How important is Hydration?

What is it?

Hydration is one of the most fundamental areas of nutrition and is important in everyone’s daily habits. For the body to work efficiently, your fluid levels should be at a certain level consistently, and topped up when they get low. It might seem simple to do so, but honestly probably most of us walk around dehydrated most of the time! It’s easy to forget, and sometimes your body doesn’t let you know you’re needing a drink of water, especially if your body is used to being dehydrated.

Why do we need to be hydrated?

I won’t be getting too complicated in this post but ultimately water is needed for lots and lots of processes. It’s needed for the blood to carry essential items around the body every minute of every day, keeps the muscular system hydrated and every organ and it’s central to the kidneys removing waste from the body as well as the GI system to physically do that process. It’s needed for the brain to function properly and be alert, for our skin to keep moisture, for our hair to stay strong and for our eyes not to dry out. Water is needed for a lot of things and whilst they will likely continue to happen anyway, being dehydrated makes them slower, less efficient, less beneficial, and possibly damaging.

What can affect your hydration levels?

This isn’t as simple as forgetting to have a drink of water. The body gets dehydrated throughout the day anyway due to water being used regularly. If you don’t drink anything, you’ll be dehydrated within hours and probably feel the effects the next day.

However, a bunch of factors can also affect your waters levels that may not be so obvious. Doing any sort of physical activity will make your body use up more water, as we lose it through sweating for example. The same happens when in a hotter climate, and so in these two circumstances an individual should drink more water than usual to make up for the loss. In most cases your body will tell you it’s thirsty, and so you’ll naturally reach for some water but some illnesses like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome have an odd symptom where folks don’t ever feel thirsty.

Diuretics, substances that increase fluid lost through urine, can also affect your hydration levels. If you’re peeing more, you have less fluid in you and so must keep this regulated. The classic ones are tea and coffee due to the caffeine content, which can have diuretic effects at high levels (300mg+ generally). A lot of folk drink both early in the day, and so are things to consider if dehydrated a lot of the time. Cucumber, asparagus, celery, and ginger can have the same effect, and a host of other foods too. For an easy check on how dehydrated you are, check the colour of your pee the next time you go. In general, the more yellow it is the more dehydrated you are. You may also get headaches, difficulty focusing and cramping in the muscles.

What amount should I be aiming for?

There are lots of differing statistics for this, as well as size, gender and other individual circumstances playing a part too. Honestly, I tell everyone I coach to aim for at least one and a half litres, and you can’t go wrong. Add half a litre for any moderate exercise, or heat. With hydration, if you stay at a good level, you’ll be fine but if you dip into then lower levels, you’ll find the efficiency dropping over a period of days. Set alarms on your phone to have a drink, you’d be surprised how much you need!

Mark