Making sure you drink enough water every day is one of the easiest and most effective ways of ensuring exceptional health. Water is important for the health of every cell in your body, allowing nutrition to pass into the cells and toxins to be flushed out.
Dehydration occurs if you do not drink enough water. Dehydration impedes the function of all your organs, which can lead to dysfunction of major bodily systems and make you susceptible to disease processes. Just by making sure you are consistently hydrated, will make you less likely to become ill.
For health, the only beverage you should be drinking is water. Although some beverages are marketed to possess health benefits, their health deterrents far outweigh the benefits. Even real organic fruit juices are merely natural sugar water and are only a little less harmful to you than a sugar drink or soda.
Some sources of water include spring water, bottled, Brita filtered, reverse osmosis and tap water. Although there are many opinions as to what is the healthiest source of water, the most important factor is to drink enough of it.
The hydration guidelines that I promote are those of F. Batmanghelidj, MD; also adopted by the C.H.E.K. Institute. To determine how much water you need daily to stay hydrated and promote exceptional health you need to take your body weight in pounds, divide it by two and drink that many ounces of water each day. A 200 pound man needs to drink 100 ounces of water, and a 150 pound person needs to drink 75 ounces each day. (Note that 64 ounces is a half gallon and 128 ounces is a gallon.)
This guideline is for water only and other beverages cannot be substituted or used in combination. If you do also drink juice, from concentrate or not, it does not factor into the equation. Also, foods with a high content of water do not factor in. Additionally, if you drink 8 ounces of a caffeinated drink, you need to add 8 ounces to the equation. If you drink 8 ounces of an alcoholic drink you need to add 16 ounces to the equation.
If you currently drink only 20 ounces of water a day, you will not be able to easily drink and properly absorb 75 or 100 ounces within days. This change in your body’s absorption ability may take up to 6 or 9 months to accomplish. I suggest increasing your daily consumption by 3-5 ounces daily for a week, and then increasing it again the next week by another 3-5 ounces.