Water is life. In the same way that you do not miss your breakfast, lunch, and evening meal, you should also make sure that you are drinking adequate water in a day to ensure good health. Unfortunately, most people do not consider drinking water paramount for their health and only drink water when thirsty. Surprisingly, however, it is worth noting that thirst is a symptom of dehydration.
In other words, you should never wait until you feel thirsty to drink water. Although the recommended water consumption varies with weight, age, activity level, weather, and sex, it is always ideal to drink water every two hours. If you are struggling to drink more water, you should ensure that a glass of water accompanies every snack and meal you eat.
You should also carry a bottle of water to your job and any other place you go to enjoy the amazing health benefits of drinking water. As a major component of your body, water offers so many health benefits. This article highlights the top 20 health benefits of drinking water as frequently as possible on a daily basis.
20 Amazing Health Benefits of Drinking Water
1. Prevents constipation
If you do not drink enough water, you are more likely to experience constipation. On the other hand, if you constipated, drinking plain water and carbonated water can help ease symptoms. If you are eating balanced foods without taking adequate water, you will regularly suffer constipation. Drinking water regularly also helps to prevent constipation by ensuring unconstrained bowel movements.
2. Aids digestion
Taking water before, during, and after a meal helps your digestive system to break down the food you eat more easily. Therefore, if you frequently experience digestive system problems, you should drink water immediately you eat. Consuming too much sodium or fiber without drinking adequate water can cause bloating. Bloating, for instance, can be treated by drinking a lot of water or peppermint tea.
3. Supports kidneys health
Individuals struggling with kidney stones are increasingly becoming a big problem in the health industry. More people are becoming victims of the deadly disease, but you can keep it at bay by drinking water. Water dilutes minerals and salts that can concentrate in the kidneys to become stones.
Your kidneys play an important role in regulating blood pressure, maintaining water levels, and filtering waste. Therefore, drinking water is essential for your overall health.
4. Boosts skin health
If you want to look younger, you should drink adequate water. Drinking water plumps up your skin cells, minimizing the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines, which keeps you looking younger. Drinking water also keeps your skin glowing by flushing out impurities and toxins that dull your skin from the body. Drinking warm, vitamin c rich lemon water on a daily basis is a perfect remedy that will keep your skin glowing.
5. Makes you work out better
Before hitting the gym or starting your home workouts, you should always strive to first consume adequate water. Although most people tend to drink water during workout sessions, experts advise that you should take adequate water before, during and after workouts. Drinking adequate water before workouts make you workout longer and avoid muscle cramps.
Although the adequate amount of water that you should drink depends on various factors such as weather, activity level and how much you sweat, you should drink at least two cups of water about two hours before working out and five to ten ounces of water every 20 minutes during your workout sessions.
6. Improves mood
If your mood is low, you should consider taking a glass of water. Dehydration triggers stress and thus, drinking water on a regular basis makes you less prone to feeling stressed. It has been proven that cognitive problems, negative mood, fatigue and anger increase when you are dehydrated. To avoid stress and improve your mood, you should not wait until you are thirsty to drink water. Thirst is a symptom of dehydration.
7. Keeps you energized
With the two-thirds of the human body comprising of water, any form of dehydration negatively affects the functionality of most body organs. Dehydration is associated with increased anger, fatigue, and confusion, as well as decreased vigor. You need to drink adequate water for your body organs to work properly. Drinking water also helps to maintain healthy blood pressure and heart rate.
Your immune system also needs adequate fluid to produce lymph, which plays an essential role in keeping you healthy. If your body organs are not functioning effectively, you will feel fatigued and weak. Drinking water ensures that your body organs are functioning optimally, which keeps you energized.
8. Helps you lose weight
Drinking water helps your body maintain healthy body weight. In an era where people are highly concerned about their appearance, drinking adequate water can help you achieve your dream appearance.
Drinking cold water helps to raise metabolism as the body must produce more energy to increase temperature, which makes your body burn more calories. Drinking water also eliminates the need to take beverages high in sugar that can make you gain weight.
9. Boosts the immune system
The importance of drinking water on your health cannot be better highlighted by the fact that drinking water helps fight the flu and its symptoms. Water plays a vital role in boosting the immune system in several ways that include flushing harmful toxins from your body and transporting oxygen to the body cells, ensuring proper functioning of the body.
