Top 10 reasons why drinking water is good for your health
- Filed under: Health Advices, Health News
- Date: Mar 27,2009
The sentence “Drink more water” became similar to a cliché; you can hear it all the time. But only few of us really know the reasons why we should make a daily habit of drinking at least two liters of water. It is not only a fashion to advice people to drink more, but it really helps our organism in several ways. As we all know 70% of our body consists of water or at least of different liquids. It is important to keep this balance and to provide our organism with the necessary amount of water.
In the following you can read ten reasons why you should include water drinking in your daily rituals and the benefits it can offer to your organism.
1. Purifies and makes your skin beautiful
You can read in various magazines dedicated to women that drinking water is essential for hydrating your skin as well, not only your organism. While cosmetic products offer an outer hydrating effect for your skin, you could change them with a bog bottle of fresh water that would have the same effect, only from inside. I should not even mention that it has a stronger impact from inside than from outside. This way you can preserve your beauty and youth for a longer time.
2. Toxins
Thanks to our healthy way of living and to the great foods we eat, we introduce lots of toxins in our organism every day. Water purifies our blood that is taken to all of our organs. This way we can purify the whole organism. As we all know the liver purifies the blood and the more diluted it reaches the liver the easier it will be for the liver to extract the toxins and release only pure blood. Through water we can get rid of toxins such as nitrogen and ketones.
3. Helps preventing heart attacks
Researches were made that proved that those who drink at least two liters of water are less probable to be affected by heart problems than those who do not drink even one liter per day. In indirect proportion with the introduced amount of water does the probability of a heart attack lessen.
4. Hydrate the muscles
It may sound funny but the muscles need to be hydrated as well. If you regularly do some physical exercises and tend to omit drinking an adequate amount of water you may experience cramps and other pains. Professional sportsmen do recognize the necessity of drinking water on a regular basis. It also optimizes and helps reaching a better performance.
5. Helps concentration
The loss of liquids from our body may result in different unpleasant symptoms such as headaches, incapability of concentrating, irritability.
To go back to our references to magazines dedicated to women, there we can also read frequently that drinking water helps burning fat, or at least reducing it. Water is essential for the appropriate circulation of blood that transports oxygen to all of our organs. But the oxygen is not only vital for our staying alive, it also helps burning fat. So water does not help reducing fat in a direct way but it helps the circulation of the oxygen in the body that plays an important role in burning fat. Another important effect of oxygenating your organism would be upon your strength and energy level.
The brain also needs water in order to be able to function properly. The more oxygen reaches our brain the more vivid it will become. So in an indirect way water can influence our cognitive skills as well and may help us become more quick in thinking and able to focus better on what we are doing.
6. Digestions
As it does with our blood the water dilutes all the liquids in our body. This has an important role in the process of digestions as well. It is vital for a proper digestion and it also helps preventing constipation. Similar to the case of blood with the liver, for example as food reaches our digestive organs, the more diluted it reaches the stomach the easier it will be digested.
Water also helps nutrient absorption and it transports the waste material from our cells.
7. Fights infections
The reduced amount of water in our organism can lead to a disease called Chronic Cellular Dehydration. This state of the body simply means that the organism is not hydrated enough to be able to fight different infections or diseases. By the inadequate hydration of the body our immune system is weakened.
When your body feels it does not have the necessary amount of water for proper functioning, cells may draw water from the blood. Of course it was already explained that blood should be diluted because only so it can provide us with all its benefits. But if cells withdraw water from it, blood will become thick. Its speed of circulation will be reduced and hardened. This can lead to another defending mechanism of the body, it may redirect blood only to the most vital organs. Of course all of our body and all organs, all cells need blood. In the places where the blood does not reach the toxins will remain and there will be nothing to transport them. This again can lead to numberless health problems.
An interesting experiment was made that proved that water drinking can reduce the probability of cancer in the urinary bladder. The most exposed participants drank less than one liter water per day while the less exposed ones drank more than two liters. The conclusion of the experiment was that every 250 ml water added to the organism decreased the probability of cancer in the urinary bladder with 7%.
8. Cools your body
Water helps you to maintain a regular temperature of your body. It is proved that water is the most effective liquid. While usually only 10% of the introduced beverages is absorbed by our body, approximately 90% of plain water is absorbed.
We lose water in every action we sweat, urinate and not always replace the amount that left our body while water would be vital for maintaining the optimal temperature of all the organs.
9. Hunger or thirst?
With all you eat you introduce calories in your organism, calories that can become fat or muscle. It was already mentioned that water helps increase protein synthesis that stands at the basis of muscle building. If you help your organism with enough water the introduced calories will become muscles through protein synthesis.
If you do not possess the necessary amount of water you may experience constant hunger that sometimes could be repressed by drinking a glass of water. Water can help the metabolism as well.
10. In case of illnesses
One of the reasons why a sick person who has temperature should drink liquids is that he loses lots of liquids through sweating, but also because this way the temperature can be repressed.
Although water costs almost nothing we do not use it properly and do not draw all the possible benefits from it. We should understand that water is vital and it helps the functioning of all of our organs and our brain. If omitted it can cause headaches, pains in our muscles, cramps, the loss of proper cognitive abilities. If you regularly do physical exercises, you are ill, have temperature, it is even more important to drink water.
You can check the state of your hydration by checking your urine. Its color gives you a clear hint upon the amount of water you need. Normally the urine should have a light yellow color. The more colored it is, the worst the situation is. Of course it can be remedied any time by drinking a glass of water. But it is important not to forget that this should be a habit, a daily ritual not only a “once in a while” practice. Yet you must not overreact with water drinking. The human body can not absorb all the water you drink, and even less if you drink big amounts once or twice a day. It is advised to drink a glass of water every one hour, even if you do not really feel thirsty. If you do not like the taste of water or you are simply just through with it, you can try some special drinks that consist of water almost exclusively but maybe their taste is more special.
You can try to add a slice of lemon or other fruit or even a leaf of mint to your glass of water, this way you will fasten your metabolism even more and reduce the amount of fat that is deposited in your body.
There are special drinks that are made of distilled water and fruit essence. They are not the typical carbonated beverages or sugar solutions but pure water with a fruity taste.
Try drinking tea. Of course it is important not to fill your tea with sugar because that way it will be not much better than the typical sugar solutions. Instead of sugar try to put honey in it, but if you can drink it without any sweets it is even better. Try herbal teas that can help purifying your organism and eliminating toxins.