Water is the elixir of life and it has been used since the beginning of time for natural living and healing. Water is the universal solvent. It is the most abundant molecule on the surface of our planet – 70% of the Earth is covered with it. What happens when such an important compound is in short supply in the body?

10 Reasons To Stay Hydrated 

The importance of water for health can never be undermined. Here are 10 good reasons to replenish your fluid intake often:

1. Every part of the body - from your brain to the ends of your feet - needs water to function properly.

2. Without enough water in their cells, organs cannot perform their normal operations nor communicate with each other effectively.

3. Life begins in water. The sperm fuses with the egg and the embryo develop in a liquid environment.

4. Important processes of nutrition – digestion, assimilation, and excretion need a liquid medium.

5. Water forms the foundation of blood.

6. Water maintains the electrolyte balance in the body

7. The waste-carrying fluid in the body – the lymphatic fluid, slows down without enough water, causing toxicity and diseases 

8. Water regulates body temperature

9. It maintains young-looking skin and agility in your joints by lubricating them

10. Water maintains the activity of the busiest organ of the body – The brain. It needs water to process all the complicated neurotransmissions that go on inside

When we were born, we had 70% or more water in the body. Due to incorrect lifestyle habits, most of the population has 60% or less hydration in the body.

The blood, lymph, skin, sense organs, and many parts of the body are mainly water. Did you know the percentage of water in different organs?

• Muscles – 75%

• Bone - 24%

• Skin – 80%

• Brain – 75%

• Heart – 79%

• Blood – 85%

• Lymph - 96%

• Liver – 85%

• Kidneys – 83%

Dehydration Symptoms:

The wrong lifestyle builds toxicity in the body and dehydrates it.

If you have these symptoms, you could be dehydrated:

1. Skin feeling dry, stretched, and wrinkly

2. Deep yellow or dark-colored urine

3. Chronic constipation

4. Dry skin on the heel

5. Dryness and floaters in the eye

6. Aches and pains and muscle catches

7. Parched throat despite drinking copious amounts of water

8. Feeling hot all the time 

9. TATT – Tired all the time for no reason

10. Brain fog – i.e. Inability to think straight

11. Frequent lapses in memory or hallucinations

12. Getting hard of hearing

13. Peeing happens only once in 6 hours or so

14. A drooping, bent frame of the body

Dehydrating Foods:

Try this experiment:

Choose a day of relatively less activity.

For half a day, eat only fruits and check how much your body indicates a need for water.

For the next half-day, eat cooked foods – bread, dosa/idli, paratha, curry with masalas and check how much is the ask for water by your body?

You will observe that in the second half, there is much more need for water and a general feeling of heat in the body.

There are certain foods that take water from your body, instead of replenishing it. Eating them can lead to reduced water in your body. Some of those foods are:

• Salt

• Vitamins and supplements

• Packaged fruit juices and colas

• Processed and packaged items

• Cooked foods even homemade

• Sugar

• Spices

• Dry tasting foods

• Deep-fried foods

• Nuts and seeds

• Foods that create acid wastes - tea, coffee, meat, eggs, and dairy products 

If you have put something dry into your body and it comes out as wet waste, the body has used the water from inside to process the food. The drier and more acid-forming a food is, the more water it takes water to get digested.

The body also uses water to hydrate the waste in the colon. So if you are dehydrated, chronic constipation is often the result.

Dehydrating Activities:

It’s not only foods, but certain activities also cause dehydration. 

• Working in AC environments

• Extreme or heavy sports

• Traveling by airplane 

• Radiation from artificial sources like wifi, cell phones, etc

• Arguments, Stress, Worries and other consuming emotions

What Does It Mean To Be Properly Hydrated?

Being hydrated at the cellular level. Cellular hydration means that the body has enough water for all systems to function properly. Benefits of proper hydration include:

• Optimum functioning of muscles & joints 

• Good digestion and excretion

• Feeling at ease and mood regulation

• Healthy elasticity of the skin 

• Improved memory function

• Improved agility of the body

The Perennial Question - How To Stay Hydrated? 

Popular wisdom says that you must drink 8-10 glasses of water a day. Is that right?

 It is not possible to become hydrated by following the usual recommendation of 8 to 10 glasses of water a day. It just passes straight through the body. What we need is hydration at the cellular level. We are not drinking animals but suckling animals.

 The purest form of water is contained in the raw fruits and vegetables - distilled directly from the soil by nature. That is nature’s perfect, purest form of water. Fruits and vegetables contain 75% to 90% water combined in the right manner with other elements to restore balance in the body at a cellular level. Not only water, but these foods also contain fiber. When water and fiber are present, the waste removal process happens easily.

 Hence, it is much better to change our dehydrating lifestyle, and eat more raw foods, rather than fix the problem by drinking a lot of water. When your daily diet contains predominantly fruits and vegetables in raw form, you can achieve hydration at a cellular level.

Here is the water content of common fruits and vegetables

     Watermelon        96%

     Orange                89%

     Apple                   86%

     Papaya                 88%

     Mango                 82%

     Banana                75%

     Cucumber           95%

     Tomato               94%

     Onion                  88%

     Ash gourd           96%   

     Radish                 94%

     Carrot                 80%

     Potato                 82%

     Lettuce                95%

     Spinach                93%

 Summary

The human body works best when it is hydrated to 70% or more hydration.

Based on this, nature cure recommends roughly 50% fruit, 35% veg, 10% starch, and 5% proteins (i.e juicy to concentrated) as a lifelong maintenance diet.

But when we are already chronically ill, the percentage of water-rich food should be higher – i.e. fruits and vegetables consumed in raw form.

Base your diet on nature’s diet recommendations and watch how all functionalities of the body begin to improve.