Whenever a person disregards his or her sense of thirst and strives to ingest several glasses of water a day just because he has been told that doing so is good for the health is not right. Under such circumstances one is actually putting unnecessary strain on our body in two major ways.

Ingesting more water than we need can increase our total blood volume. And since our blood volume exists with in a closed system, our blood circulatory system needlessly increases our blood volume on a regular basis and this might put unnecessary burden on our heart and blood vessels.

Our kidneys must work overtime to filter excess water out of our blood circulatory system. Our kidneys are not the equivalent of a pair of plumbing pipes whereby the more water you flush through our kidneys, the cleaner they become.

Rather there is the filtration system that exists in our kidneys and is composed in part by a series of specialized capillary beds called glomeruli. Our glomeruli can get damaged by unnecessary wear and tear over time, and drowning our system with large amounts of water is one of many potential causes of said damage.

Putting unnecessary burden on our cardiovascular system and our kidneys by ingesting unnecessary water is a subtle process. For the average person, it is virtually impossible to know that this burden exists, as there are usually no obvious symptoms on a moment to moment basis. Important to note here is that this burden is real and can hurt our health over the long term.

Forcing the body to accept a large amount of water within a short period of time say for an hour or two can be fatally dangerous to our health.

If you force large amounts of water into the body system over a short period of time, the kidneys will struggle to eliminate enough water from the system to keep the overall amount at a safe level.

As our blood circulatory system becomes diluted with excess water, the concentration of electrolytes (includes mineral ions such as potassium, sodium, calcium and others) in our blood will drop relative to the concentration of electrolytes in our cells.

In an effort to maintain an equal balance of electrolytes between our blood and our cells, water will seep into our cells from our blood, causing our cells to swell.

If this swelling occurs in our brain, the bones that make up our skull hardly budge. The result is an increase in intracranial pressure that is to say our brain gets squeezed.

Depending on how much water we drink in a short period of time, we could experience a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from a mild headache to impaired breathing.
Here we need to understand how much water we should drink to best support our health.

If we eat plenty of foods that are naturally rich in water, such as vegetables, fruits, and cooked legumes and whole grains, we may not need to drink very much water at all. If we do not use much or any salt and other seasonings, our need for drinking water goes down even further.

Conversely, if we do not eat a lot of plant foods and add substantial salt and spices to our meals, we may need to drink several glasses of water every day.

Regardless of what our diet looks like, if we sweat on a regular basis because of exercise or a warm climate, we will need to supply our body with more water (through food and liquids) than someone who does not sweat regularly.

Most important is that people should drink water following their sense of thirst. Some people believe that thirst is not a reliable indicator of how much water you need, since many people suffer with symptoms related to dehydration and do not seem to feel a need to drink water on a regular basis.

Most people who are chronically dehydrated have learned to ignore a parched mouth. If we ask such people if they are thirsty and would like a piece of fruit or a glass of water, they will almost always realize that they are indeed thirsty.

Some people suggest observing the color of our urine as a way of looking out for dehydration. The idea is that clear urine indicates that we are well hydrated, while yellow urine indicates that we need more water in our system.

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