Written by: Kasia Dabrow-Kielan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In my previous article, I wrote about the first pillar of health “Air” and a fair bit of information got covered on this topic. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so (you can find the link to all my articles just by scrolling down). This time around let me focus on the second pillar of health, which is “water”. So let’s talk H2O and why water should be the main drink you consume, moving other drinks aside!
Hydration is essential for your body and health. Hydration supports clear skin and glowing eyes; it prevents kidney stones and shuns pain and inflammation in the body. Hydration even reduces the development of many degenerative diseases, common in today’s world.
Did you know that your lungs are approximately 90% water, your brain is approximately 80% water and your bones are approx 25% water! Not hard to understand why headaches, brain fog, memory loss and neurodegenerative diseases occur when individuals don’t drink enough water over time. Your brain and your body need to be refreshed with water every 24 hours, so when the brain gets its much needed amount of water, the excess then flows into your bloodstream and cells, to support the body and its function.
As you can see, good hydration is vital for good health. Try drinking a litre of water upon waking; it really helps to hydrate your body and your digestive system. It also helps with eliminating body waste first thing in the morning. If you are dehydrated your body will hold onto toxins including heavy metals and viruses. If you are properly hydrated, your body has an easier time removing these toxins from your liver, kidneys and other parts of your body.
If you are dehydrated, combined with some subpar lifestyle choices such as consuming certain foods and certain drinks and you have the perfect recipe for chronic dehydration. Foods and drinks containing alcohol and caffeine (coffee, tea, green tea, cola, energy drinks and even chocolate) pull out the water out of the system so the larger the amount in our diet the bigger requirement for you amping up water. On the other hand, the greater your consumption of fruits and vegetables, which are on average 70% water, may mean you require less water to drink to remain adequately hydrated.
Cooked foods force your body to pull liquid from different organs and cells to help break them down. Now I am not saying cooked foods are bad, but we should aim for a balance of cooked and raw foods. This might be 60-80% raw vs cooked i.e. baked potatoes with raw salad, wild rice/ quinoa or steamed vegetables with raw leafy leaves and guacamole and if you wish to enjoy meat, eat it with a large fresh salad.
There seems to be so much conflicting information about how much water we should be drinking. There is a good reason for the confusion though; some people feel like they are never thirsty, some feel never quenched, some say they go to the bathroom too often so they decrease their amount of fluid intake and everybody has an opinion. The daily water intake recommendation is actually one litre of water per 22 kilograms of your body weight, per day and the best indicator of hydration is clear to a light almost straw-like coloured urine.
However, for many, regardless if you drink too little or enough, this does not mean your actual cells are hydrated. Here is why. Your cells need to absorb the water you drink but the cells need the right balance of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium to attract it. These minerals if you like “interact” with one another and if some are too low or too high, this will affect the absorption of your water. If the right minerals are lacking, water will not be able to enter the cells at ease. So when the water remains outside these cells you will feel water retention. The good news is that you can make changes to improve the mineral imbalance of your diet.
Another reason you want to stay hydrated is that if you reach a certain level of dehydration your blood thickens. Have you seen thick, sticky blood under a microscope? I have – it does not look good! Healthy blood cells appear round, almost a perfect circle and do not touch one another. However when you have thick blood, the perfect circles are sticky and layer up on each other and once you develop thick blood, it becomes much more challenging for your heart to draw up fresh, clean blood from the liver. Thick blood may set you up for some serious health issues and as mentioned before, add too much coffee, soda, wine, and animal fat unfortunately over time lead to severe dehydration. When you reach a certain level of dehydration, your heart has a challenging time to provide your brain and organs with blood and oxygen; therefore, unfortunately, the ongoing effort and the energy can wear out the heart, too soon.
When talking about water and dehydration, we cannot ignore the topic of salt. This is because the deliberate added high levels of salt that get sprinkled onto your food on restaurant/ take away dishes or in pre-packaged foods contribute to dehydration – and this is not the salt your body needs to function and definitely not in the right quantities. The right kind of salt is the one which will electrolyte all of the 10,000 trillion cells in your body. Water and salt together regulate the water content of the body and salt forces for some water to stay outside the cells and balance it accordingly. The good quality salt also helps with regulating your heartbeat and blood pressure, extract excess acids from cells, assists with balancing sugar levels as well as being vital to nerve cells’ communication and processing of information. Adding a small amount of high-quality salt into your water, especially in the morning, will help activate the digestive system and/or before exercise it will provide a boost of electrolyte energy to the cells to prevent cramping and help replenish minerals lost through perspiration.
Most of us lose about 1.5 litres of water per day just through perspiration (sweating), respiration (breathing), defecation (pooping) and urination (peeing). And those who are nonstop hungry – are most likely to be starved of water and will find that by increasing their daily water intake will actually tend to eat less.
The quality of water you consume is also very important. If you drink water from a tap, chances are it may contain some harmful additives such as industrial waste, chlorine (chemical disinfectant) and heavy metals toxins such as lead, mercury copper, cadmium and aluminium (industrial runoffs and ageing water pipes). So please make sure you drink quality clean water. If you grab filtered bottled water, please know your source, some brands are not what they say. And yes, just to be clear, I do provide my kids with their own filtered water even at the childcare centre – so for those who see me dragging a 10-litre container of water to my kids’ childcare, this is why! I also cook with filtered water as I believe high-quality water is essential for our good health.
I would recommend that if you can, drink out of a glass bottle rather than a plastic bottle, but if you can’t avoid plastic, at least make sure it is BPA free. And keep in mind, to ward off dehydration, drink your H2O gradually throughout the day and remember the quality and quantity of the water you consume makes a big difference to your health and overall wellbeing.
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Kasia Dabrow-Kielan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kasia Dabrow-Kielan worked as a Social Worker for almost 15 years and completed her Bachelor of Psychology and Social Work. Kasia's passion is to work with others and she is equipped with skills to enhance the well-being of her clients. She worked in various fields of Social Work in Australia and the United Kingdom. Kasia's personal experiences and life challenges made Kasia change her lifestyle and now has dedicated her life to helping others do the same, outside of Social Work. Kasia has passionately created her own brand Consciously Healthy, which the name speaks for itself. Kasia has become a Health Coach and studied Iridology in Bali. She offers Iridology, Sclerology, health consulting, 1 on 1 Health Coaching, and detox online programs. Kasia's hunger for knowledge does not rest and is keen to pursue further studies.
