What is water? Water is a substance composed of the chemical elements hydrogen and oxygen and it exists in gaseous, liquid, and solid states. It is one of the most plentiful and essential of compounds and it is tasteless and odorless.
A healthy body has just the right amount of fluid inside and outside of each cell also known as fluid balance. If too little water is inside a cell, it shrivels and dies. If there’s too much water then the cell bursts. Your body is mostly water, between 50% and 70%. Water is used by the body to digest food, dissolving nutrients so that they can pass through the intestinal cell walls into our bloodstream and move food along through our intestinal tract. Water is also used to carry waste products out of your body. Water provides a medium in which biochemical reactions can occur, such as digesting food, producing energy and building tissue. Water is used to send electrical messages between cells so that your muscles can move, your eyes can see, your brain can think and well you get the picture. Water is used to regulate body temperature – cooling your body with moisture that evaporates on your skin, which is why sweating is so important. Water is used to lubricate moving body parts. As much as three-quarters of the water in your body is in intracellular fluid – the liquid inside body cells. The rest is in extracellular fluid, which is all the other body liquids, such as: Interstitial fluid (the fluid between cells) Blood plasma (the clear liquid in blood) Lymph (a clear, slightly yellow fluid collected from body tissues that flows through your lymph nodes and eventually into your blood vessels) Bodily secretions such as sweat, seminal fluid and vaginal fluids and urine.
Research shows that losing as little as two percent of your body weight from sweating slows sprinting time, affects lateral movement and decreases strength. For a 180 pound person that’s just a 3.6 pound difference. With just one percent body water loss your cardiovascular system becomes affected. As dehydration worsens you will experience reduced muscle endurance, heat exhaustion, cramping and fatigue, and, in worse cases heat stroke and coma.
A simple and effective way to track your hydration status is to weigh yourself before and after a training session. The goal is to match sweat loss with good hydration practices. If you’re losing more than two percent of your body weight, then you know you need to hydrate better during training. This can also be applied to your daily activities by weighing yourself in the morning and then again before bed.
Basic guidelines for daily hydration should be about a half an ounce to one ounce of fluid per pound of body weight depending on activity level and ambient temperatures.
While water should be the main source of hydration, you can also incorporate water-rich foods into your diet. These would be foods that are around 90% water, for example: Cucumbers, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers, watermelon, and spinach are all great choices.
With regards to health, everything I’ve covered is non-negotiable as they are integral in the proper daily functions of every part of your body. Each of these items should be considered medicinal and as such must be taken in the proper dosage and at the prescribed times in order to perform optimally in the human body. Failure to adhere to the complete needs of your body will only result in temporary success, nutritional imbalance, possible systemic damage ranging from endocrine to gastrointestinal, immune deficiencies, reproductive issues and neurological distress. To put it simply, always take your medicine!
