Not Drinking Enough Water - Are you Stupid?

The title of the blog is no pun intended. A study revealed that even a little dehydration can decrease your mental acuity by as much as 30%.

That explains a lot of the stupid decisions that I have been making. Seriously,I am not joking. I have been told a zillion  times by health practioners, trainers, parents friends and tons of people to drink water and keep mysel hydrated. all to deaf ears, that also can be blamed to dehydration cause I have to be stupid not to take up such a simple advice.

Back to the research I came up on it by chance while reading a book where the author decided to develop the habit of drinking water when he read about this. So I had to do some research of my own....the google god of course comes to rescue as usual.

Here is what I found from the tons of results

"The Brain is 85% water. Optimal brain function depends on water and lots of it. Water is what keeps the brain signals going. When the quality of water is compromised the signals are short circuited. Even if a person is 1% dehydrated, there is a 5% decrease in cognitive function. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy, short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing. Studies show that prolonged dehydration of the brain causes cells to begin to shrink." Water &brain  by Dr. Corinne Allen
 Also all this while I wondered if coffee , tea milk , juices made up for the water need and keeps the body hydrated. To my alarm they dont hydrate the brain because to send signal out the brain needs water and not anything else. To top it according to Mayo Clinic, the average adult loses more than 80 ounces of water every day through sweating, breathing, and eliminating wastes.
 These readings made me wonder if my brain cells have already started to shrink, because quite frankly I dont drink enough water. There are days that I only drink one glass, which is scary considering what I just read. I dont like the taste of water but to hell with taste before I'd rather drink water than endup being brain dead.

While there are tons of reseach on how much water a body needs, it certainly depends on your size weight , where you live and your activity level. A quick way to check is the color of your urine, if its clear then you are hydrated on the other hand if its darker and more aromatic your urine, the more dehydrated you are. If you want a more exact amount of water intake then there is a hydration calculator that I found on the net , use that
http://www.camelbak.com/hydrationcalculator

Can one have too much water, well its quite possible and it is unhealthy and can cause Hyponatremia. But Hyponatremia means "insufficient salt in the blood."  and is usualy caused when  a person drinks too much water in a short period of time, the kidneys cannot flush it out fast enough and the blood becomes waterlogged. Which in my case is impossible cause I dont drink at all.  So the moral of the story never chug water all at once, sip it through the day  not all at once.

The only silver lining in the cloud with all this research is that I am never dying of hyponatremia cause I dont drink water at all forget excessive. All this reading has made me super scared about my mental state. I am taking control of it from now. As a first step I have put up signs to drink water wherever I can put them, including my phone.

 If this will not help I have asked collegues at work and friends to remind me to drink. I have also set reminders on my phone every two hours to sip water.
All these meausres hopefully will help me get into the habit of drinking water and definately making smarter decisions (not sure about this one ) :D 

Do you have some ideas on deleoving the habit of drinking water? let me know

PS: Wishing you all  a Happy New Year  my you all have a splendid year ahead