We can’t survive without water. Two-thirds of our body is made up of water and our blood is 90% water. In order to function properly, you need to stay hydrated. A lack of water can affect so many different areas of your health; from your skin to your digestive system and exercise performance.
By drinking enough water every day and eating plenty of water-rich foods, you can hydrate your body from the inside out. We all know that we need to stay hydrated but it’s one of those things that can really slip through the cracks. By staying on top of your water intake, your skin, heart and overall health will thank you.
10 Benefits of Keeping Your Body Hydrated:
- Improve skin health
- Promote cardiovascular health
- Support muscles and joints
- Cleanse your body
- Regulate body temperature
- Transport minerals and nutrients
- Boost exercise performance
- May help prevent kidney stones
- Assist with weight loss
- Help to Prevent and Treat Headaches
How to Drink More Water and Stay Hydrated
In general, health authorities recommend that you drink about eight 8-ounce glasses of water which is about two liters or half a gallon of water. Hitting your daily water intake is important for good health as water aids in a ton of different functions within the body. Water aids digestion, circulation, absorption, and excretion. As well as drinking more, you can also up your intake of water-rich foods to help you stay hydrated. It’s not just drinks that help, you can eat your way to better hydration.
Related: Hydration: Drink Up!
Water-rich fruits and vegetables to add to your diet include:
- Watermelon
- Cucumber
- Tomatoes
- Spinach
- Mushrooms
- Oranges
- Blueberries
- Apples
Hydration plays a huge role in your skin health. A lack of water can result in dryness, dullness and increase the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Although it’s always a good idea to get your nutrients from your diet, supplements can help give you an extra boost.
Related: Why Proper Hydration Is Essential
What are the Benefits of Staying Hydrated?
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Improve Skin Health
When you’re dehydrated, it affects your skin’s ability to perform essential functions like cell turnover. This means your skin isn’t able to shed the outer layer of the skin enough and can lead to a buildup of dead skin on the surface resulting in clogged pores, and a lackluster complexion.
Staying hydrated benefits your skin, making it much more supple and increasing elastic. From a basic beauty standpoint, proper hydration means that your complexion will look more plump, youthful-looking and healthy. Skin hydration is crucial for reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles as well. Hydrated skin can also help combat very oily skin which can result in a shiny appearance, clogged pores, and pimples.
2. Promote Cardiovascular Health
When you’re dehydrated, your blood volume can decrease. This means that there is less blood circulating through your body. When this happens, your heart tries to overcompensate. Your heart begins to beat faster, increasing your blood pressure and heart rate. When there’s not enough oxygen reaching all your cells, it can make everyday tasks like walking up the stairs and exercise feel a lot more difficult.
By staying properly hydrated, it allows your heart to pump blood around the body more easily and oxygen can reach all parts of the body. In turn, this helps your body and muscles work more efficiently.
3. Support Muscles and Joints
Water is foundational to our health. Adequate hydration enables the body to properly lubricate joints. This helps to reduce joint pain and inflammation. Water helps to support your muscles and joints so that they can work more effectively together to support everything you do. When you’re hydrated, water transports oxygen and nutrients to the muscle as well as removing waste efficiently. To encourage pain-free movement and give your body the best opportunity to thrive, hydration is vital.
4. Cleanse Your Body
Proper hydration performs several roles in the body. It helps to remove toxins from the body and cleanses your body of harmful substances. Water flushes toxins from the body and transports nutrients to where they need to be. Water acts as a natural lubricant to soften stools and clear out the bowels.
Your kidneys also need water to help remove toxins from the body. Toxins are a normal part of body functions as we intake food and oxygen. But, they need to be excreted from the body to maintain normal levels within the body. If toxins have the chance to build up in the body, it will result in a number of health problems.
5. Regulate Body Temperature
Water is able to regulate your internal body temperature in response to the temperature that’s around you externally. Your body mainly does this through sweating. When it’s too hot outside or you have a fever, your body sweats. It’s water that allows your body to sweat. Dehydration impairs your body’s ability to regulate temperature, so you stay hotter. This can be a problem as your body will remain hot, instead of sweating and maintaining a stable internal temperature.
