Hydration Matters: Water, Electrolytes, and Your Health

From my opportunities to speak about hydration, its importance, and the role of electrolytes for optimum water intake, it’s evident that hydration is frequently overlooked and neglected in nutrition, even though it’s critically important to overall performance. Staying hydrated is essential beyond just during strenuous activity. With vital organs such as your heart, lungs, kidneys, skin, etc., being majority water – even your bones are 31% water! It’s necessary to stay hydrated daily.

Here are some tips to help us to stay hydrated:

Add fresh fruit and vegetable slices to our water for fun and palatability. Research has proven adding lemon to water helps us detoxify. You can infuse water with different vegetables or fruits.
Add whole fruit and raw vegetables to our diet. These have a good amount of water.
Mix it (water) with green tea: While most of our hydration should come from water, mixing in some green tea will add spice to our hydration life.
Break it up. Calculate how much water we need to drink daily, and break that amount up every 3-4 hours. Doing this will also ensure that we are staying hydrated throughout the day. If you prefer to sleep soundly through the night, minimizing bladder alarms, finish your last sip by 8 p.m.
Look behind you. For many, checking urine color to ensure it’s clear (rather than yellow) indicates that you’re hydrated.

Role of electrolytes:

Both rehydration (fluid replenishment) and the ability to retain more bodily water depend on electrolytes, which are electrically charged particles (anions or cations) from salts dissolved in water.

The electrolytes potassium (K+) and sodium (Na+) make up most of the osmolytes in the ICF and ECF. Due to its function as the primary volume regulator in the extracellular compartments, sodium has a significant impact.

In a day, How much water shall I need to drink?

So, one question arrived: How much water should I need to drink for my body functions (Metabolism process, execution, TBW, etc.)? It depends on your activity, climate, and body fat percentage. An average Indian needs to drink 2.5-3 Liters per day.

This water source comes from drinking water and other sources, such as coconut water, soup or fruit juice, caffeinated drinks, etc.

What are you thinking? Drink water and electrolytes mixture for more activity and stay healthy.