The Importance of Water

Next to oxygen, water is the most important element to the human body. It is absolutely critical that you drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day at a minimum and if you drink coffee, tea, soda, or alcohol, you should add at least another two glasses of water for every cup of them you consume. I personally keep a one-gallon bottle of water on my desk at work that I fill each morning and finish before I leave the office.

Water makes up more than two-thirds of the weight of the human body, and without it, you would die in a few days. The human brain is 95% water, blood is 82%, and lungs 90%. A mere 2% drop in our body’s water supply can trigger signs of dehydration including fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on small print, such as a computer screen. Mild dehydration is also one of the most common causes of daytime fatigue. An estimated 75% of Americans have mild, chronic dehydration—pretty bad for a place where clean water is readily available through the faucet. Not only do we drink too little water, but we consume large amounts of coffee and soda or even alcohol, which actually dehydrate the body. When you don’t drink water regularly, more often than not that feeling of hunger is actually your dehydrated body crying out for water. It’s not until we actually start drinking the correct amount of water that we begin to get thirsty. Before that, the mind interprets our thirst as hunger.