Hydration; & why it’s sooo very important!

Water is crucial for the proper functioning of all body systems. **Every cell, tissue, and organ in the body requires water to sustain life.** Staying hydrated is vital for processes such as circulation, digestion, temperature regulation, and nutrient transportation.

**Blog Overview:**
Roles of water in the body
Why dehydration weakens muscles
Are you gaining weight or having trouble loosing weight due to dehydration?
Early/Chronic signs of dehydration
How to stay strong and hydrated!

GUY’S LET’S TALK HYDRATION!…

Water is absolutely vital for maintaining optimal health and supporting the proper functioning of the human body. It's fascinating to note that approximately 60-65% of our bodies are made up of water. This essential nutrient holds immense importance, given that while we can survive for weeks without food, our bodies can only last a day or two without water. Water plays an integral role in a wide array of bodily functions, such as keeping the blood in a fluid state, facilitating the delivery of oxygen to cells, aiding in the transportation of nutrients, enabling digestion, promoting cell-to-cell communication, maintaining normal electrical properties of cells, ensuring cellular hydration, assisting in natural healing processes, flushing out toxins, removing waste from cellular level up to interstitial level, regulating body temperature, preventing tissues from sticking together - did you know we are actually less flexible when we’re dehydrated?! The list of roles water plays in the body is infinite so maintaining adequate hydration levels is crucial to ensure smooth and efficient internal operation of our bodies at all times.

Did you know Dehydration makes your muscles weaker and causes you to gain weight?!
Your body is at its most vulnerable state when deprived of its crucial element, water, essential for its proper functioning and overall well-being. Hypohydration (or lack of hydration) puts a cap/limitation on muscle strength, power, endurance, and places them in high jeopardy of strain (due to lack of flexibility & stretching capability).

Why dehydration weakens the muscles…

There are four physiologic characteristics of muscles contractility, excitability, extensibility, and elasticity a.k.a performance, but also their feel and look, etc. they are all affects by the water content in the body because your muscles are 79% water! Super cool right?! let’s take a look at the specifics…

When you flex or contract your muscles, they pull water from your blood to fill up the muscle tissue and cells. This allows them to perform tasks like heavy lifting (lifting in general actually!) without getting fatigued or injured. However, if there isn’t enough water available, the opposite occurs. When you’re body is dehydrated it starts to extract water from your muscles and transfers it into the bloodstream. This process happens for a very crucial reason -to maintain proper circulation and blood pressure needed for survival. But nonetheless, it leaves your muscles vulnerable to potential susceptibility to injury.

Dehydrated muscles can lead to tightness, cramps, and increased vulnerability to stress and strain, resulting in a higher risk of injury. A 2008 study found that even moderate dehydration, equivalent to a 2.9% body mass decrease, can cap performance make athletes more prone to injury.

** REMEMBER**

Water plays a crucial role in transporting nutrients into our cells, including those essential for muscle function. Staying hydrated is key to ensuring that nutrients can efficiently reach our cells, supporting overall health, and optimal bodily function.

Electrolytes (minerals which you can add to your water, or get from your food!) play a crucial role in normalizing the pH of muscles during exercise. As muscles tear and repair themselves during physical activity, lactic acid is produced, leading to increased acidity, fatigue, and soreness. By replenishing electrolytes, the pH levels of the muscles can be restored, helping to prevent and alleviate fatigue. Moreover, adequate hydration is essential for muscle cells to efficiently synthesize proteins. *Yes, muscles create protein through a metabolic process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS). MPS is stimulated by strength training/resistance activity, diet, & supplements. Our muscles are actually made from 20 different amino acids 9 of which are essential meaning we have get them through our diet! Anyways moving past that cool fact what you need to know is that without sufficient water intake, muscles struggle to grow and repair themselves properly - potentially leading to muscle breakdown due to lack of synthesized protein (and that’s not good!).

( Lastly… )

Dehydration can negatively impact muscle function by elevating cortisol levels in the body!!! A study conducted at the University of Connecticut revealed that dehydrated athletes experienced increased cortisol levels.

*Cortisol for those of you who don’t know is a very important hormone for our survival, so please don’t demonize it or look at it as though it’s something really bad! Cortisol is kicked on (produced by the adrenal glands), when we are in a stressful situation - this stress can be internal like eating a bunch of sugar (which typically results in a reactionary blood sugar low) or it can be external like running from a tiger. Cortisol is the primary stress hormone used for blood sugar emergency cases (when blood sugar gets too low), metabolism, the sleep-wake cycle being naturally higher in the morning to aid in waking up, aiding in blood pressure, etc. However, chronically elevated cortisol levels or abnormal spikes later in the day can have negative effects on the body, impacting nearly every organ and system. While cortisol increases glucose availability and enhances the brain's glucose utilization, it can also inhibit nonessential functions like digestion and detoxification during stress responses, prioritizing immediate survival needs.*

Cortisol can compete with testosterone for certain enzymatic receptors, and since testosterone is most crucial for muscle growth and building - higher cortisol levels can lead to a decrease in testosterone levels! Ultimately affecting muscle development. It is essential to prioritize proper hydration to support optimal muscle function and overall performance. So more cortisone could mean less testosterone and less muscle.

Are you gaining weight, or having trouble loosing weight due to dehydration??!

Water makes up about 60%-65% of your body, making it the most crucial nutrient for optimal functioning.

Did you know that, although you may think you have nothing in common with a camel, one very useful skill we share is preserving water for the times we go without it? Just like camels store water in their humps to survive in the desert, our bodies have unique ways of conserving water to keep us healthy and thriving.

