Drinking water is the most direct way for us to replenish water. 70% of the earth’s surface and 70% of the human body are made up of water. As the saying goes, “people can go without food for three days, but not without water for a day”, which also confirms the importance of drinking water.
But in your everyday life, you may be racking your brain over a meal, but you’re not racking your brain over a glass of water.
Most of us think that drinking water is the easiest thing to do.
Actually, the time and amount of water you drink can have a significant impact on your health.
8 Health Benefits Of Drinking Water
1. Drink More Water When You are Upset, Which Is Conducive to Emotional Relief
The endorphins produced by the brain are called the “happiness hormone” and adrenaline is often called the “pain hormone”.
When a person is miserable or irritable, adrenaline surges, but it can also be flushed out of the body like any other poison, and one way to do that is to drink lots of water.
If you assist with physical labor, adrenaline is excreted with sweat, or with tears if you cry.
2. Discharge Toxification
Most people know that drinking a glass of water in the morning is good for your health.
After a night of metabolism, the waste in the human body needs the help of external forces to discharge, and water is the best “cleaning agent”.
The cells act as a dry sponge, catching the water and excreting it in about 40 minutes.
This is an important detox process.
3. Pressure Reduction
Have a glass of water before you make a decision. A University of East London study found that students who drank a glass of water before a test improved their cognitive skills and their performance on the test. For office workers, drinking a glass of water before stressful or decision-making can help clear your mind.
4. Reduce Blood Viscosity and the Risk Of Cerebral Thrombosis
Take a sip of water before bed. When a person is asleep, water loss in the body results in less water in the blood and higher blood viscosity.
For the elderly, drinking water before bed can reduce blood viscosity, which reduces the risk of cerebral thrombosis.
In addition, in the dry autumn and winter season, water can moisten the respiratory tract, and help a person fall asleep better. But pay attention， drinking water before going to bed can not be too much, otherwise, it will cause bad sleep.
5. Drinking Water When You Have a Cold Will Help You Recover
Drinking lots of water when you have a cold can be very helpful to your recovery, as it helps to flush away mucus from your airways and makes you feel good about breathing. In addition, if you have a fever, the body’s self-protective response is to cool down, and there are signs of increased metabolism, such as sweating, breath’s shortness of breath, and increased water evaporation from the skin, you need a lot of water. Drinking water not only promotes sweating and micturition but is also conducive to thermoregulation, which can promote the rapid elimination of bacteria in the body.
6. Helps Relieve Constipation
Constipation is caused by two things:
First, because of the lack of water, there is a stool in the body.
Second, the intestinal tract and other organs have no excretion force. If you gulp down water and swallow quickly, the water will reach your intestines as quickly as possible, stimulating bowel movements and facilitating bowel movements.
According to Jiang Liangduo, a professor of internal medicine at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Dongzhimen Hospital, one of the reasons for constipation is the lack of body fluid, drinking water can play a role in quickly replenishing fluid, thereby stimulating intestinal peristalsis, promoting defecation.
7. Drinking Water Before Meals Reduces Appetite and Helps You Lose Weight
Weight loss is a topic we often discuss, but how can you lose weight in a healthy way? Drinking water is the easiest way.
Many chemical reactions in the human body take place in “water”. Enough water is needed to keep the body’s metabolic machinery in working order. For obese people, you can drink a small glass of water about half an hour before a meal to increase the sense of fullness. Drinking a small glass of water half an hour after a meal can strengthen the body’s digestion.
Drinking a glass of water before breakfast in the morning can speed up the peristalsis of the intestines and stomach.
In addition, drinking a glass of water before a meal can reduce hunger and reduce food intake, you will lose your appetite over time in this way.
8. Water Is the Best Medicine
A foreign scholar said that water is the best medicine, to be exact, water should be the best food because water not only has food efficacy but also has medical value.
