1. Hydration

Hydration is super boring, We know. It’s also super important. In this post, you’ll learn a novel way of thinking about what hydrating does to us, and more importantly, for us.

Have you ever either said these things or had these thoughts?:

- water makes me feel heavy

- water makes me bloated

- water hurts to drink

- water tastes bad

- water isn’t good unless it’s cold as ice

- normal water is too flat for me to drink

- my job won’t let me stay hydrated

- I hate having to pee all the time

- I hate carrying around a water jug everywhere

- water’s only necessary for plants and sea critters

- I live in Miami (or Houston), isn’t just breathing the atmospheric water enough hydration? lol

The Scientific reality is that hydrating our body is the single most effective way we can leverage and optimize our body as a system of organs (organism) to get the most out of it. So why do we fight it so much? We’re not interested in finding all the various reasons why not to do something. We’re focused on the multitude of reasons why we should do something, which is a much more compelling argument. Here’s a fun quote to hold on to:

- “I’ve never seen a person who was good at making excuses who was ever good at anything else.” - John Maxwell

Now, here’s what we’ve learned about drinking water through personal experience as well as reports from tens of thousands of people:

1. It’s a discipline,

2. it requires some strategy, and

3. it saves you time by increasing your ability to do things more quickly, with less effort, while remaining rather calm and clear-headed. No joke!

What motivates someone to drink enough water in a day? One word: Performance.

When we fail to hydrate, our blood volume decreases, meaning our blood also thickens and becomes more viscous like syrup. It requires more energy for the heart to send blood through the miles of vessels, and blood flow becomes reluctant to reach areas like fingertips, toes, and everywhere there are capillaries. The whole organism of the body has a reduced capacity with reduced water intake. The tendons and ligaments become sticky and are likely to tear with quick movement or sudden heavy loads (burst loading), and the joints get creaky and wear down faster, especially as muscles stiffen. Muscles also work like there’s a “slow spell” cast on them. When you’re dehydrated, you’re literally running your body dry, just like cranking an engine after draining a majority of the oil from the oil pan.

This not only affects how much energy you have, (because metabolism and digestion are also severely hampered while your tissues cramp often) but it affects your body mechanics too, which affects your public impression as well as your self-esteem. It also affects cognition because the brain needs oxygen via blood flow. So not hydrating also reduces computational power and increases brain fog. I mean I can go on and on, but do I need to?

All parts of the body that require ample blood flow in order to work well receive a direct benefit when we hydrate with a goal in mind, and not just a sip here and there to keep our tongues wet. That happens to be everything in our body by the way. As mentioned before, the effects cascade to affect every aspect of our physical and non-physical selves. Proper hydration means easy movement, deep rest, effortless thinking, bright emotions, alert response, faster reflexes, more stamina, less sensitivity to pain… it’s endless!

Okay so you’re convinced, hydration brings you closer to God. So, what’s the right way to hydrate? “8 glasses a day” is not always enough for people over 130 lbs, especially if they’re active.

The How-To:

Just like with everything, it can be made endlessly complicated by overthinking. Despite the battle of technicalities in my head, here’s the easy formula:

Drink 3+ Liters a day. Palpate your own muscles and do your own fatigue tests to determine how much more water you may want to consider for the level of performance you need from your body in the next few hours. If you need more activity, strength, stamina, speed, mental clarity, or pliability from your body, drink more water. If your muscles feel hard to the touch when you’re not trying to flex, guzzle. It doesn’t mean you’re strong, it means you’re dry. The compliment of being “hard-bodied” is a misleading term. Try massaging a competitive bodybuilder and tell me they’re not squishy. They hydrate and then DRIVE the water as deep into their muscles as they can with every rep they pump. Contrast that to the person who remains in rather the same limited ranges of movement day in and out, paying little mind to what they’re drinking aside from the question “does it taste good?” Hugging one person feels like a giant warm gummy bear, and the other feels like hugging a giant potato fresh out of the ground.

CAUTION:

Beware of water acidity, source, type, and treatment. NEVER make it okay to drink distilled water unless you have salt on hand to add to it. “Youtube” the effects of water salinity on blood cells. It’s awesome. Also, realize that carbonated water doesn’t absorb into the body’s tissues as you would hope. I know I just burst your happy little carbonated bubble. In your defense, I don’t know of any scientific studies to verify this claim yet, but I have enough reasonable cause to believe that carbonated water doesn’t hydrate the body well, if at all. Again, test it out for yourself! How?

The Test:

Time yourself running up 3 flights of stairs having had a gallon of LaCroix on one day and a gallon of water a few days later. See how long it takes for your heart rate to drop below 80 bpm each instance and recover your breath. You may be surprised!

If you have questions or comments I’d like to hear ‘em!

You’re favorite LMT,