Daily Water Intake
How much should your daily water intake be? Is the 8 X 8 recommendation justified? According to the Guyton’s Textbook of Medical Physiology, this is how much water we lose every day under normal conditions:
- Skin (not from sweat)–12 ounces
- Lungs–12 ounces
- Sweat–4 ounces (without exercise)
- Feces–4 ounces
- Urine–48 ounces
Total: 80 ounces per day. And remember, that’s without sweating due to exercise or high heat and humidity.
The recommended 8 x 8 would provide 64 ounces, and that means we would be 16 ounces short based on typical fluid loss, even before your daily exercise routine. That’s why eight 8-ounce glasses of fluid per day is still a good idea. Some would argue that tea, coffee, soft drinks, processed juice, and alcoholic beverages should count toward that total, I disagree since these beverages actually make you urinate more than usual and therefore, you need to drink even more water to replace fluid loss.
How much is your daily water intake also depends on your body weight, how much you exercise each day, the kind of work you do, your diet, your health condition and the climate you live in. For example, the heavier you are, obviously, you need to drink more water, and so on.
Keeping balance in the body is one of the major key factors for optimal health. Remember to replenish the amount of fluid loss due to your daily activities. If you sweat more during a work out or live in hot and humid climate, drink more water. If you urinate more often after drinking the caffeinated beverage, drink more water to replace it. Severe dehydration can affect the skin, drinking enough water will help. If you experience a headache or migraine, fatigue or muscle cramps, loss of appetite, it may be sign of dehydration. Try filling yourself up with a couple glass of clean fresh water
While drinking too much water (more than your bodies’ need) won’t help improving your health more, drinking too little definitely harms many of your body’s functions. Water is about 80% in infants’ weight, 70%-75% in adults and 60%-65% in the elders. Keep your body adequately hydrated may prevent you from many ailments and body malfunctions. Make sure to keeping tract of your daily water intake needs. There is a water intake calculator you can refer to here, just plug in your weight, how much you exercise each day and the amount of water you should drink each day will be calculated for you.
Now you know how much you should drink each day, but do you know what kind of water to drink? Bottled? Distilled? Boiled? Straight from the tap?
Distilled water is not for human. It doesn’t contain the micro mineral that the body needs. Boiling water may kill the bacteria, but won’t filter out the contaminants, heavy metal, and or chlorine/chloramine, all are bad for health. Knowing how much to drink is important. Knowing what you are drinking is also important if you want to maintain good health. Water is good for you only if it is good water!
- Loading...
