Hydrate Yourself

Water is the most common nutritional deficiency in the American population. The advice that “you only need to drink when you’re thirsty” perpetuates a myth. Being thirsty means you are already dehydrated and the body is demanding that its buffer be filled back up.

Exercise, hot weather, sugar, soda, coffee, black tea, and even some herbal teas are diuretic, which means they force water out of the body.

Also, eating foods high in table salt (like at a restaurant or processed foods) can be quite dehydrating. Ever noticed when you come home from a meal out that you’re just “starving” for water? That’s the table salt. Sea salt doesn’t create this effect.

The adult body is made up of about 60% water, with the lungs having a very high water content, at about 83%. What does all this water do?

Water is needed by the brain to manufacture hormones, it regulates body temperature, flushes waste (mainly in urine), lubricates joints, and helps deliver oxygen throughout the body. In terms of digestion, it forms our saliva to start off the digestive cascade, is a large component of stomach acid, and keeps our mucosal membranes functioning well.

I mentioned that the lungs have a high water content. When I learned this fact, I had an “a-ha!” light bulb moment. Back in college, I took a break-dancing class, and it was really intense. I noticed that after every class I would spend a few hours feeling like my lungs were irritated, coughing and wheezing.

I had never felt this way in the past, so I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma. The inhaler that I was prescribed worked well, and I continued to use it for almost a decade, as I trained for and ran three half marathons and other endurance events.

But then, when I took my Nutritional Therapy Practitioner training program, I learned the lesson that I’m going to teach you today, which is to divide your body weight in half and drink that many ounces of water each day. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you would drink 75 oz. of water a day.

I started making a habit to do that, just because it was in our curriculum. After about three months, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t using my inhaler as much – in fact, I didn’t wheeze at all while exercising, even when my heart rate rose significantly, like when hiking up a big hill.