Please read this first: First Steps to Take After Toxic Chemical Exposure
How much fluid should you be drinking every day? What does dehydration do to you? Does coffee count? Read on to learn exactly how much and what to drink for daily detox and anti-aging!
Hydrating Liquids
“Hydrating liquids” are any beverages you drink that are not also diuretics, meaning that they pull water out of your body. Water, juice, decaffeinated tea, and soup are all considered hydrating liquids. Caffeine, alcohol, and diuretic herbal teas are NOT hydrating liquids.
The opposite of hydration is dehydration, which means that your body is not getting enough hydrating liquids. You can live for several weeks without food, but you can live only a couple of days without water!
What dehydration does to you
Dehydration is one of the top ten reasons Medicare patients in the United States are hospitalized. On average it is estimated that up to 7% of people over the age of sixty-five (one out of fourteen) are chronically dehydrated.1
As we age, we tend to consume fewer liquids. This may occur because the sense of smell and taste sometimes wanes, drinking is uncomfortable, or if we drink then we will need to use the bathroom and perhaps our bladder control isn’t what it used to be.
Lack of adequate fluid intake can result in kidney stones, constipation, tremors, unclear thinking, confusion, mood changes, and memory loss.
Research shows a drop of just 2% in water weight in the body (twenty-eight fluid ounces) leads to:
- Impaired recall of events
- Fatigue
- Dizziness upon rising
- Decreased ability to do arithmetic
- Short-term memory impairment
- Visual tracking of objects impairment
- Reduced speed and accuracy in target finding
- An 8% to 34% drop in strength for cycling and treadmill2
What dehydrates you?
Certain beverages we drink actually dehydrate us, and count against our daily liquid intake.
Caffeinated beverages, like coffee, tea, and soda. The caffeine draws water out of your body, while a cup of coffee may be mostly water, the caffeine in it is actually counted as negative 1 glass. This is why coffee in Europe is often served with a glass of water!
Decaffeinated coffee, tea, or soda without caffeine can be counted toward your daily fluid intake.
How much hydrating liquid should you drink?
We are made up of 60% water by weight – so a 154-pound (70 kilograms) person will have 90 pounds (10.78 gallons) of water in them. The brain is 85% water!
In the chart below you see that each day that person in this example loses 54 ounces just through the normal functioning of the body without any extra exertion.
Here is how to calculate your hydrating fluid intake goal
Take your current weight and divide it by two. This is the number of ounces you should be trying to consume to be well hydrated.
Example:
160-pound weight divided by 2 = 80 ounces per day.
If you drink out of a 10-ounce glass or mug, that is 8 glasses per day.
If you drink out of a 500-milliliter bottle (hopefully made of glass or stainless steel – not plastic!) that is equal to 4.7 bottles.
This might look like: milk with the morning cereal (6 oz), a glass of juice or decaf tea (8 oz), water on the way to, and during work (16 oz), a juice, tea, or water at lunch-time (14 oz), some soup (8 oz), some water during or after recreational exercise (20 oz), and a beverage with dinner (8 oz). This totals 80 ounces of fluid.
Next up:
- 4. How Much Liquid Should You Drink a Day?
- 5. How to Gently Move Your Bowels to Accelerate Detox
- 6. How to Sweat Toxins Out
- 7. Take high-quality supplements – Start with the basic detox supplements: B-Complex, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Magnesium, CoQ10, and Zinc citrate. This video explains supplement quality – Are you getting what you think you are?
- 8. How to Test and Purify Your Home
- 1. First Steps to Take After Toxic Chemical Exposure
- 2. How to Detox by Just Breathing
- 3. What are the Best Liquids for Detox?
References
1. Vivanti A, Harvey K, Ash S, Battistutta D. Clinical assessment of dehydration in older people admitted to hospital What are the strongest indicators? Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2007 Nov 8.
2. Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate. Institute of Medicine. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC. 2005. https://doi.org/10.17226/10925
