Water is essential for life because up to 70% of your body is made of water. Therefore, to stay healthy, you need to drink enough water daily. But how much water should you drink? Can you have too little or too much? Find out more and how to get the perfect amount of water you need each day.
Why Your Body Needs Water
Your body needs water to maintain its balance. Every cell in your body contains water, as does your blood. In fact, water helps to flush your body of wastes through urination, sweating, and bowel movements. If you don’t have enough water, these functions slow down, reducing the waste removed from your body.
Water also ensures that the joints in your body have adequate cushioning to protect them from wear. Also, drinking enough water helps to keep your body temperature at an ideal level, not too high or too low.
Without having enough water or drinking too much can impact every system in your body.
How Much Water Is Too Much or Too Little?
Generally, water intake relates to your body size. Men should have around 15.5 cups of fluids daily and women need 11.5 cups. However, you don’t have to drink this many cups of water. Estimate about one-fifth of your fluid intake will come from food. Therefore, when planning your drinking, men should have around 13 cups of water a day and women should have around 9 cups of water. However, if you live in a hot or dry climate or do hard labor, you will likely need more.
If you don’t get enough water, you can face dehydration, which can pose a serious problem. Your body cannot function at its peak. Drinking too much water rarely happens outside of specific situations. For those who have an excessive amount of water, the kidneys cannot keep up with filtering the blood, and your body’s sodium levels drop, creating a potentially fatal situation that requires prompt medical attention.
You will know that you have the correct water intake when you don’t feel thirsty and your urine is light yellow to clear in color.
How to Get Enough Water in Your Diet
If you find that drinking enough water is difficult, find ways to improve the taste of the water that you drink. Switch to filtered or purified water instead of tap water. You will save the expense and waste of bottled water and get water that tastes better. Try adding slices of lemon, orange, or cucumbers to the water to boost its flavor, too.
Your fluid intake can also include other drinks besides water. However, because water is readily available, cheap, and does not contribute extra calories or sugar to your diet, it’s the best choice.
Replace Your Tap Water with Better-Tasting Filtered Water
If your tap water doesn’t taste great, you may be shortchanging yourself on the amount of water that you drink daily. Get fresher tasting water that has up to 99% of the impurities removed with a whole home filtration system or a purifier. Contact Best Home Water Treatment Systems today to schedule a consultation on getting better water from your kitchen faucet.
