Hydration

Hydration

There’s new research out that supports the assertion that staying hydrated is good for you.

From an article on the findings by the NIH: “Adults who stay well-hydrated appear to be healthier, develop fewer chronic conditions, such as heart and lung disease, and live longer than those who may not get sufficient fluids, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in eBioMedicine.”

As with most such studies, we don’t know for certain that people who are healthier don’t just drink more water, which would make this a correlative rather than a causitive relationship (correlative would be “people who are healthier tend to drink more water,” causitive would be “people who drink more water become healthier.”)

That said, there is a decent amount of evidence (beyond this study) that suggests adults, on average, should drink something like 6 cups of water each day (at the minimum) and that it should actually probably be more like 6-9 cups for women and 8-12 cups for men (though those numbers vary based on a person’s size, activity level, the temperature outside, the temperature at the office, humidity levels, random peculiarities of genetics, etc).

My personal hydration approach, for many years, has been to just keep a huge cup of water next to me all day. I find that simply having it there, available and close at hand, eases my desire to just sit around and eat all day (or partake in drinks that are less healthy or neutral, like soda), while also staving off dehydration.

Your mileage may vary on this, and this is a habit that’s reliant on the availability of nearby (and abundant) clean drinking water (it also necessitates more trips to the bathroom throughout the day—you’ve been warned), but it’s probably time well-spent to figure out some kind of hydration habit/rhythm that works for you and your specific needs and lifestyle.

Here’s a link to that NIH article: https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2023/good-hydration-linked-healthy-aging

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