Where do I even start to get healthier? Water!
People ask me all the time where to start on getting healthier. I always start with the foundations that can really make a huge difference in your health journey.
Things like:
Diet
Exercise
Stress
Toxin Removal
Rest
Emotional Balance/Trauma
Supplements
Success Mindset
Today I would like to talk about the importance of drinking water, not only the quantity but the quality of water you drink and what water does for your body.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Utz, Neuroscience, pediatrics, Allegheny University, different people have different percentages of their bodies made up of water. Babies have the most, being born at about 78%. By one year of age, that amount drops to about 65%. In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water. However, fat tissue does not have as much water as lean tissue. In adult women, fat makes up more of the body than men, so they have about 55% of their bodies made of water.
Water helps your body keep it's temperature normal, lubricates and cushions your joints, protects your spinal cord and other tissues, and gets rid of wastes through urination, perspiration and bowel movements. Water also helps your body remove toxins from the food we eat, the air we breathe, and chemicals in products you use on your hair and skin. It also carries oxygen and nutrients to all of the cells in your body. Every system in your body depends on water.
For all of this to happen, you need to drink water each and every day. The Institute of Medicine determined that an adequate intake for men is roughly 3 liters (about 13 cups) of total beverages a day. The adequate intake for women is 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total beverages a day. Remember, there are certain situations when your body requires more water than normal. Some of these are exercise, hot weather, illness, health conditions, pregnancy and breastfeeding.
A good rule of thumb that I like to use is to drink half of your body weight in ounces every day and more in certain situations.
Lack of water can lead to dehydration. Dehydration is a condition that happens when the loss of body fluids, mostly water, exceeds the amount that is taken in. Some symptoms of dehydration are increased thirst, dry mouth, weakness, dizziness, confusion and headache.
You should get most of your fluids through drinking quality water since it is calorie-free, inexpensive and readily available. Food provides about 20% of total water intake. Many fruits and vegetables can provide water for your body.
The quality of water you drink each day is as important as the amount of water you drink. I was drinking the right amount of water each day when I first started seeing the Naturopathic Doctor. When she did muscle testing on me, she found out that my body was dehydrated and had a lot of chlorine, along with other chemicals found in tap water, in it. This was because the tap water I was drinking was not properly hydrating my cells. I used to get headaches all the time. It was because of being dehydrated and drinking impure water. If you are interested in finding out what is in your tap water, you can go to your city's website and look at the water quality report. I did this and what I saw had me very concerned about our drinking water.
Now my family and I drink reverse osmosis water and since that strips your water of everything, including minerals, we remineralize and also put in electrolytes in our water every day. You can find both the minerals and electrolytes that we use here.
We used to drink a lot of bottled water until I found out that the plastic that the bottles are made of are not BPA (Bisphenol A) free. What that means is that the compound BPA is leaching into your bottled water. If you fill the bottle up over and over again, the BPA just keeps leaching into your water. I used to do this all the time and thought I was doing a great thing for myself! The best type of water bottle you can get that will not leach plastic into your water is a stainless steel, insulated (so your water stays really cold) water bottle. We have several of these water bottles and they are also lead-free.
The other thing I really don't like about plastic water bottles is that they are filling our oceans and killing our wildlife. Look up, "trash vortex", to see for yourself. It is really scary to see what we are doing to our earth and all of it's resources!
To YOUR health!
Jen
The information presented on this blog is not intended to take the place of your personal physician’s advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. It is for informational purposes only.
