You need water.
Yes. You.
Are you drinking enough water? Drinking adequate amounts of clean, well mineralized water (check out Part 3 in our mineral series) is one of the easiest, simplest and cheapest things you can do to maintain excellent health.
This post revisits some material we’ve covered in the past, but it’s important enough to repeat. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for the United States are about to be published. Again they plan to recommend the need for adequate water intake.
Reasonable sound advice.
Yet we still hear people saying that Dr. So-And-So on television says it’s not necessary to drink a certain amount of water. This misconception needs a proper response.
There are many benefits that come from drinking enough water. Doctors who encourage water intake notice:
- A decrease in joint and back pain.
- Leg and ankle swelling are reduced (this may not make intuitive sense, but unless you have kidney or heart failure, ankle swelling is usually due to not enough water intake).
- Digestion and bowel function improve. Constipation is often completely eliminated when there is adequate water intake.
- Your skin is moistened from the inside out, and dry itchy scaly skin improves. Wrinkles also decrease.
Yet some doctors in the media say that you don’t need water? Really? With all due respect – wrong advice for many reasons.
The published medical literature says you do need water. There are more peer-reviewed articles than I can count studying the problems caused by inadequate water intake. The Institute of Medicine (IOM), known for its measured and rather conservative recommendations about nutrition, has published recommendations about the minimum intake of water required for health.
These recommendations from the Institute of Medicine became adopted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Both agencies included this in their recommendations for the nutritional needs of people in the United States.
Every five years, the USDA and the DHHS are required to present to Congress a report on the Dietary Guidelines for the United States. Their report, based on peer-reviewed literature, shows water is one of the nutrients they study and recommend. I can only assume doctors stating there is no scientific proof that human beings need to drink water don’t read these studies.
Part of the challenge is that most people don’t drink the basic amount of water recommended in these dietary guidelines. Daily water needs are based on weight, and the formula hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years. Take your weight in pounds, divide it by two and you will get a number that represents the number of ounces of water you must drink each day.
Using this formula we see that the general recommendation to drink eight, 8 ounce glasses (64 ounces or 2 quarts) of water each day is a good amount if you weigh 128 pounds. However if you weigh 192 pounds, you need 3 quarts of water per day. If you weigh 256 pounds, you need a gallon of water per day just to meet the minimum recommended amount to avoid disease.
That is in the recommendation from the Institute of Medicine, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services. I know that at times we find ourselves at odds with these agencies. In this case we agree.
The basic equation of half your body weight in ounces needs adjustment if:
- If you live in the mountains or if you sweat a lot due to hot climate then you need more than the minimum recommended amount of water
- You engage in strenuous exercise or strenuous physical work. This requires drinking more than this minimum amount of water.
- If you drink a lot of coffee, dark tea or eat more than 90 g of protein per day then this too requires that you drink more than the minimum recommended amount of water.
With these additional issues adjusting your water intake proves essential so that your body gets what it needs. Being smart about this point can greatly shift your overall health and balance.
In addition to the benefits described above, in our office clients report improvement in sleep, better energy levels, improvement in sexual function, exercise tolerance and less moodiness and aggressiveness. Also iff you’re worried about being up all night peeing, drink your water earlier in the day.
It is so easy to drink enough water, and the benefits come quickly.
Just try it.
You might just be amazed with the results.
Make sure to share your results below by leaving a comment. We want to hear about your successes.
As always – To Your Health.
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© Can Stock Photo Inc. / alexmillos
