The Good

Hydrating will help with protecting yourself from cancer and heart disease along with a healthy lifestyle. A study from the Adventist Health Study, with 20.000 men and women, where one group drank 5 glasses of water plus and the other 2 glasses or less daily. Those that drank double the water had half the the risk as those that drank less. There were other studies done on those that included exercise and a healthier lifestyle by Harvard and they also concluded the same and that the reason could be due to increased blood flow and lowering blood ‘viscosity’. The findings from this study showed that women should take 2- 3 liter  and 2.5- 4 liters for men. This includes 1 liter a day that is found in food like vegetables and fruit, plus all drinks that you have during the day will count too.

By hydrating you will help yourself to prevent disease along with a healthy lifestyle.

But studies done also found that these people also did not eat many vegetables and fruits, did not shop in the fresh produce isle and did little exercise. Lets face it most people whom are drinking lots of water are the ones exercising.

The Bad

By not hydrating well on a daily basis these are some of the issues that you can face:-

The Good to Know (G2K)

G2K  – How do you know if you are hydrated? Well here is a simple trick to do

Step 1 Empty your bladder

Step 2 Drink 750ml of water and then

Step 3 Check how much you pee an hour later

              Dehydrated = less than 250ml out

              Hydrated = more than 250ml

Also look at the colour of your pee and this will tell you your optimal amount, you want the colour to be clear, not dark yellow and you also do not want it to be completely clear as this might be too much.

G2K – Drinks like tea and coffee and infused water can hydrate you through the day with added benefits. Green and white tea have been shown to reduce your risk of ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer, but I will go into this in more detail in another blog soon.  Tea can also lower cholesterol and blood pressure, blood sugars and body fat. Wow hadn’t we start putting the kettle on. Well steeping your brew in cold water over night in the fridge and drinking through the next day will retain the antioxidants as well as take the bitter taste away and reduce the caffeine content.

G2K – Also good to know is that hydrating with Tea will increase your alpha brain wave state. The state where you want to be in meditation – calm, relaxed, fully alert and focused. Yep you can get this with a cuppa tea. You want white tea or green tea.

G2K – In terms of cancer prevention green and white tea protect DNA damage.

G2K – Green tea is better than white tea, but if you add lemon white tea is better than green. Why I hear you ask – well it seems that phytonutrients in white tea are released at a certain pH level which the lemon helps with.

The Myths

So we are told that we should drink 8 glasses of water a day of around 8oz per glass, but where did this come from. Well in 1921 an experiment was done with one man – yep one man that concluded that the author measured himself from his own urine and sweat output and determined the amount he lost which amounted to less than 3% a day – the equivalent of 8 glasses a day.  But what is enough? This then became the guide line that we seem to follow globally .

As we are all different, we all need different amounts to hydrate us and we all have different constitutions so try this experiment for the ultimate way of measuring:-