You may know that you’re supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day. You may know that this is important to be healthy, have good skin, prevent dehydration, and lose weight. But why does it make you healthy? Why does it improve your ability to lose weight? Do you really need 8 glasses a day?

Your body is mostly made of water, about 60-75%. This fact alone should drive home how important water is to your well being. Did you know you can last weeks without food, but only a scant 3 days without water (not even that if you’re unhealthy and dehydrated to begin with)?

What Water Can Do For You

Like most people, I am only interested in something if I believe it will enhance or benefit my life in some way. Humans are selfish, and this is an important trait for survival. So read on to learn about what water as a nutrient can do for you.

Water does for your body what it does for your house. Water flushes waste products away from your house, it cleans your house, and it cooks the food that nourishes you. While water doesn’t cook anything in your body, it is the highway that your food’s nutrients drive on to get to your cells.

Water helps you move. It cushions your joints, protects your brain and other organs, helps food move through all your tubes, and helps you swallow. If you’ve ever suffered from dry mouth, you know how difficult it is to chew, taste, and swallow food without enough moisture in your mouth.

Water is essential to digestion of proteins and carbohydrates. Without water, your body cannot perform the chemical process necessary to extract nutrients

Water keeps you at a healthy 98.6 degrees. If you’ve ever waited impatiently for a pot of water to boil, you know that water’s temperature changes very slowly. This action regulates your body’s temperature, releasing (sweating) or retaining heat at a healthy rate.

Water helps to keep you trim. It is the magic potion for weight loss, coming to you right out of your kitchen tap. Your liver converts fat to energy, but another of its jobs is to help the kidneys. Kidneys need a lot of water. If the kidneys don’t have enough water to do their job, your liver picks up the slack. This means your liver cannot quickly or efficiently metabolism fat, impeding weight loss. If you drink enough, your liver can go back to performing all it’s duties at maximum level.

Water makes you look young. It fills out your skin cells, plumping up saggy skin; it clears away impurities, giving you a youthful glow; it improves muscle tone because your muscles are mostly water.

How much do I need?

Alright, so you are convinced now that water is a miracle potion, and people absolutely must get enough. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to determine how much water you should be getting.

If you truly lead a sedentary lifestyle (you’re bedridden or have severely impaired movement), your body probably doesn’t need 8 glasses a day, 6 could do it. But if you move at any point throughout the day, you need 8 eight-ounce glasses or more. That’s right, more.

You lose water constantly all day long, and the human body does not possess the ability to produce its own water supply. Therefore, you must replace the water. You lose water sweating (you may not notice this), exhaling, urinating, and bowel movements. It isn’t enough to simply drink when you are thirsty; by the time you feel the sensation of thirst, you are already dehydrated. 8 eight-ounce glasses a day is a good baseline for women, 9 eight-ounce glasses for men.

Other factors also determine your water needs: temperature of environment (the warmer it is, the more fluid you need), activity level, illness, and pregnancy are just a few. If you are overweight, you need an extra glass per extra 25 pounds of weight. Bigger people (men, some women) need more water than a smaller people (women, children, some men).

If you exercise, you need to increase your water intake. A good way to figure out how much to consume is to weight yourself before and after your workout. If you weigh less at the end of your workout than you did at the beginning, you’ve lost water weight. Drink enough extra water during the workout so that your weight remains stable.

You could also use an online hydration calculator like the one at the end of this article

Could I ever drink too much?

Unlikely, but possible. If you are an elite athlete or a long-distance runner/cyclist, you could develop a condition know as “water intoxication.” The huge amounts of water the athlete consumes during an athletic event causes blood plasma to increase, diluting salt levels in the body. The athlete is also losing salt through his sweat, so the amount of salt available to the body is decreasing on two levels. There aren’t always any symptoms of this condition (confusion, weakness), but most athletes can avoid it by drinking a sports drink containing sodium during sporting events.

Even if you aren’t an athlete, but workout for extended periods of time or in extreme heat, this condition could affect you. Adding a little fruit juice to your water or drinking a diluted sports drink can help prevent water intoxication.

Remember that it is very unhealthy to consume half or all of your daily water allowance in one sitting. Your body may not need that much water all at once, and you could still end up dehydrated when the kidneys flush away the excess water. Drink a glass or two at specific times throughout the day and during exercise.

But I don’t want to constantly run to the toilet.

During the first few days or weeks of increasing your water consumption, you can expect to run to the toilet more often. It will go away, however, as your body corrects its fluid balance. What happens in the beginning is that your body begins to flush out waste and extra water it has been holding onto. You may notice a drop on the scale as you let go of retained water, so called “water weight.” Once your body becomes used to receiving adequate amounts of water, it will not hang on to extra fluid, and the detoxification process eventually ceases. So stick with it!

Is bottled really better?

No. In fact it is worse in a lot of cases. Purified water (essentially filtered tap water) lacks the minerals present in regular spring, ground, or tap water. If you want to drink bottled water, make sure it is natural spring or ground water or has had minerals added back into the water after purification.

Bottled water is very expensive, especially if you need to drink 64 ounces or more a day. Tap water is practically free. Plus it has the added bonus of fluoride, an added mineral (done by the municipal water system) which protects your teeth from cavities.

Water is the miracle pill (well, drink) that the world has been searching for. Drinking enough is not hard to do, especially after you begin to notice how good it makes you feel. Cheers!

External Links:

• Hydration Calculator -