Drinking enough water is important to hydrate your whole body, ensuring your bodily systems function properly.
Skin evaporation, breathing, urinating, and passing stools all cause your body to lose water on a daily basis. If you don’t replace the water you lose, you will become dehydrated.
Dehydration can cause many unpleasant symptoms such as mood changes, headaches, constipation, and unclear thinking.
It’s important to drink enough fluids and eat foods like fruits and vegetables to stay hydrated and prevent these symptoms from occurring.
1. Maintain your body fluid balance
Up to 60% of your body is made up of water. Your lungs, heart and brain are largely made up of water. Your skin, muscles, kidneys, and even your bones also contain water. Water serves many purposes in your body, including the following.
- Carries nutrients and oxygen to your cells
- Maintains your body temperature
- Lubricates your joints
- Helps dissolve nutrients to make them available to your body
- Flushes out waste
- Creates saliva
- Protects body organs and tissues
- Keeps eye, nose and mouth tissues moist
Your brain tells your kidneys to excrete water as urine, and when you are low on fluids, it triggers your thirst. Following these cues to urinate and to drink water will help maintain your body fluid balance.
Your body needs more water when you live in a hot climate, or when you’re very active physically. You also should drink more fluids if you have diarrhea, vomiting, or develop a fever.
When your body is dehydrated, you will urinate less because your kidneys will retain fluid so they can keep functioning. Your urine becomes darker in color and smells stronger.
If you are dehydrated, Drip Hydration, Regenerate Me, and The IV Doc offer an IV Drip in Las Vegas. Certified nurses will come to your home or office and administer the IV drip.
It won’t take long for the symptoms of dehydration to improve and for you to feel yourself again because the fluids and electrolytes go directly into your bloodstream.
2. Help energize your muscles
If you don’t drink enough, your cells cannot maintain their balance of fluids or electrolytes. Your muscles are about 80% water, and when the muscle cells aren’t properly hydrated, they are unable to function optimally. Losing even a small amount of your body’s water content can impair your physical performance.
Drinking enough fluids is essential when you exercise, especially when you exercise hard enough to sweat profusely. You need to drink before exercising and at regular intervals during exercise to replace the fluids you lose by sweating. Sweating causes a loss of fluid and electrolytes, such as sodium and potassium, which are both vital to the proper functioning of the body. They ensure proper muscle and nervous system function, help move nutrients into cells, and move waste out of cells. They also balance the body’s pH levels. This is why many athletes drink sports drinks that contain electrolytes.
If you don’t replenish fluids, you will experience fatigue, lack of motivation and changes in body temperature. This can make exercise feel much more difficult both mentally and physically. Optimal hydration prevents this from happening and can help reduce the oxidative stress that happens with intense exercise.
3. Promote proper digestion
Water supports the functioning of the digestive system, starting with eating. Water is a component of your saliva that helps to moisten your food and make it easier to swallow. Your saliva also contains enzymes that begin to break down food as you chew.
In your stomach, water-filled gastric juices are released, and these also contain enzymes to further break down food before it goes to the small intestine, where most digestion takes place. Water is also needed to produce the mucus that coats your stomach and protects it from the acidic gastric juices. Digested nutrients pass into your bloodstream, which also require water to be properly circulated.
In the large bowel, the soluble fiber from foods (such as oats or beans) swells with water, adding bulk. The insoluble fiber that comes from foods (like whole grains and vegetables) traps and attracts water rather than absorbing it.
Being properly hydrated helps prevent constipation. Fluids help keep fecal matter soft so it can move easily through your digestive tract. When you don’t get enough fluid, your colon extracts water from your stools, and you become constipated as a result. Getting enough fluids prevents you from becoming constipated and helps your entire digestive system to function properly.
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