6. Transport Minerals and Nutrients
Water is involved in several functions in the body including transporting minerals, nutrients, and oxygen. Proper hydration is essential for moving nutrients throughout the body. Water transports glucose, minerals, water-soluble vitamins, and other nutrients throughout the body. Water itself is a critical nutrient. All biochemical reactions occur in water and form the structure of large molecules and proteins.
7. Boost Exercise Performance
Without proper hydration, your physical performance can suffer. This is especially important during intense exercise. Losing as little as 2% of your body water can have a significant impact on your physical and mental performance. It’s not uncommon for athletes who are training hard to lose up to 10% of body water during an intense session.
Poor hydration can reduce motivation, increase tiredness and make exercise feel much more difficult, affecting your physical performance. Proper hydration has been found to stop these effects from happening. Hydration may even help to prevent oxidative stress that happens during intense exercise.
8. May Help Prevent Kidney Stones
Urinary stones are clumps of mineral stone that occur in the urinary system. The most common form of urinary stones is kidney stones, which as the name suggests, occur in the kidneys. It’s thought that a higher fluid intake may help to increase the volume of water that passes through the kidneys. This is thought to help dilute the concentration of minerals in kidney stones, so it’s less likely that minerals will crystalize and clumps will form.
9. Assist with Weight Loss
Drinking plenty of water, eating water-rich foods and staying hydrated can help support weight loss. This is because water can make you feel fuller as well as boost your metabolism. Studies have found that drinking half a liter of water increases metabolism by 24-30% for up to 1.5 hours. Therefore, upping your water intake could increase your daily energy expenditure.
10. Help to Prevent and Treat Headaches
Dehydration can trigger headaches and migraines in some individuals. Dehydration headaches can feel different to different people, but they typically have symptoms similar to those of other common headaches. It is often described as a pulsating ache on both sides of the head that’s aggravated by physical activity.
A small survey published in the medical journal Headache found that among the people interviewed, 1 in 10 had experienced a dehydration headache. These respondents described the headache as an aching that got worse when they moved their heads, bent down, or walked around. Most of these survey respondents felt complete relief 30 minutes to 3 hours after drinking water.
While plain water should do the trick, drinks with electrolytes can give you an added boost.. Electrolytes are minerals your body requires to function. You get them from the foods you eat and things you drink. Dehydration can disrupt the important balance of electrolytes in your body, so replenishing them with a drink with electrolytes in them can help you feel better. Staying hydrated and keeping electrolytes balanced, it is possible for most people to end the pain of headaches.
It appears that timing is also important when it comes to hydration and diet. One study found that participants who drank half a liter of water before meals lost 44% more weight over 12 weeks. Staying hydrated also helps to keep your digestive system in working order, helping to expel fats efficiently from the body. Proper hydration helps to flush out your system, reduce water retention, and decrease appetite.
By hitting your daily water intake and eating plenty of water-rich foods, your body can benefit from proper hydration.
Sunwarrior’s Beauty Greens Collagen Booster is all about promoting hydration and supporting skin health from the inside out. It has other beauty benefits including strengthening nails, improving hair health, combating oxidative stress, and alkalizing cells. The collagen booster contains hyaluronic acid (HA) for smooth and supple skin. HA is also good for attracting and retaining moisture in your skin and lubricating joints, keeping your body hydrated.
Beauty Greens contains coconut water to hydrate the skin and strengthen your cells. Coconut water is an excellent source of electrolytes. For optimum hydration, it’s important to maintain a balance of electrolytes and fluids. When you exercise, you sweat out electrolytes and fluids. It’s important to replenish these after you exercise. The collagen booster helps to replenish electrolytes you lose throughout the day as well as encouraging your body to increase its own natural collagen production.
By increasing your water intake through water-rich foods and incorporating a collagen booster into your diet, you can help to hydrate your body. Staying hydrated is essential to all areas of performance and health. Even low levels of dehydration can cause headaches, constipation, and tiredness. Just 1-2% of dehydration can result in impaired cognitive function.
When you’re suitably hydrated, you can maximize your physical performance, improve skin health, and support your joints and muscles.
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