Did you know that there is no agreed-upon formula to calculate how much water we should be drinking a day?
There are wild and wooly estimates that range from 4 litres a day to just 500ml. among certain scientists. This fascinates me because water is such an important part of our lives, yet it is researched so little.
This advice on how much water, is then layered by gender differences, like a man should drink three litres and a woman should drink two litres.
Another layer is your level of activity through the day, do you exercise each day. Does your job involve a lot of moving around. The more the activity, the more the water.
Finally the size and weight of the body is a parameter to use as a guideline as well. But those estimates do not take into account if the body has more muscle or more fat.
Hydration then remains a mystery.
What everyone agrees on is that the lack of hydration is a sign of aging or rather speeds up aging. Making the blood thicker and stickier. Cells lose their plumpiness and organs don’t function.
But drink too much water and you strip away the water-soluble vitamins and minerals from your body. Slowing down your body processes. Ayurveda believes that drinking too much water is bad for the kidneys, as they have to filter out all that excess water. Giving them too much work to do.
So instead of getting dragged into the how much water debate. For now, let’s look at when is the best time to drink your water.
Through the night, our bodies continue to function, we sweat under the warm blankets. And yet for 8 hours we barely drink a sip of water. Waking up with bladders full we stumble into the morning.
After a quick trip to the toilet we move to the main reason for getting up, drinking our Tea or coffee. Ah the world makes sense now. But we have lost the most important time to hydrate ourselves. And no, tea and coffee do not count as hydration.
In fact both tea and coffee are diuretics and make us lose more water than they give us. Leading to us being chronically dehydrated.
So instead of starting your morning on the back foot and then playing catch up with your hydration through the day. Let’s kick start the morning the right way.
Instead of having a plain glass of water in the morning I suggest using this opportunity to supercharge it. Pour out a glass of water and to it, add a sprinkle of pink Himalayan sea salt and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.
The pink salt is filled with minerals like potassium and magnesium. These minerals help the body use sodium better. They replenish many of the minerals lost through the night. Pink salt does not raise your blood pressure as normal table salt does. Nor does it make you retain water.
The apple cider vinegar helps the uptake of the minerals from the pink salt. The probiotic bacteria have a better chance of populating our gut when we are on an empty stomach. The vinegar will help curb that morning acidic feeling many of us get.
In fact, a good quality apple cider vinegar is so important to have on a regular basis. Make sure it’s organic and the label says “with mother”. Mother here refers to the good probiotic bacteria in the vinegar.
If you find apple cider revolting, add a squeeze of lime!
Follow this with another glass of plain water and you are now ahead of 90% of the population with your hydration.
So your habit for hydrating your mornings is to keep the Apple cider vinegar and pink salt, next to the place you make your tea. While the water is heating up pour out a glass of water add a pinch of pink salt and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Drink it and pour one more glass of plain water.
Remember start your mornings the right way, hydrate hydrate, hydrate.