10. Flushes out toxins
Water plays a critical role in keeping your body healthy and skin attractive. The most noticeable and identified role played by water in the body according to scientists is flushing out toxins. Water helps your body get rid of harmful toxins through sweat and urine. And by getting rid of toxins, water helps to keep the kidneys and urinary tract healthy.
Your body is a fully functioning machine that uses the lung, kidneys, and liver to detoxify. Furthermore, after the organs have detoxed the body, they heavily rely on water to get the toxins out of the body. For this reason, you should always ensure that you are drinking adequate water to get rid of toxins from your body fully.
11. Boosts your brain power
People tend to drink a cup of coffee when they are looking for a mental performance boost. However, what they do not understand is that taking a glass of water is more beneficial to your brain than taking a cup of coffee. With 73-percent of your brain made up of water, drinking water regularly helps you focus, think, concentrate, and stay alert.
Moreover, studies have shown that being dehydrated by just two-percent affects your performance in tasks that require psychomotor, attention, and immediate memory skills. Dehydration negatively affects your brainpower by reducing your cognitive and motor skills, increase your sensitivity to pain, reduce your memory power and affect your mood.
12. Prevents headaches
Dehydration causes headaches, and this is because of the influence of dehydration on brain function. In other words, water is an essential component in the functionality of your brain. In addition to boosting brainpower, drinking water also helps to prevent and relieve headaches caused by dehydration.
According to Medical News Today, dehydration headache occurs when your body loses essential fluids affecting brain functionality. When dehydration occurs, the brain loses essential fluids resulting in a temporary shrink. The shrink causes the brain to pull away from the skull causing pain!
13. Prevents cramps and sprains
Dehydration is also associated with cramping and can lead to sprains. Water acts as a natural lubricant for your joints and muscles making them less prone to sprains and injuries. By drinking water, it makes your muscles and joints more flexible reducing the likeliness of experiencing sprains and injuries.
14. Regulates body temperature
Water is essential in regulating your body temperature. When it gets hot, your body uses sweat to cool down. Drinking water replenishes the lost fluid through sweat ensuring that you are comfortable in a hot environment.
15. Prevents bad breath
Surprisingly, and something that most people don’t know is that in addition to the kind of food you eat, bad breath is usually a sign of depriving yourself enough drinking water. Drinking water frequently and after easting significantly aids in washing away oral bacteria and leftover food particles that cause bad breath.
16. Good for your heart
Drinking a sufficient amount of water helps to maintain the proper viscosity of blood and plasma as well as the distribution of fibrinogen thereby ensuring good heart health.
17. Ensures efficient transportation of minerals and nutrients throughout the body
Without water, it would be impossible for nutrients and minerals to reach all your cells. The minerals and nutrients dissolve in the water making it possible for them to reach all your body parts.
18. It aids in forming saliva and mucus that keeps your eyes, nose, and mouth moist
Water is a major component of human saliva and mucus. Saliva and mucus play very vital roles in the body by keeping the mouth, eyes, and nose moist thus preventing friction and cell damage. If one gets constantly dehydrated, it can make the body incapable of producing enough saliva and mucus, which can result in cell damage and friction in the eyes, nose, and mouth. Dry mouth and itchy eyes, for instance, can be exacerbated by the lack of drinking adequate water on a daily basis.
19. Helps fight sickness
Drinking adequate water can help fight off major diseases because water helps in keeping various body nutrients and minerals in balance. If you are drinking enough water daily, you are hence less likely to suffer discomforts and illnesses such as constipation, migraines, urinary tract infection, kidney stones, exercise-induced asthma, hypertension, and even diabetes.
20. Improves oxygen circulation
To improve the circulation of oxygen in your body, you should always drink water throughout the day. Water as an essential component of your blood and helps to transport oxygen to every part of the body. As such, it ensures one is happy, energized, and in good health as oxygen aids in oxidation and metabolism.
Furthermore, if some parts of your body such as the brain, nerves, or body cells fail to get adequate oxygen, it can lead to serious illnesses or even death.
References:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290814.php
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-health-benefits-of-water
https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/6-reasons-to-drink-water#1