The Health Benefits of Water

To start with, here are a couple of facts about water:

1. Water is a resource and vital to your health.
2. You can go about 3 days without water before you die.
3. Water is the universal solvent, meaning most things dissolve in water.
4. A normal adult is roughly 60% water and fetus’s (about 32 weeks) is 80% water.

In a nutshell, water is important. Water is important to life and without water we cannot achieve peak health. Furthermore, by every public health standard issued during the past 50 years, humans have not experienced optimum health. Now I started this blog with the focus of water to be about nutrition, but the reality is that it goes beyond and stumbles into ecology, politics, and day to day life. I am positive that you are already making the connections and it is worth talking about but, for this small blog I am going to stick to the nutritional side of things. If you would like to more about water as it pertains to the environment, politics, etc. check out some of the links below.

Water has a bunch of functions as it pertains to your health. Water is in almost all of your bodily fluids, including your blood, lymph, digestive juices, excretory juices, and sweat. Water is heavily involved in all your body processes such as your circulation, absorption, digestion, and elimination. A person’s water requirements vary from person to person based upon gender, climate/living conditions, activity level and diet.

So how much fluid does the average, healthy adult living in a temperate climate need? The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is: About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids a day for men. About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women.

So you might be thinking, “yeah I know is important and I know it's vital to living but what does it have to do with health?” A better question may be what happens when we don’t have water. Aside from dying, your dehydration can have a couple of symptoms.

1. Chronic and persistent headaches
2. A sluggish or non-acting digestive system
3. Dull, flaky, and ashen skin
4. Weight Gain
5. Chronic Fatigue
6. Dry mouth, leading to a host of tooth and dental hygiene issues

Stay tuned for more about water...

- Inspired Health Group contributor, Robbie Erickson

Links and Sources.

1. Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine. – Elson M. Haas, MD – With Buck Levin, PhD, RD

2. https://www.henryford.com/blog/2020/05/side-effects-of-not-drinking-water

3. https://www.waterlogic.com/en-us/resources-blog/where-does-our-drinking-water-actually-come-from/

4. https://www.waterlogic.com/en-us/resources-blog/where-does-our-drinking-water-actually-come-from/

5. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256