Five Ways Hydration Helps Your Body
This past weekend my husband, Zack and I went up north. As we were driving I was trying not to drink too much water because I did not want to stop to use the restroom too many times. A few hours into the trip, I noticed how thirsty I was.
Did you know: If you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated?
We think about hydration often in the summer because it’s commonly talked about. We rarely think about it in the winter unless we have a problem. Hydration is important every day no matter the season.
Did you know hydration helps the following 5 things:
Flu Prevention
Dry skin
Kidney Function
Joint lubrication
Constipation
So how does hydration decrease our chances of getting the flu? When we are exposed to the flu virus, it searches the body for a week or dehydrated cell. After it finds a host cell, the flu virus multiplies and gets ready to attack the body. If we keep our body healthy and hydrated the flu virus gets swept away by our bodies defense systems. As long as we stay hydrated our body will be more likely to rid the virus and thus we are more likely to stay healthy.
Our body is 70-80% water. This water is used for many different tasks and one is keeping our cells hydrated. When we begin to dehydrate, our bodies pull water from the outside in. One of the first things to happen is that our skin dries out. With proper water intake our skin will be less likely to dry out.
Kidneys are a huge part of our bodies filtration system. In fact, our kidneys need lots of water to maintain healthy kidney function. Our kidney’s purpose is to filter blood by separating toxins from our blood. Water helps to keep our blood more viscous so the kidneys do not have to work so hard.
Kidneys are known as our “fair-weather friend” and when our body is not functioning properly our fair-weather friends start to struggle leading to kidney failure. Proper hydration helps to ensure this does not happen. When our blood gets too thick, it’s like a motor that has went too long without an oil change. The oil turns into sludge and soon the motor will blow up because the oil is too thick to do its job. When our blood doesn’t have enough water, our kidneys have to work a lot harder.
Water is a huge component of the fluid in our join capsules known as synovial fluid. Having healthy joints cannot occur if we are not getting enough water because this fluid becomes thicker thus leading to joint pain or abnormal wear on our joints.
A very important job for water is excretion. One thing we do not like to discuss very often is our bowels. In a properly functioning colon the waste moved along and slowly turns from a liquid to a solid until we defecate. When we are dehydrated water is pulled from our colon and the flow or movement of feces slows making it more difficult to defecate. Basically, if you are not getting enough water, you are more likely to struggle with constipation.
So, in short let’s make sure we are getting 12-15 glasses of water per day to ensure our bodies stay healthy.
Check out the video below for some helpful tips to get more water.
Make today wonderful,
Sarah Z
Created by Sarah Zastrow- Bay Area Wellness LLC