While your body may not have a water storage system, hence the need to regularly drink water to maintain the 70% levels, it does have its very own water recycling system as well as a fantastic drought management system.
We need to ensure that we maintain a 70% balance of water in our bodies because water is the source of life and our continued existence; it can be found in every cell in the body and without it we cannot survive longer than about three days.
When we get hot and when we physically exert our bodies, we sweat; we also urinate a couple of times a day, cough, sneeze and cry sometimes – all of which loses water – even just breathing means we lose water in the form of the vapour we exhale when it is cold. This means that we need to constantly replace the fluids that we have lost by drinking water regularly.
Fortunately, the human body has just about the best water recycling system around; your body recycles hundreds of litres of water per day in order to maintain natural bodily functions. Unfortunately though, even with this great recycling system, the human body still comes short of between six and eight glasses or around 1.5 to 2 litres of water per day. The amount differs depending on age, diet, lifestyle, climate and various other factors.
Your own personal drought management system kicks into gear when you do not have sufficient water in your body and become mentally and physically fatigued; it will endeavour to prevent respiratory water loss by creating histamines, thereby shutting off the capillaries in your lungs.
This reduces water loss from breathing but will also make breathing somewhat difficult; it is the body’s attempt to save the brain from damage due to a lack of water, which is what is making you fatigued. Drinking sufficient water at this stage will rehydrate your body and restore your capillaries to their normal size.
No lasting damage will be done if this only occurs occasionally, but it is best to avoid this situation by ensuring that you drink sufficient water on a daily basis. If you do not like the taste or smell of tap water, do yourself a favour and invest in a water cooler for great-tasting, refreshing, toxin-free drinking water.
