We’ve all heard it before: the human body is 75% water. So the question that comes next is how much water do you drink in a day to stay hydrated? Eight glasses? More? Less? Does that include coffee, teas, and sodas? What about juices?
So many factors to consider. Well, let’s set the record straight.
First, the body is 75% water, not 75% soda, or coffee! Coffee, tea, sodas, and alcohol all work to remove water from the body. For every cup of coffee consumed; two cups of water is needed to hydrate you. Some say three cups of water should be consumed per cup of coffee, others say only one is needed, and some go as far as five cups of water per cup of coffee. I guess the type of coffee matters, or they factored in the sugar and cream.
Translation: drinking coffee, tea, sodas, and alcohol lead to dehydration.
Dehydration is an imbalance experienced when the body looses more fluids (mostly water) than is ingested by drinking. We lose about three liters of water daily; in our sweat, urine, stool, and breath. That’s right, in form of vapors. Remember how you breathe really close to a glass and a screen formed to draw funny faces on?! That’s water vapor.
How & why
Hydration is essential to a vibrant body.
It behooves so many people how that the human body consists of so much water, than anything else. The blood is mainly water, the bones contain water, our eyes are always damp with water, organs need water to function, cells reside in fluid made up of mainly water, and the brain? You guessed it…water; 80% of it. Water is man’s sustainer.
Did you know?
Most adult asthma is caused by dehydration? When the cells of the body loose water without being replaced, they shrink and get inflamed from accumulated waste material, which leads to a tightening of cell walls and consequently difficulty in breathing. Some respiratory therapists have reportedly treated asthma attacks with only water.
Water loss is a serious matter. As the body loses water or as no more is taken in, the body goes into survival mode gradually shutting down, literally. Every human function and metabolic process require water to operate: the blood’s pH is maintained with water, the heart works harder when we are dehydrated, the brain is severely stressed when dehydrated; some body salts such as sodium and potassium are lost as the body loses water also.
Watch out for signs of dehydration, or better yet avoid the root causes, or educate yourself on how you can combat dehydration.