10 Reasons to Drink More Water

There is nothing less caloric and safer to drink than water. This includes all kinds of water, including plain clean tap water, bottled water, mineral, seltzer or sparkling water. Basically, this includes all water anywhere without any calories.

Sometimes water can contain things like sodium, sugar or even caffeine! Make sure that you’re not buying this and counting it as water – it is not just water. Some types of water which have lately become commercially acclaimed include all three of these substances and some people, having forgotten to read the label, still think they’re drinking clean water.

Here are a few reasons to drink water more often:

1. Water is literally the thing that keeps you alive.

There can be no life without water – not only life as we know it, but life at all. Our bodies are over seventy percent water and we always have to put more in it because we lose a certain amount by just existing. We lose this water through excrement, urination, sweating, breathing and pretty much everything else that we do.

We have to keep well hydrated constantly – dehydration results in fatigue, joint pain, headaches and a plethora of other illnesses. The rule of three dictates that you can survive three weeks without food, three days without water and three minutes without air.

2. Drinking plain water helps against heartburn.

Medically speaking, heartburn is literally the absence of water in the upper part of your gastrointestinal tract. When you have heartburn, your body is telling you that you are thirsty.

Usually, when you have it, you take antacids or some other kind of pill, but this doesn’t cure your dehydration, instead your body continues to suffer, you just don’t feel the effects that much. If you keep taking pills when you have heartburn, you could create some major health issues for yourself, such as stomach and duodenum inflammation, ulceration, hiatal hernias or even gastrointestinal cancers, which include pancreatic and liver cancer.

3. Water gets you going.

When you wake up, you drink coffee to get your mind started for the day, right? Well, water does the same thing for your body. It takes the pressure off your dry mouth and distributes itself throughout your body, making you subtly feel better.

However, don’t fool yourself with other drinks – coffee and soda won’t have the same effect. They are indeed beverages marketed for being refreshing, but they contain caffeine which will push more water out of your body through the process of diuresis.

4. Water helps you keep your body weight.

It boosts your metabolism and helps you keep your appetite in check by reducing your hunger. When you don’t drink enough of it, your kidneys can’t work as well, and the workload transfers to your liver instead.

The liver then burns the fat stored inside it to utilize it as energy. This means that if you’re not drinking enough water, your body will burn far less fat because of the livers’ role in the work of your kidneys.

5. Water helps you get rid of toxins in your body, as well as other metabolic waste.

Your body is an incredibly big chain of chemical reactions and they all have some waste such as ketones, nitrogen or urea, especially when you’re eating a diet with a lot of protein.

If you want to put more muscle on your body, again, you need water to assist your kidneys.

6. Water boosts physical performance

The American College of Sports Medicine says that if your body has normal fluid replacement processes, it will be better hydrated which means that your performance will be boosted up to its best level, especially if you’re training regularly. To make sure that you can palate the water you drink, the ACSM suggests that you drink flavored water.

This means that you would be able to drink more of it and stay hydrated. One of these drinks is Gatorade’s Propel Fitness Water which will sub out water with pretty much the same effects. It will help you drink a lot of water daily which will in turn boost your performance and practically eliminate the danger of dehydration.

7. Water reduces your chances of a heart attack.

People who drink more than five glasses of water per day have a whopping 41% drop in the likeliness of having a heart attack in comparison to those who only have less than two glasses per day.

Don’t get too excited though – this only counts for water so put away your coffee, milk, alcohol, juice or tea. They might actually make you more likely do get a heart attack.

8. Lowers the likelihood of bladder cancer

In a study conducted by Michaud and coworkers over a 10 year period and including over 48,000 men, it was concluded that having a high turnover of fluids decreases the likelihood of urinary bladder cancer.

20% of the guys in this study drank 2.5 liters of water per day and 20% drank 1.2 liters or less, while the other 60% were in the middle. The results clearly demonstrated that with every extra 240ml glass of water per day, the risk of bladder cancer drops by 7%.

9. Drinking more water helps the kidneys work properly.

When you don’t drink enough water, your cells still have to get it from somewhere. They do this by pulling water inside them from the bloodstream. When this happens, your heart is automatically weaker because your blood loses its liquidity and thickens over time, which means your body will prioritize and draw water away from areas that aren’t absolutely vital to the functioning of your body.

Because of this, you can be dehydrated even before getting the feeling of dehydration, which means that your kidneys will take a big hit. The kidneys have a role in the purification of your blood and getting toxins out of your body and they will not be able to do their job if you don’t give them enough water to work with.

10. Water regulates our temperature, breaks down solids and more.

Our body needs water more than anything else. Up to 75% of your body is water and it is absolutely vital in the function of all of your organs. It regulates your organs and body’s temperature, it breaks down solids and it moves all of the nutrients around your body. If you keep hydrated, you also lower your risk of chronic pains like rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, colitis and lower back pain, but it also helps with your blood pressure and cholesterol.

If you want to know if your water intake is adequate, just look at the color of your urine. Under optimal conditions, your urine should have a light yellow color. If it’s any darker than that, drink more water.

Drink whenever you feel thirsty and make sure you get at least eight glasses per day. When it’s hotter outside or you’re doing physically demanding exercises, you might even need ten or more glasses. Just listen to your body and your digestion, blood circulation, temperature control and the look of your skin will improve. Water is by far the most essential thing you need to consume, but nobody has managed to pinpoint exactly how much we need, so keep your intake at eight cups or more.

Drinks such as coffee, tea and sodas need to be kept in check because some of their effects might contradict the effect that water has on your body. This means that the sugar and the caffeine will reduce the hydration effects, making you need more water in order to keep functioning. If you’re not hydrated enough, sooner or later you will develop illnesses and health threats that could have been easily avoided by simply drinking more regular water.

When trying to replace your bodily fluids, always go for water instead of anything else. In fact, if you’ve read this entire article all the way through here, you’re probably thirsty. Drink some water!


For the latest news and updates join our 1 Million fans on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.


Leave a Reply