The main idea I want to share with my readers is to avoid mindless drinking of water without considering other lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise habits and climate. A few days back I was in the city centre and someone asked me whether drinking water provides health safety. My answer was ‘yes’ but the mind of a businessman was seemingly far from my attention. It is important to understand that once you disregard key indicators for water requirements in the body such as the sense of thirst or strive to ingest several glasses of water a day just because you have been told that doing so is good for your health, you can put unnecessary strain on your body system. Sometimes you might find yourself in need of water but people can get water from various food substances that are rich in water. Water is a neutral fluid and used as an intermediate in all biochemical processes that constitute our body. Our bodies require certain levels for proper function of our body parts. Not all body parts require the same amount of water and the requirement varies with the function of a particular body component. When one part of the body receives inadequate water requirements, there are regulatory processes in the body that draw water or absorb water from areas that possess adequate fluid concentrations. To become dehydrated, your overall water content in the body is usually low. Before you suffer from dehydration, the body regulatory mechanisms will always alert you. This is the reason for the occurrence of thirst. Thirst is an important indicator of water requirements in the body. People have different levels of thirst based on their lifestyles. For example if you eat foods such as vegetables, fruits, cooked legumes and whole grains that are naturally rich in water, you may not need to drink much water at all. People who do not use much salt or do not take salt contents regularly usually lose the urge to drink water. On the contrary, if you do not eat a lot of plant foods or you add substantial salt and spices to your meals, you may need to drink several glasses of water every day. Regardless of the diet, if you sweat on a regular basis because of exercise or a warm climate, you will need to supply your body with more water than someone who does not sweat regularly. It is therefore very important to follow the sense of your thirst to monitor your body water requirements. 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 feel the need to drink water on a regular basis. There are other indicators of dehydration as well. For example some people suggest observing the colour of your urine can be a good indicator of dehydration. The idea is that clear urine indicates that you are well hydrated, while yellow urine indicates that you need more water in your body system. However, you should always be cautious with this idea because some food additives that are heavily pigmented can add substantial colour to your urine. Dangers Usually kidneys work overtime to filter excess water out of the circulatory system. One of the important understanding here is that the kidneys are not the equivalent of a pair of plumbing pipes whereby the more water you flush through your kidneys, the cleaner they become; rather, the filtration system that exists in your kidneys is composed in part by a series of specialized capillary beds called glomeruli. The glomeruli can get damaged by unnecessary wear and tear over time, and drowning your system with large amounts of water is one of many potential causes of this kind damage. In addition, water overload puts unnecessary burden on the heart and blood vessels. The blood volume exists within a closed system — the circulatory system. Fluid overload can therefore result from ingesting more water than you need. Young people and especially kids tend to make jokes for drinking competition. If you drink or force large amounts of water into your system over a short period of time, the kidneys will struggle to eliminate enough water from the body system to keep the overall amount at a required level. When the circulatory system becomes diluted with excess water, the concentration of electrolytes in the blood will drop relative to the concentration of electrolytes in your cells. In an effort to maintain an equal balance of electrolytes between your blood and your cells, water will seep into your cells from your blood to cause edema of the cells or your cells will swell. If this swelling occurs in the brain cells, you experience an increased intracranial pressure. Depending on how much water your drink in a short period of time, you can experience a wide variety of symptoms that range from mild headache to impaired breathing. As occurred in the tragic water-drinking contest, it’s possible to die if you drink a lot of water in a short period of time.
