Importance of Regular Water Intake

Preventive healthcare often places a lot of emphasis on the importance of water in one’s life. Water accounts for almost 60% of your body weight and if percentage even falls by 1%, then you start feeling thirsty immediately. A decrease of 5% will lead to decreased muscle strength and endurance, while a decrease of over 20% leads to death. And yet, ironically, we do not give much value to water.

Here are a few more reasons why drinking more water is important to your overall wellness –

Water is a Universal Solvent

For all the biochemical processes that take place in your body, water serves as an important solvent. Charged and polar molecules are able to move freely through water due to its polar nature. Did you know that 83% of your blood is water? The dissolved substances in water are carried all over your body. This means that the likes of Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide and nutrients are able to move from one cell to another all thanks to water.

Maintains Electrolyte Balance

Electrolytes are electrically charged ions of chloride and sodium, that are responsible for maintaining the correct water balance in your body. They are also responsible for supplying all sorts of information to your brain via nerve impulses (which are nothing more than electrical signals). They also help regulate muscle activity. However, in order to do so, these electrolytes need to be stored at certain levels. To do so, water constantly moves in and out of cells in order to let the ions stay in equilibrium.

It Regulates Your Body Temperature

Did you know that water cools down your body temperature to the optimum temperature (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) via sweating? It’s true. Whenever your body is exposed to the sun, the temperature inside your body starts increasing almost immediately, forcing you to sweat. Sweating is nothing but the body’s way of cooling down your rising body temperature. And when the sweat is wiped or evaporated from your skin’s surface, it removes the extra heat and cools down.

Boosts Your Physical Performance

When your body undergoes physical activities like sports, working out at the gym etc, you can lose as much as 2 liters of water per hour through sweating. Drinking water frequently during such activities helps maintain your body’s muscle strength as well as stabilize your body temperature.

After reading these points, there should be no doubt in your mind that the role of water, as agreed by various preventive healthcare doctors, is extremely important in the emotional and physical wellness of a person.

Advisor Healthcare‘s HealthAdvisor app is a smart solution to track all the body vitals, diet and water intake. HealthAdvisor app crunch your health data and provide you various insights about your health and help you to take informed and preventive measure to spend a healthy and long life.

Originally published at blog.advisor.healthcare on July 27, 2015.