Homeopathy, invented in the 18th century by the German physician Dr. Harmani, was all the rage. The solution: dilute the water to 30 times the power of 10. The ratio of water to medicine is 1,000 times lower than a drop in the ocean. If you use the “quantity change to quality change” point of view, even if the highly toxic arsenic, is dissolved in 10 times 30 times the power of water, you can be assured to drink because the water has been diluted to no medicine. So since it has been diluted to no medicine, this “homeopathy” how can there be therapeutic value? In fact, although the composition of the drug has gone, the water is still playing a role, still effective.
4 Health Risk of Shortage of Water in the Body
When our bodies are short of water, we can have all kinds of problems. The nutrients in our bodies can not be “transported”. What we eat can not be transported to all parts of the body. Over time, it causes discomfort and makes us want to drink water desperately, even severe water shortages can be life-threatening.
Here are some of the problems that can result from a lack of water in the body:
Kidney Disease
The kidney is an important metabolic organ in the body, one of its roles is to form urine, if the body is short of water, it will promote the reabsorption of water by the kidney, leading to urine concentration, and concentrated urine may precipitate crystallization, leading to kidney stones.
Constipation
Although urine comes out of the urethra rather than the anus, water can affect the digestion and absorption of food. In people who drink less water, the stool is drier, intestinal peristalsis will be a little slower, the frequency of defecation will be reduced, easy to cause constipation.
Brain Atrophy
This is relative to brain edema. Lack of water in the body, the body’s brain cells will add water to the blood circulation, and long-term lack of water will lead to brain cell atrophy and cognitive impairment.
Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases
We all know that drinking water can speed up metabolism, especially can promote blood circulation, for the elderly, maintaining blood circulation is very important. If the body is dehydrated, slow blood flow and increased blood concentration can lead to blockages and thrombosis, which can cause heart attacks such as cerebrovascular disease and heart attacks.
What Is the Proper Way to Drink Water?
1. Don’t Drink Until Thirsty
If you drink only when you feel thirsty, you’re making a mistake.
“I only drink water when I’m thirsty.” I don’t sweat in the room with the air conditioner on, so I don’t need to drink water.” … None of this is true. From infant begin to old age, the moisture inside people’s body is decreasing gradually, infant moisture accounts for 90% of body weight, and the proportion of the old is 60%, 70%. To maintain the body’s normal water needs, people need to drink a certain amount of water every day. According to the dietary guidelines for Chinese residents, an average adult should drink 1.5 to 1.7 liters of water a day.
So what does it mean if we feel thirsty?
It indicates that the body has reached a water deficit of 2% to 3%.
The reason we feel thirsty is that we are mildly dehydrated and send a distress signal to our central nervous system. Drinking water at this point is not to hydrate, but to relieve dehydration.
If we don’t drink water in time, dehydration will continue to increase, once the amount of water loss reached 3% to 5%, the body’s skin will begin to dry and peel, and we get distracted and don’t want to eat. When you continue to lose 5 to 10% of your fluid, you look pale, your eyes are sunken, and your breathing becomes rapid.
We can not only know our own lack of water through thirst, but also through urination to observe, because the general body of water shortage, there will be less urine, urine yellow phenomenon, and the less urine, the darker the color, the bigger the problem might get. Of course, it could be caused by a kidney lesion.
A survey by the Hong Kong Department of Health found that one-third of adults drink less than six glasses of water a day. According to the US Water Health website, people lose at least 1% of their water when they are thirsty. Therefore, the office worker should form the good drinking water and the micturition habit
Drink water not to quench thirst, but to participate in metabolism, a long period of dehydration will increase the blood viscosity and induce cerebrovascular disease. At the same time, the less attention to drinking water, the desire to drink water will be lower, people will become more and more “dry.”
Therefore, whether thirsty or not fill the water in time. Take a bottle of water with you when you go out and take a SIP at any time. Put more water glasses in your office or home and form the habit of drinking water regularly.
2. Don’t Drink It All in One Gulp!
When you drink water, don’t drink it all at once, otherwise, the water won’t be absorbed and will be drained out in a short while, this won’t help your body quench its thirst, scientific drinking water should be sipped slowly.
