A GLASS OF HEALTH

When I am out of my every-day routine I always struggle to drink enough fluid. Specially when we are on holiday - sometimes it is lunch time when I feel very thirsty and - as we know - thirst is already the sign of dehydration.

When we are on holiday it is easy to forget about our fluid intake - at least I find it challenging. Too many things are going on, too many adventure and I just completely forget about drinking... - and then I just feel dry mouth and more stressed....

I said -when I am out of my usual daily routine - as normally I plan my fluid intake ahead. Or better to say: I set up a routine to make sure I drink enough. My best support at this is my green 1 pint cup.

I need to drink 3 cup of water + 1 glass of orange juice in the morning and 1 big cup fruit or herbal tea in the evening. This plan normally works - except when we are on holiday.

Then the is the risk of dehydration...

The first signs of dehydration are

• thirst
• impatience
• loss of appetite
• constipation
• nausea
• increase of heart rate
• tiredness 
• weakness

When we experience dizziness, headache, shortness of breath, decrease of the amount of saliva and our body produce less urine that means already 6-10% loss of fluid. 

Even higher - 11-20% of dehydration cause unclear vision, difficulties at swallowing and hearing, painful urination , wrinkled skin and finally it can be fatal.

Dry mouth is already a serious sigh of dehydration, and means too much loss of body fluid.

More about dehydration is here.

The average body fluid loss is 2,5 litres - through breathing, sweating, urination. Of course in hot weather condition or higher physical activity makes our body to lose more water than normally so we need to drink more.

How can we replace this fluid loss?

Through drinking.
But it does matter what and when we drink.

What?

We are prone to choose the tasty drinks like hot drinks, fruit juices or soft drinks.But they are not the right choice - not just because of the extra calories they contain but because of their diuretics effect and their speed of adsorption.

Drinking more diuretics drinks - like coffee, black tea, green tea, coke - does not help. As these make the problem even worse: instead of balancing out our body's fluid they increase the loss of fluid.
Soft drinks are too concentrated to use as fluid replacers as they adsorb really slowly - and this way they make dehydration even worse.

So no coke, no coffee, no orange juice. What then? Only plain water?

Well, if you care about your teeth and figure water is the best solution.
But there are some light alternatives fortunately.

• Diluted drinks: If you dilute soft drink and fruit juices 1:1 with water drinks will adsorb as fast as water. 
• Choose low calorie diet drinks - but these are useless as fuel replaces, so if you do regular exercise choose rather sport or fitness drinks. 
• You can find some tasty, low-calorie alternatives in my previous post here.

When?

The recommended routine is the following:

Hm, 0.5- 1 litre in the morning is quite challenging, but it is understandable as the body carries on excreting waste after the night shift. However my personal top is only 0.5 litre (one glass of diluted orange juice and 1 glass of water) in the mornings. All these before the usual morning coffee latte.

Of course the guide for those who exercise regularly is a bit different. A nice summary of fluid intake for athletes here.