It is difficult to imagine, but you can lose a significant quantity of water each and every day simply by breathing, depending on your level of physical exercise and the climate in which you live. If you do not have water in fresh supply to transport blood plasma, vitamins, and nutrients throughout your body, dehydration will take place soon and you will most likely experience physical and mental fatigue. As a result, you should keep your brain hydrated at all times.
When the body is lacking water, it will do everything possible to ensure that adequate water is supplied to the brain. This means that the loss of water is limited to other areas of the body. To make sure that ‘drought-like’ conditions are prevented from occurring, a keen system of prevention is developed by your body.
When triggered by a water deficiency, your body produces histamines to try to prevent respiratory water loss. This closes off the capillaries in your lungs. When these capillaries are constricted, it helps in reducing water loss, but of course it becomes far more difficult to breathe. It is important that you understand that the body is doing this on purpose.
The body uses the strategy of producing histamines as a ‘drought management system’, not as a disease or illness or something gone wrong. Because it is trying to save your brain, your body wants the constriction of the capillaries in your lungs. How is this production of histamines achieved by conventional medicine? Well, it is through the prescription of antihistamines, or drugs that are designed to counteract the body’s deliberate production of histamines in order to conserve water.
The capillaries in the lungs are then opened up by these antihistamines, making breathing seem easier. With the approach of the conventional medicine, nothing but the symptoms is treated, and in doing so, the body’s own strategies and intentions in trying to conserve water are counteracted. It could be said that the real requirement for patients with asthma is not histamine prescription drugs, but rather plenty of water on a regular basis.
How can you help your body’s drought management system?
First, managing your intake of water-depleting drinks such as beer, coffee, or beverages containing sugar is a golden place to start. What you need to be doing, of course, is simply drinking more water. However, there is more to it than just that – it is also important to stop drinking beverages that tend to deplete your body’s water supplies. Many of the beverages that are consumed by consumers today do not offer any actual hydration! When you drink soft drinks, it leads to water loss in your body, not water gain.
When you drink one can of a soft drink beverage, you do not feel satisfied and want more, and thus trapping the body in a never-ending cycle of craving for hydration that consuming soft drinks is simply unable to satisfy. Water is what your body truly craves.
Another water-depleting drug is caffeine. A diuretic effect is created in your body when you consume caffeine in any form, whether it is coffee, soft drinks, or pills. This means water is eliminated from your body through urination. Unfortunately, most people continue to drink alarming quantities of coffee, soft drinks, and other beverages that actually cause the depletion of water from their systems.
What are other ways to lower your body’s need for water?
Reducing the amount of water you are required to take in by allowing your body to better conserve is as valuable and terrific as simply supplying yourself with more water. Here is a list of a ways to help you decrease the amount of water your body needs:
- Protect yourself from the sun– The sun heats up your skin and body temperature and increases the need for water. It also causes faster evaporation of sweat. This is why it is critical to shade yourself and keep away from the sun.
- Protect yourself from the wind– Many people think that the wind cools the skin and body, thus reducing the need for water. However, unless you are overheated, the wind will actually increase your need for water. Water and moisture from your skin surface is evaporated by wind and that in turn increases water demand.
- Whenever possible, breathe through your nose, not your mouth – Your mouth contains a lot of moisture. When you keep your mouth open, the moisture escapes, causing your mouth to dry out. Your body is then forced to have to replace that moisture and you waste precious water this way.
- Eat less (less protein in particular) – Water is required for the digestion of food. This means that you use more water when you eat more. Foods with high water content, such as fruits and many vegetables, are exceptions to this rule. Also, keep in mind that protein takes more water, so you should try to consume foods with as little protein if possible. Fats and carbohydrates take less water to digest.
When you conserve the water in your body, you can make sure that your body is hydrated during times of crisis. It is not hard to conserve body water. You can protect yourself against a lot of harm, possibly even death, by rationing it wisely, especially when you do not have a lot of it around.