Drinking water too much at a time can accelerate micturition, increase the burden on the stomach and dilute gastric juices, this not only can reduce the bactericidal action of gastric acid, but also hinder the digestion of food, and drinking water too fast will easily cause flatulence. Too much water in the stomach can also lead to stomach ptosis.
In addition, people with heart disease who drink too much water at once can overburden their hearts and trigger heart failure.
3. Drinking Water an Hour Before Meals Will Help Digestion
Drink a certain amount of water an hour before meals to ensure that enough digestive juices are secreted to stimulate appetite and aid digestion.
When eating, you should also drink a certain amount of soup in order to dissolve the food, so that the stomach in the food and gastric juice mix.
However, it is not recommended to drink a lot of water after dinner, so as not to dilute gastric juice and affect digestion and absorption.
4. How to Drink Water In The Morning and Before Going to Bed at Night?
The first glass of water in the morning is the water of life, all the waste things in the body need a kind of wash after a whole night of metabolism.
Our cells are like dry sponges. When the water goes in, it catches it, and then it goes out in about 40 minutes. This metabolic process is what we called detox.
In addition, you can drink a glass of water after getting up at midnight, and those who do not get up at night can drink it in the morning. Drinking less before going to bed and drinking more after going to bed is also the principle of properly drinking water because drinking too much water before going to bed will cause swollen eyelids and frequent toilet runs in the middle of the night so that the quality of sleep is bad. And after a night’s sleep, the human body loses about 450 mL of water, which needs to be timely supplement in the morning, so drinking water after waking up in the morning is good for blood circulation, and can also promote the brain awake, and make this day thinking clear and agile.
5. People Suffering from Different Diseases Should Drink Water Scientifically According to Their Condition
When taking medicine for gastric ulcers, cough, pharyngitis, and so on, try not to drink water as much as possible, you need to carefully read the instructions before taking it.
If you want to drink water, you should drink water half an hour after taking the medicine, and wait for the protective film to stabilize or reach the effect time of the medicine.
Some drugs have a specific way of acting that you should not drink more water, or even not drink water at all, otherwise, it will reduce the effectiveness of the treatment and lose its effect.
Don’t drink too much water when you take stomach medicine
When taking medicine for gastric ulcers, cough, pharyngitis, and so on, try not to drink water as much as possible, you need to carefully read the instructions before taking it. If you want to drink water, you should drink water half an hour after taking the medicine, and wait for the protective film to stabilize or reach the effect time of the medicine. Some drugs have a specific way of acting that you should not drink more water, or even not drink water at all, otherwise, it will reduce the effectiveness of the treatment and lose its effect.
Experts have revealed that certain peptic ulcer drugs, such as sucralfate and Aluminum hydroxide gel, are often made into suspensions that pass into the stomach, where they form tiny, insoluble particles that act as a powder over the damaged lining of the stomach, in this way, the gastric mucosa is protected from acid attack, and new tissue slowly grows to fill the ulcer and restore its original function. Drinking a lot of water while taking these drugs can actually dilute the drug, reducing the number of particles that cover the damaged stomach lining, thinning the protective membrane, and rendering it ineffective. Not only that, but you shouldn’t drink water for half an hour, because drinking lots of water over a short period of time can also wash away the newly formed protective membrane, exposing the damaged mucosa to corrosive stomach acid.
Patients with urinary tract infections or urinary tract stones can drink water and urinate to play the role of “internal washing” to help cure diseases. Drinking plenty of water in patients with hepatitis can help recede the disease.
Patients with acute nephritis and renal failure should not drink too much water.
What Is the Healthiest Water to Drink?
You may have heard that weakly alkaline water will make your body alkaline by adjusting the Ph, and make you healthier, actually, this lie has been dispelled several years ago, the pH miracle founder- Robert Ouyang, was also awarded $105 million in damages by a San Diego Court on Nov. 2, 2018, to a cancer patient.
