated and is safe for direct consumption. However, installation of a water purifier is necessary in certain countries.
- Bottled water:
- Mineral water: Water obtained from underground which is naturally contains minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and etc.
- Purified water: Water undergo purification treatment, which removes all bacteria, contaminants and dissolved solids (minerals). Besides purification, there are few added steps such as distillation, carbon filtration, reverse osmosis, or deionization. These added steps make more variety of purified water in the market.
- Spring water: Water obtained from natural spring or underground source. However, it may undergo treatment to remove contaminants and bacteria, but nitrates, and some metals are likely to remain, yet is considered suitable for drinking.
- Deionized water: Water which has removed almost all ions and minerals, also called demineralized water. It is not recommended for drinking since it may still contains microbes and inorganic impurities.
- Distilled water: Water which has removed all minerals and microbes through distillation process, but may contains volatile compounds (such as benzene) that have lower boiling point than water.
Both deionized water and distilled water are not recommended for drinking purpose, because both of them may increase water excretion from the body (increase urination), and cause rapid loss of minerals such as magnesium, calcium, sodium and etc.
Hot Water or Cold Water?
Which one is more beneficial to body health? Actually both of them can be beneficial when it is plain water, not sugary nor alcoholic beverages. However, never drink too hot, hot water (above 65° C) can hurt your tongue and esophagus, and might increase risk of cancer.
The benefits of drinking hot water:
- Improve digestion
- Detoxify toxin
- Ease constipation
- Aids weight loss
- Ease nasal congestion
- Relief pain
The benefits of drinking cold water:
- Lower down body temperature
- Increase body metabolism
- Improve energy level
- Aids weight loss
It seems like drinking both hot water and cold water is helpful for weight loss, but they have different effects on your body. For example, drink a cup of warm water in the morning helps to activate digestive system, breakdown food faster, and improve bowel movement, which reduce constipation and clear out your intestine. Drink a cup of warm water before is not only active your digestive system, but it also can give you fullness feel and helps to prevent overeating.
For cold water, it will be the best to drink during hot weather or after workout, which includes activities that make you sweat a lot and dehydrated. The body can absorbs cold water faster than hot water, also lower down your body temperature more effectively, hence it can makes you feel fresh, rehydrated, and cool after sweating. Another fact is, instead of lower down your body temperature, it is regulating your body temperature. Cold water can reduce body temperature, but this will increase your body metabolism, which burn more calories to maintain the body temperature at normal range.
Cold water is not suitable to drink during or immediately after meal. This is because your body will need more energy for maintaining body temperature, hence will affect food digestion process.
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