Importance of Hydration

The following is the first of our series on Hydration Health.

Water Is Essential For Life

Every cell, tissue and organ needs water to function properly. By weight, our bodies are approximately 60% water. Organs such as hearts, lungs, brains, and kidneys can be 70-80% water. Even our bones contain about 30% water.

The various functions in our body that depend on water include:

• Making tears and saliva
• Lubricating our joints
• Regulating our internal body temperature by sweating and respiration
• Dissolving waste and nutrients in the cell to allow for passage through walls and filters
• Carries nutrients to cells, carries waste away from it.
• Water in the bloodstream carries the metabolized proteins and carbs that we consume.
• Essential for flushing waste mainly through urination
• Acts as a shock absorber for brain, spinal cord, and fetus
• Water is an integral nutrient to the life of every cell

How Much Water Do We Really Need?

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is:

About 124 ounces or 15.5 eight oz cups equaling approximately 1 Gallon or 3.7 liters of fluids per day for an average man and About 92 ounces or 11.5 eight oz cups equaling approximately 3/4 of a Gallon or 2.7 liters of fluids per day for an average woman

These recommendations cover various fluids from water, beverages and food. About 20 percent of daily fluid intake usually comes from food and the rest from liquids.

When we read these recommendations we have to pause and count how much liquid do we actually ingest a day from various beverages and food. Most if not all will conclude that we don’t get anywhere near our daily requirement and that we survive in a continuous state of dehydration that will eventually catch up with us with disorders due to dehydration. However, most of us won’t associate dehydration as a factor in our metabolic disorders nor fully understand how our bodies have been compensating for our lack of hydration.

Today we are beginning to understand that there are actually two forms of metabolic Hydration to satisfy daily, which may explain why we need to drink so much water and beyond just quenching our thirst or recuperating from perspiration. One is the familiar need is the obvious one we quench when thirsty. The other one we that is easier to ignore is the metabolic hydration at the mitochondria of each of our cells. New science is now giving us vital information to begin to understand the impact of dehydration at the cellular level and the disorders associated with this consequence. Research now indicates that although our bodies can hydrate by simply our drinking liquids but our cells need to be electrically charged to hydrate to function properly. Therefore hydration at the cellular level is not just dependent on how much water a person drinks but how electrically charged the cells are to receive and absorb the water to hydrate the cell and expel waste.

Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP)

Today we need to know a new term that we never new existed before, if we really want to understand the importance of hydration. It is Adenosine Triphosphate or ATP for short. ATP is the single source of energy responsible for all the vital functions that keep our cells healthy. To keep this in simple terms for conversation purposes ATP is the hydration vehicle that transports the nutrients into and waste out of -our cells. It also plays a key role in “Cell Signaling” as a communicator between so many active elements that support our cell functions as well as other vital functions related to preserving the healthy structure of our cells and immune support. To summarize ATP is the universal energy currency that drives the biological reactions that allow cells to function and life to flourish—making ATP a crucial player in the biological world.

Hydrogen and ATP

Again for conversation purposes we are going to refrain from the scientific explanations that you can easily find elsewhere, and simply say that today we know how Hydrogen stimulates ATP in the mitochondria, which is the energy center of the cell and how it promotes the hydration and vitality of the cell. More importantly we know that if the ATP is not electrically at optimum charge, then the cell is not functioning or hydrating properly which will be responsible for the cellular metabolic processes to malfunction into numerous disorders and some just from dehydration.

Tell us how you stay hydrated or suffer the consequences of not hydrating enough. Share your experience with others. We can only rely on each other because main stream media has sold out to their sponsors.