Some people say that pure water is removed from the beneficial trace elements of the human body, if people drink this water for a long time, it is harmful to the human body, and will cause muscle weakness, absence of mind, malnutrition, and other problems, especially not conducive to the growth of children. However, this is also nonsense. People drink water mainly to replenish water, not nutrients, and the nutrients they need are mainly absorbed from food, not water.
Therefore, whether mineral water, pure water, or tap water, as long as the water quality meets the drinking water hygiene standards, is safe to drink.
What Is the Proper Way Of Drinking Water During the Exercise?
Before exercise: Drink a glass of water to thin the blood and reduce viscosity.
After exercise: follow the heartbeat to drink, drink 150 to 200 ml of water every 15 to 20 mins during exercise, the total drinking water per hour should not exceed 600 ml so that not only you can maintain the balance of water in the body, and not also increase the burden of the heart and gastrointestinal because of drinking too much water.
After exercise, the elderly should not drink a lot of water at one time. This is because gastrointestinal blood vessels are constricted and need a recovery process. If you drink a lot of water immediately, water can accumulate in the gastrointestinal tract, which can lead to bloating and affect digestion. It is better to drink some warm water in small sips after waiting for a few mins until the heart is beating a little more stable.
It is recommended that you can try to keep the speed flat when drinking water.
Drinking Water Helps You Lose Weight
Tip 1: Drink water early in the morning to reduce belly fat
Drinking a glass of water before breakfast in the morning can accelerate gastrointestinal peristalsis, expel garbage and metabolites from the body the night before, reduce the chance of belly fat, not only replenish cell moisture but also reduce blood viscosity and facilitate urination.
Usually half an hour after drinking water, the body will expel the previous night’s metabolites.
Tip 2: Drink water before meals to reduce appetite
Studies have shown that a glass of water can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system for up to 1.5 to 2 hours, followed by the release of adrenaline that gradually depletes fat stored in the body, leading to a significant reduction in excess weight. Compared with dieting, weight loss in this way is more stable and lasting.
In addition, drinking a glass of water before a meal can reduce hunger and reduce food intake, the longer the appetite will be smaller, which can achieve the goal of weight loss, but also replenish the body’s needs for water and speed up the metabolism.
Tip 3: Drink water in the afternoon to lose weight
The most common form of obesity is flab, which is caused by sitting and high-calorie foods, and in the afternoon, when people feel tired and listless, it’s also a vulnerable time to consume unnecessary calories because of your emotions.
A cup of herbal tea can help dispel the desire to eat because of your emotions, and the smell of flowers and plants can also reduce your appetite, kind of an ambush for a half-full dinner.
Drinking Water at the Right Time
The best time to drink water is the morning before exercise and the night before going to bed about 200 ml of water, during the day between meals, about 400 ml of water.
Every day after getting up in the morning, at about 10 am 3-4 pm, and before going to bed in the evening the four “best times to drink water” are to drink 1-2 cups of water.
- Morning is the best time of day to hydrate Because drinking water in the morning can stimulate gastrointestinal peristalsis, and prevent constipation.
What’s more, blood concentration increases after a long period of sleep, so taking in water at this time can quickly reduce blood concentration and improve circulation, leaving a person refreshed and refreshed.
2. It is advisable to replenish water once between meals, mainly because after meals, animal proteins in the body will produce certain toxic substances after metabolic decomposition, these toxic substances must be discharged from the urine as soon as possible, otherwise, it is harmful to the body.
As it turns out, it doesn’t matter much if a person doesn’t poop for three to five days, but if they don’t pee for two to three days, toxic substances accumulate in the body and move into the brain to stimulate brain tissue, causing mental changes, kidney failure, and even death.
Many diseases, such as hypertension and arteriosclerosis, are related to the deposition of small sodium ions in the blood vessel wall.
Urolithiasis is associated with urine concentration and urate, calcium oxalate, and other salts deposition.
Cholelithiasis is related to cholesterol crystals.
Ulcer disease is associated with excess gastric fluid…
However, some people are reluctant to drink water, resulting in thick, dark urine, which is more pronounced in the morning.
