One of the best things that you can do for yourself is stay hydrated. And you can motivate your employees as well for the same. You should encourage them to drink water and stay healthy. This would also have positive effect on the work environment of your office.
Share with them the benefits of drinking water, and why one should not forget or ignore this.
Drinking water may be one of the easiest things to include in your self-care routine with the least amount of effort. There is an enormous list of benefits that your body receives from staying hydrated. But since you don’t have all day, I’ll just list a few important ones.
1. Better Physical Performance
When you are exercising or spending a long time out in the heat, your body starts to become dehydrated. Losing even a small percentage (2%) of your body’s fluid will start to cause negative side effects.
These side effects include overheating, lethargy, fatigue, and difficulty with physical and mental performance. You will start to feel sluggish and clumsy. If you notice your body starting to react in this way, sit down, take a break, and drink a glass of water. You’ll be surprised how quickly your body can bounce back.
2. Increase Mental Wellbeing
Staying hydrated will have you feeling more energetic and ready for the day. Dehydration as low as 1-3% can start to affect your brain function and mood. When dehydrated, women tend to experience changes in their mood, concentration levels, and can start to get headaches. Men tend to feel anxious and fatigued as their working memory becomes impaired.
Staying hydrated will help prevent these symptoms which will boost your ability to focus on the task at hand. Without the side effects of headaches, anxiety, etc., you will have much more energy to get through the day.
3. Helps Weight Loss
This point sounds a little bit like a women’s health magazine myth, but there is actually some truth behind it. Drinking a 500ml glass of water can actually increase your metabolism 24-30% for about an hour and a half.
Studies recommend that you drink this glass of water about a half hour before you eat a meal to take advantage of that metabolism boost and also decrease your desire to overeat. One study showed that people who drank a 500ml glass of water before meals lost 44% more weight than those who didn’t over a twelve-week diet.
4. Helps Constipation
When constipation occurs, your colon is dehydrated. This makes it harder for your body to pass stool. If you are dehydrated, your stool will become hard and dry. To help get things moving, focus on rehydrating your body.
Drinking water will provide your body with the fluids to hydrate the colon and soften stool. There is not always one single factor that is causing constipation. However, drinking water could be an easy, natural fix to try before you reach for the laxatives.
5. Flushes Toxins
About 60% of your body is water. Your body uses water for your blood, your urine, your sweat, your organs… basically everything. So, when something is wrong in your body, the fluid that you pass through it picks up these harmful chemicals or contaminants and rids your body of them through sweat, urination, bowel movements, etc.
Your kidneys and liver do a lot of work in this process and, in order to function at their best, they need to be properly hydrated. Dehydration will make it difficult for these organs to do their job. As a result, toxins can stay in your bloodstream longer, become more concentrated, and can cause significant damage to your body.
6. Better Brain Function
A study done by the Georgia Institute of Technology revealed that dehydration can cause your brain to make mistakes or lose focus when performing boring tasks. Subjects were given a simple, repetitive task to perform before working out, at the peak of the workout, and after taking a break to drink water.
Half of the subjects were allowed to drink water throughout the test, while the rest were not able to replenish any lost fluids. Subjects who were given water repeatedly throughout the test made fewer mistakes than those who were without. Staying hydrated can help you stay focused and perform at your best, mentally.
7. Helps Spine Health
If you are experiencing back pain, drinking water may be a simple solution to your problem. There are two different parts of the discs in your spine: an outer part that is more fibrous and soft, and the gel-like squishy center. When you become dehydrated, the squishy center of the disc shrinks. When it shrinks, extra pressure is put onto the outer, fibrous part of the disc.
This part of your disc is not designed to support your spine. In extreme situations, it can collapse or cause a herniated disc. More commonly, it will put pressure on the nerves in your spine and will cause back pain.
8. Regulates Body Temperature
As I mentioned before, your body relies on water for a lot of its basic functions. Another one of these functions is regulating your body temperature during exercise or direct heat. The most obvious example of this is sweating when you are too hot. When you sweat, water is sent to the surface of your skin where it evaporates and helps the blood just under your skin to cool as it travels through your body. The cooler blood will pull heat away from your organs and keep them functioning properly.
If you are dehydrated, your body will stop producing sweat to help you cool down. Blood flow to your skin will also decrease. Because it is not flowing as easily around your body, it will not be able to cool your vital organs. Heat will be conserved because the blood is not traveling to the surface of your skin to cool.
Staying hydrated while you exercise or are in extreme heat is essential to your health. Dehydration in these circumstances can lead to very damaging, long-lasting side effects.
Conclusion
Staying hydrated is very important to both your physical and mental wellbeing. If you are looking for ways to help you drink more water, one of the easiest ways is to take a travel bottle with you, like this stainless steel reusable bottle from Kool8. Kool8 is the best bottle for 2019 because of its eco friendliness and lightweight, modern design. Simply having water with you all the time will increase your water intake and remind you to make hydration a priority.
