Is your body suffering from drought? Do you use water in washing, cooking, gardening but neglect to drink your required 6-8 glasses per day? If you are taking water for granted - but not by the glass - then consider the following:
Two thirds of your body weight is water. Losing even 10% of this water volume puts your body on Red Alert: lose more than 10% and you're history! All life on Earth would cease within 7 days if water disappeared. Water is therefore critical to all life and most of our bodily life functions use water continuously.
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With respect to health, water plays a part in an amazing number of metabolic processes. It keeps your skin fresh and supple (dry skin? drink water!) eliminates fluid retention (yes! you drink water to remove excess water), reduces fat deposits (every dieter's friend is right there at the tap), cools down body temperatures, makes breathing possible, transports food to the body's cells via the bloodstream, removes body waste and acts as the fluid medium through which all enzyme reactions take place. You name it, water does it!
WATER, WATER… EVERYWHERE?
How do we get our water quota daily? 50% is from the beverages we drink whether it's water, tea, milk, fruit juice or whatever. The other 50% is made up of water contained in foods. Fruit for instance is 90% water. We also manufacture some water as a by-product of our food digestion. This manufactured fluid by-product is called metabolic water.
As noted above, all the body's enzymatic reactions require a water medium whether it's digestion of foods, reduction of inflammation at the site of an injury, or the building up of muscle tissue during exercise.
On first examination of these points, it looks like we get our water ration literally everywhere and use it everywhere. But the story isn't quite so simple. The critical factor is balance.
BALANCING THE WATER BUDGET IS PRECISION WORK
So it isn't difficult to see how we get water into our bodies, nor is it hard to imagine how water reacts within us. What is difficult, and can even be life-threatening, is the need to keep our water budget in credit. How do we lose water without knowing it, and where does water store in the body?
We literally breathe away 20% of our water intake daily as we exhale. The drier the climate, the more water we lose to evaporation from our exhaled breath and from our skin. Several liters of water a day are required to process our digestion of food and this is lost - passed from the body as excreta or passed on to body cells - as metabolic water (as mentioned earlier). A great deal of water is lost in perspiration, the body's cooling down mechanism that evaporates moisture through our muscles to the skin surface.
Stored water in the body should be balanced between water inside the cells (intercellular) and water stored in the spaces between cells (extracellular) which also includes the water part of blood plasma.
How much water is stored is determined by an internal, intricately balanced, feedback system linking the brain, liver and kidneys and driven by a chemical called the anti-diuretic hormone (or ADH for short) which makes its appearance in the bloodstream whenever the body's stores of water fall below a certain level. When ADH is released into the bloodstream, water loss through the kidneys is shut down and the body's water stores are conserved.
Balancing this feedback system is a sensible solution to simple water retention problems. Often the best way to overcome a water retention problem is to drink more water! The brain center controlling ADH that perceives a restored water balance between and within the cells and releases excess stored water.
More serious water retention problems occur when there is an accompanying imbalance in mineral electrolytes, such as sodium and potassium, and it is always advisable to consult with your health practitioner if a fluid retention problem persists.
WATER ASSISTS WEIGHT CONTROL
Drinking water assists weight loss by freeing the liver (the site of fat metabolism or breakdown) from its role in trying to cope with reduced kidney function promoted by too litde water. Once the kidneys have adequate water thought-put, the liver is free to function in its fat metabolising role.
In a word, the water budget is again restored. It is also true that an overweight person requires more water than a thin person owing to a heavier metabolic load on the liver.
In addition to improving weight control and maintaining all regular body functions, water helps relieve constipation, rids the body of waste products (very important after an illness), clears the skin and hydrates it with internal moisture.
Whenever there is complaint of dry skin that ordinary skin creams cannot relieve, immediately consider drinking more water! It is amazing how quickly this treatment works! Nearly every common skin complaint can be improved with adequate water balance.
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WATER: CLEAN OR MEAN?
We should all be aware that our Earth has only a limited supply of water, that new water can't be created, and what water we have is constantly being recycled through Nature's pathways. What comes to Earth as rain, snow or hail was water that was once flowing in streams, lakes and oceans.
Through continual evaporation and precipitation, water is reused. It should be easy to see that unpolluted water is increasingly rare and that we all need to act responsibly to keep contaminants out of this limited precious resource.
If your household water supply is suspect, the only recourse is to filter it or by to catch uncontaminated rainwater (the latter is questionable since air pollution is widespread). Whatever steps we decide to take, it is undeniable that water is our planetary and bodily life-giver and we will all suffer more than a drought if we neglect its importance.