3. The main reason for drinking water half an hour before sleep is that the human body naturally sweats during sleep and unconsciously loses water and salt, while the body can not replenish water during the eight hours of sleep, that’s why you feel parched when you get up in the morning. Therefore, doctors recommend a half-hour before going to bed to drink water in advance, so that the body can still maintain a state of balance during sleep, but also reduce the concentration of urine, to prevent the occurrence of stones.
How Much Water Should I Drink a Day?
Authorities often say that drinking eight glasses of water a day (2000 milliliters) can make up for daily consumption. This standard quantity is not suitable for all the people and every season. Because children, young adults, and the elderly, each person has a different amounts of activity and other water consumption factors, it is not possible to follow a constant value to make up water.
There are three methods for estimating human daily water demand, but the results are roughly the same: the average daily water demand of adults is more than 2,500 milliliters, of which about 1,500 to 2,000 milliliters come from direct drinking water, the rest is taken from food. For a 70-year-old man, he will drink more than 60 tons of water in his lifetime. Of course, drinking more than 2,000 milliliters of water a day is just an average, and if you’re an individual, you can measure your actual water consumption in the following ways:
- It can be calculated by weight. According to the International Institute of Medicine in Los Angeles, the standard amount of water adults should drink is 40 milliliters per kilogram of body weight per day.
- Estimated by displacement, the total daily displacement of the average adult is about 2500 ml, and according to the principle of balance between intake and exclusion, the daily water requirement of the adult is about 2500 ml.
- According to the U.S. dietary allowance standard, adults need 1 milliliter of water for every 1 kcal consumed, and infants need 1.5 milliliters of water. The average adult needs to consume about 2000 kilocalories of heat every day, so according to this calculation method, adults need between 2000 to 2500 ml of water every day.
8 Common Misconceptions About Drinking Water
1. No Water, no piss?
Of course not.
Many people think that the urine we excrete in the water we just drank, but that’s not the case.
Our kidneys not only form the role of urine, but it is also responsible for purifying the blood, and it is a “model worker”, never stop purification, It takes about five minutes to process the whole body’s blood, and the result is that waste products are filtered out of the blood and excreted through the urine.
2. How long is it healthy to urinate after drinking water?
The speed and amount of water you drink, as well as the health of your kidneys and bladder, can all affect how urine forms. In other words, different people with the same amount of water will end up taking different times to go to the bathroom.
But there was an experiment that looked at drinking water to make you urinate, the study found that urination rates rose after drinking a liter of water, peaking about an hour after drinking water and almost back to normal two hours later.
3. Drinking water can remove toxins and improve kidney function
The kidneys filter toxins from our bloodstream, which are then excreted in the urine. But the question is, does drinking too much water every day actually improve kidney function?
No, in fact, drinking a lot of water can dramatically reduce your kidneys’ ability to filter, a subtle but real decline.
4. Drinking too much water will lead to water intoxication
Recently, the topic of “drinking water to lose weight” is popular. It claims that the metabolism of the human body consumes heat and produces water. If you consume more than 5,000ml of water a day, you will consume more than twice as many calories as normal people. In addition, the feeling of fullness from drinking water also affects normal food intake, occupying space in the stomach and naturally eating less.
Filling your stomach with water theoretically creates a temporary feeling of fullness, but hunger doesn’t just come from the stomach, blood sugar levels and visual and olfactory stimuli also play a big role. Limit the amount of water you drink. Adults should consume at least 1,500 milliliters of water a day, not all of it. In fact, our food already contains a lot of water. For example, vegetables are 90% water, fruits are 80% water, and fish and meat are 70% water. In addition, we drink 1500 milliliters of water every day is enough, otherwise, it will increase the burden on the kidneys. If you drink a lot of water every day for a long time for losing weight, it will cause “water poisoning” within a month.
