Why we need water | Daily water requirement | Water “intoxication” | What will we drink
The most important component of our diet, of course, is water. Good water has no taste, no smell, no color, but we still love it so much that we cannot live without it!
Why we need water?
Water itself has no nutritional value, but it is an integral part of every cell in our body. The human body is 50–80% water (the younger it is, the greater part of his body is water, not only blood, in which it is 85%, but also bones: 20-30% of bone tissue is water. Without food a person can live for dozens of days, but only if they have fresh water. One can survive without water will last only a few days. The acute dehydration that occurs with some serious diseases, such as intestinal infections, can lead to impaired consciousness (if loss make up only 6-8% of body weight), with 20% death occurs.
No wonder pediatricians are so afraid of diarrhea and vomiting in young children — in them dehydration can develop rapidly, quickly reaching critical levels. Under normal conditions, a person loses about 2-3 liters of fluid per day with breathing, then with the liquid part of feces and urine. With heat and low humidity, these losses increase many times.
Water is an integral part of every cell in our body.
Anyone who has been to Israel is familiar with the phenomenon of a dry, hot wind blowing from the side of the desert. In the days when it covers the country, it is recommended to drink a lot, because hot and dry air practically draws moisture from the body, leading to increased dehydration. No matter what house or store you enter, you will certainly be offered water.
Fluid flow increases during physical exertion, especially in hot weather. What is the water absorbed by us? After all, it does not contain any nutrients and, moreover, is not a source of energy. Nevertheless, water is the internal environment in which various (complex) biochemical reactions take place, it transports internal biologically active substances from the place of their formation to the place of use and delivers unnecessary metabolic products to the place of disposal. It humidifies the oxygen entering the lungs; Standing out in the composition of sweat, regulates heat transfer, thereby maintaining a constant body temperature; removes toxic substances from the body. That means drinking daily, and a lot, is a vital necessity.
Daily water requirement
Approximately about 40% of the fluid in the body comes from food — meat, cereals, fish, dairy products, even 50% bread consists of water, and the remaining 60% must be obtained in the form of drinks. We calculate: a person weighing 70 kg needs about 2.5 liters of water on cool days. He will “eat” 1 liter, and 1.5 liters should be drunk.
On such hot days as in summer, the need for water increases dramatically: with moderate physical activity up to 2.5-3 liters per day. People who have to work in conditions when the ambient temperature reaches 38-40 “C, so as not to suffer from dehydration, you need to drink up to 6 liters per day.
Water “intoxication”
Limit the use of water to those who suffer from heart and kidney failure, and the rest should consume it as much as required by the standards. Just do not drink the daily norm in one fell swoop! In medicine, there is the concept of “water intoxication”, when excessively much water is immediately absorbed into the blood. This leads at least to a violation of the digestive system, and as a maximum to cerebral edema. In the middle between them was acute heart failure, when the myocardium was not able to pump a sharply increased volume of blood. So, you need to drink often, but in small portions.
You can’t drink cold drinks — they can be below the body temperature by no more than 10-15 ° C, otherwise such a liquid, once in the throat, will cause a spasm of the vessels that feed the mucous membrane of the tonsils. As a result, there will be a sharp decrease in local defenses and viral and bacterial inflammatory processes will quickly develop in the throat. No wonder the incidence of tonsillitis in very hot days is the same as in winter in severe frosts.
What will we drink?
Today, the food industry offers us a huge assortment of drinks, especially sweet carbonated ones. These are Coca-Cola, sprite, Fanta, and others. Scientists from the United States — countries whose food industry has been so successful in creating and distributing such drinks around the world — have called them liquid sweets. Drinking a can of Coca-Cola and other similar liquids, a person seems to eat up to 12-15 teaspoons of sugar. In the heat, as everyone knows very well, I especially do not want to move. Where do these sugar calories go? Correctly, they are deposited in the roundness of the abdomen and hips.
It is impossible to quench your thirst with sweet drinks — it persists, and a person drinks a can after a can. Perhaps, enterprising manufacturers were counting on this, because if you quench your thirst quickly, sales will be low: why buy more if you don’t feel like drinking anymore? In addition, the composition of these drinks includes additional ingredients: flavors, colorants, and other chemicals. All this will have to be processed by the liver, which already has enough worries, especially if the person is overweight. And the effect of such drinks on the teeth is also not beneficial. It is proved that people who use the “light” options for such a drink gain weight even faster than those who drink the “classics”. Probably due to large volumes.
Therefore, preference should be given to ordinary homemade drinks — tea, unsweetened compote (especially from dried fruits), fruit drinks, and also mineral water.