When you don't drink enough water, your body tends to retain the water you do drink, because it can't function properly without an adequate supply! By making sure you drink enough water consistently, your body will release stored water, because it’s not entering a survival mode of dehydration (where it fills up stores in the body). And when you keep drinking water and actually hydrate yourself, your body won’t hold onto it for dear life to preserve all you give it, but it will rather use the water up for cellular/metabolic processes and let it cycle through you - in turn reducing water weight!

So not to beat a dead horse or anything but it’s super IMPORTANT to stay hydrated!

Neurologist’s patient before and after photos… the only different drinking 101 oz of water daily!

Sarah, the woman in the pictures above, struggled for years with horrible constant headaches and poor digestion. Not accepting this as her new normal Sarah reached out to a neurologist about her regular headaches and a nutritionist about her poor digestion, and both told her, she should be drinking up to a gallon of liquid a day.

Neither physician prescribed a prescription or recommended a supplement they both actually (which I am super surprised by), told her she needed to drink water before they’d place her on any type of protocol! If only more practitioners told their clients the huge importance of water! I mean it is required literally by every single system, organ, tissue, and cell in the body.

My daughters, Alice, eight, and Betty, four, tell me I look 'about 100 years old' in this photograph and I have to agree.
Even my lips look shriveled. This is all classic evidence of poor hydration, apparently. Every system and function in our body depends on water.
It flushes toxins from the vital organs, carries nutrients to cells, provides a moist environment for ear, nose and throat tissues, and eliminates waste.
Not drinking enough means all these functions become impaired. So I decided to see how I would look and feel if I drank three litres of water every day for 28 days. * 3 liters is about 101 oz

As very apparent by the pictures above drinking an adequate amount of water daily/consistently, did Sarah wonders!

Let’s talk about her headaches/digestive alleviation!

Headaches can indeed be a common signal that your body needs more water. When you are dehydrated, your body may attempt to compensate by drawing water from the brain, causing it to temporarily shrink. This process can lead to tension on the sensitive membranes connecting the brain to the skull, resulting in headaches. Think back to the last time you’ve had a hangover headache - you dehydrated yourself and your body's organs try to make up for a lack of water by stealing it from the brain (crazy right)!

Upon beginning to drink 101 oz daily, Sarah’s headaches vanished!

Water is crucial for supporting all digestive processes in the body. It plays a key role in forming digestive fluids like hydrochloric acid (HCL) for example, amongst others that are responsible for breaking down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Additionally, water is essential for transporting the nutrients absorbed from food into our cells for use and is needed to eliminate waste. Some signs of chronic dehydration include heartburn, constipation, and colitis all relative to digestion, and that’s because digestive processes require a lot of water to occur.

Again upon drinking 101 oz daily, Sarah no longer struggled with constipation and had easy bowel movements. On top of this she no longer felt bloated post eating. In fact she lost weight, felt fitter than ever before, and her stomach flattened!

This story is absolutely amazing!

Other things Sarah noticed from upping her water intake:

Increased flexibility in her yoga practice (no longer stiff upon waking up in a.m.)
Improved bowel movements (no longer so hard to pass)
Glowing complexion (plumper clear skin, moist/soft, no more dark rings under eyes)
Improved concentration & cognitive ability (our brains are 73% water so hydration greatly impacts concentration/cognitive ability)
She stopped overeating and began reaching for water instead of food (Studies show majority of people mistake thirst for hunger)
Skin became more elastic (wrinkles began to disappear, *water was helping skin cells regenerate efficiently!)
Lost 10 lbs (no bloating & flatter stomach)
Vanished cellulite from legs

Signs you may be dehydrated…

Early signs of dehydration include:

Thirst
Fatigue
Dry Mouth
Darker Urine
Cravings
Muscle Cramps
Anxiety
Migraines/Headaches
Degradation in memory & ability to concentrate

Chronic signs of dehydration:

Heartburn
Joint Pain
Back Pain
Constipation
Colitis
Exercise induced Asthma

How to stay strong & hydrated..!

I recommend to all my clients to drink around 120 oz of water daily… or a gallon! It sounds like a lot but the results of hydration are so so worth it my friends!

Over-hydration is a thing though as well, so I caution clients to not go over 124 oz daily.

*Also side note if you’re drinking a diuretic like coffee remember that’s like negative oz so whatever you drink in oz of coffee or caffeine in general remove that from your total because it’ll burn up the same amount of water you drank to process it.

* For example if you have a 12 oz late with breakfast, and drank 120 oz of water today, you really only drank 108 oz of water that day!

Hydration Generalities:

In general the amount of water you should drink every day is dependent on your weight. I weigh typically 127 lbs so that would mean I would drink 63.5 oz… however I feel way better if I drink closer to 90 oz a day!

half your body weight in 8 oz + 10 oz more to replace the water loss from coffee (coffee is a diuretic)
Do not exceed over 120 oz

One thing to keep in mind, once you start hydrating yourself you may feel a little crummy the first week. And that’s because water is what allows your detoxification system to run properly. You may feel toxins being pushed out your skin, foul smelling sweat, etc. Just think of the first couple days as your body getting a good flush out of toxins! Your kidneys, which filter waste products from the blood before turning it to urine, will quickly feel the benefit, and they too will be getting a good flush through. And if you’re lowering your caffeine or completely getting rid of it from your daily routine - withdraw is 100% a real thing, even with caffeine - the first week is the worst of it and the results from their are nothing but good!

So why not try this little health hack and start today! Drinking water is wallet friendly, easy, and so very important for all aspects of your physiology! As always please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

With love,

Lex :)