Importance of Staying Hydrated and How Much Water You Should Be Drinking
Staying hydrated means taking in fluids. Drinking fluids especially water is important for your body. Your body needs water mainly because water makes up about 60% of your body. However, apart from maintaining that balance, there are numerous benefits to staying hydrated:
Improve Physical Performance
During physical activities especially those that are intense, our bodies use up a lot of water. These situations include during workouts, running or carrying heavy weights. Therefore, it is important to stay hydrated before, during and after such intense exercises. Proper hydration increases endurance, reduces fatigue as well as lowers your heart rate.
Cools Down the Body
As a person who is active in exercises, you should know that your body emits heat by increasing the size ofblood vessels close to your skin’s surface. This is why your face and other parts of your body becomes red when you are exercising. This results in more blood flow as well as more heat being released into the air. If you are poorly hydrated, then it takes more effort for environmental temperatures to trigger blood vessels to widen hence you stay hotter.
Promotes Cardiovascular Health
Water is essential to blood formation meaning that with fewer water levels in your body, your blood volume will also be low. This prompts the heart to work twice as hard to pump blood to get oxygen to your cells. In turn, this will make it more difficult for you to walk or walk up a normal flight of stairs.
Better Performance in Muscles and Joints
This is especially important for people who exercise. If well hydrated, then the water inside and outside contracting and expanding muscles facilitates movement of nutrients and oxygen into the muscles and movement of toxins and wastes out of them. This makes them perform better. Water also plays an integral part in lubricating joints.
It is recommended that you should drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water which amounts to about 2 liters of water.
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