Let’s start with water
So we’re living longer and there has been a lot of interest in recent years in finding ways, top tips to help us live even longer. Science has bent itself in half trying to find the magic formula for longevity. No more are we content with three score and ten! But what’s been missing until very recently has been any dialogue about healthspan. This is less about living longer and more about living more healthily.
And if you think about it that is so much more important. Living into our 80s and 90s but with chronic health conditions really doesn’t sound much fun does it? Staying alive because science has kept us alive is not the same as striving to live for as long as we can in optimum health.
But how do we go about that? It’s not something we can fix after the event, it’s about adopting a healthier approach to our current lifestyle and putting the wheels in motion now not ‘next Monday.’
For me it’s often been ‘next Monday’ when I’m going to start to introduce some better habits, increase my water uptake, spend less time on my phone, do more movement etc. And when next Monday comes and goes there’s always the following week!
We all do this, we’re conditioned in many ways to make plans to start things but the actual execution can sometimes take many attempts. Think about New Year’s Resolutions! The excesses of December will all be put right on 1st January! How many of those resolutions are still in play by the end of the month?
One of the reasons that we our resolve fails is because we are often over ambitious. We don’t think about making small changes because we’re focused on the impact and the outcome, it can so easily become all or nothing.
I’ve been experimenting over the last year to find ways to increase my water intake. Hydration is fundamental to keeping our bodies functional, we cannot live without water. We can live 3 weeks without food (yes, really) but only 3 days without water. Our bodies are between 60 and 80% water! We often don’t realise that we’re lacking water until we feel thirsty, by that time we’re actually quite dehydrated. And it’s possible to be persuaded too that we’re hungry when all we really need is a drink.
It can be difficult to keep our hydration levels up when we’re busy and distracted by other things and if it’s not prioritised we can easily go all day without having had a drink. We’ve all done it and we all know what it feels like when we’ve neglected our hydration needs, that slightly light headed feeling, fatigued and not quite with it. Some of these symptoms are not dissimilar to menopausal symptoms, dehydration is a curious mimic!
Alcohol, caffeine, refined sugars, processes foods all impact on hydration too so it’s not just about putting more water in we have to be mindful of what else is going into the mix. As our bodies age we need more water not less.
We rarely think about how good we feel when our hydration is optimised but we know how it feels when we’re not drinking enough.
The most important drink of the day is when you wake up. I have introduced a glass of water by my bed, less for the middle of the night quenching and more to be consumed when I get up. It’s the best thing for flushing things out, for putting back into the body water that overnight it’s been using. Our bodies at night whilst we sleep are quite literally being washed, especially our brains. Did you know that? While we sleep cerebrospinal fluid flushes out toxic memory impairing proteins from ourbrain. So it makes perfect sense to me that I need to top up my water levels when I wake up in the morning.
This has been a small change, a habit that I’ve adopted and stuck to. That and trying to drink more water during the day has definitely had an impact on my skin, my energy levels, my focus and my bladder health. When you start increasing your fluid intake there is by default an increase in trips to the loo and that can be frustrating but it’s the body adjusting, getting used to having what it actually needs to function well. The trips to the loo will get less as the body cycles the water around your organs, it won’t go straight to your bladder and if it does then peeing out toxins is your kidneys at work, doing their job!
There is no prescribed amount of water that anyone should be taking on board every day, we’re all different. Some will say 8 glasses or 3 pints or 2 large water bottles. The important thing is to make it a habit, to have in mind that it can take 20 minutes for it to get where it needs to go and that the lighter the colour of your urine the more hydrated you will be. If you’re someone who doesn’t drink much water at the moment then any increase will be beneficial and if you find it difficult drinking plain water then there are lots of ways to make it more palatable. I like to put lemon and ginger into my water bottle!
It’s making a small change, start with a glass of water first thing in the morning and go from there … not next Monday, but tomorrow. By next Monday you’ll be grateful you did!