Water intoxication refers to drinking too much water over a long period of time or too much water for a short period of time. The body must expel the excess water through urine. The excreted water contains important electrolytes. Weakness, rapid heartbeat, dry mucous membrane, loss of skin elasticity, and other symptoms may appear in the early stage, and even convulsions, confusion of consciousness, and coma may occur in severe cases.
5. Boiled water is better for health?
Some people think that the boiled water cooled to 20-25 degrees Celsius is the best choice, because of the active biological inclusion and magnesium, and calcium elements, which can promote metabolism, and enhance immunity.
But from the point of view of nutrition, the temperature of the water you drink is not important, because the body absorbs enough minerals from food without drinking water, so the temperature of the water does not affect the nutrients in the water.
Other people think that boiling water quenches their thirst more, but it does not. Under the action of hot water, the oral cavity, esophagus, and stomach mucosa are prone to inflammation, long-term will cause mucosal qualitative changes, cancer. So, too hot food and too hot water are thought to be physical factors in upper gastrointestinal cancer.
As for the claim that calcium, magnesium, and other elements contained in the water are beneficial to the body, although the calcium and magnesium content in urban drinking water is not particularly high, we can not simply rely on drinking water to absorb these minerals, water is mainly used to supplement the water needed by the human body, and other nutrients should be mainly absorbed from food.
6. Women can drink more water to improve their beauty, and men can drink less water?
From a health standpoint, men need to drink more water. Drinking plenty of water may protect against urinary stones and bladder cancer, these two diseases that affect about three-quarters of men, a new study has found. Overall, men who drank more than four cups of water a day had a 32 percent lower risk of developing cancer than men who drank one or less. In addition, even if men and women drink the same amount of water, men are more likely to become dehydrated because they move around a lot, sweat a lot, and lose fluids more easily than women.
7. Drink beverages instead of water
Plain water is tasteless. Let’s have a drink instead.” Many children drink cola and fruit-flavored drinks instead of drinking water every day, which is no different from spending money to buy diseases. “not only does it not hydrate the body, it also reduces appetite and affects digestion and absorption,” Zhao said.
Sugary drinks will slow down the speed of absorbing water in the gastrointestinal tract, and drinking sugary drinks in large quantities for a long time will have certain adverse effects on the metabolism of the human body.
Dr. He told reporters that although sugary drinks such as orange juice and cola taste good, they should not be drunk too much. Most of the sweet drinks sold on the market contain ingredients such as saccharin, essence, and pigments, drinking this kind of water for a long time will not only cause a burden on human metabolism, but also increase the burden of obesity and kidneys, and may cause heart cerebrovascular disease, harm to human health. Daily intake should be limited to one cup or so, no more than 200ml, and for diabetes and obese people, it is best not to drink this kind of beverage.
If you must drink tasty water, you should adjust it according to your constitution.
For example:
-Constipated people can drink some honey water or fruit and vegetable juice to promote intestinal peristalsis.
-People with cold stomachs should drink less cold green tea, herbal tea, and fruit juice, and drink more warm stomach black tea, ginger sugar water.
The life of water isn’t really something you drink to save your life, but it’s a great health benefit that comes from sticking with Life extension.
In addition, tea and saltwater are not substitutes for drinking water. Tea diuresis can affect the body’s water balance, causing cell dehydration. Because the sodium content of cells is very low, people empty their stomachs after drinking salt water, salt water can enter the blood and tissue, but can not enter the cell, too much salt will make the cell dehydrated.
8. Is saltwater better in the morning?
Some people believe that drinking plain salt water is good for your health. It is true that drinking plain salt water is good for your health. It is necessary to replenish water after sweating in summer, but it is not beneficial to replenish water in the morning, or is it a health mistake.
Physiological research believes that people do not drink water during the whole night’s sleep, but breathing, sweating, and urinary in the process of these physiological activities to consume and lose a lot of water. When you get up in the morning, your blood has become concentrated. If you drink a certain amount of plain water, you can dilute your blood quickly and correct the hypertonic dehydration at night. Drinking salt water will increase hyperosmotic dehydration and dry mouth.
