Water

Most of our bodies are water. And most of us don't drink enough of it -- we tend to get our water from coffee, tea, colas, or beer, and while all these will supply enough liquid to sustain life, they come with certain drawbacks. The human digestive and excretory systems were designed to run on water, and they have to work overtime filtering anything else. More, the sugars, caffeine, alcohol and other things offer some good, but mostly bad, side-effects.

I used to drink a lot of Coca Cola, and back in the bad old days, would go through six or eight bottles a day, which is how I got most of my water intake. All those empty calories, all that acid -- bad for the teeth, and gut, and kicks your body PH into a terrible zone. Not to mention the sugar highs that drop precipitously if you don't keep mainlining the stuff. Headaches, bad for your bladder, kidneys, gas, good way to develop kidney stones, all like that. The Real Thing™ hasn't been the same since they took the cocaine out ...

I long time ago realized the benefits of proper hydration. It does wonders for all kind of things, from cushioning your joints, to curing constipation, to giving you healthier skin and muscles and hair, gets rid of edema, and ... it's starting to sound like snake-oil, but nutritionists and some doctors and sports coaches have known this for years.

You need to keep a lot of water going through your system.

We've been doing some research on this because my wife doesn't drink enough water. She has a sensitive palate, and she can taste the chlorine the city puts into our water to kill the bugs. So she drinks tea to kill the taste. Most city water is safe, but most of it has some kind of something in it that the EPA allows little bits of, parts per million or billion; frankly, I don't think there's any safe level of lead or pesticides or cattle hormones. (If you want to try something to see how good your water is, get one of those little test kits you use for a hot tub or swimming pool and add them to a big glass of tap water. Might be surprised at what you find.)

Um. Anyway, I drink enough because I make a point of it. I keep a sixteen-ounce glass on my desk and go through five or six of them a day.

The rule of thumb is, take your weight in pounds, divide it in half, and that's how many ounces of water you need to drink a day. Me, at two hundred pounds, a hundred ounces, so six of my glasses a day. Plus what I go through at silat class, usually another twenty or thirty ounces.

Doesn't mean you still can't drink coffee or soda or milk or beer or wine -- most of those are okay in moderation, too much isn't. But you shouldn't count them against your water intake.

Here's an experiment. For the next two weeks, drink the recommended amount of water every day. You'll spend a fair amount of time peeing, but just do it. Get a jug, fill it up, drink it all through the course of your day. I expect that if you do this, at the end of the two weeks, you'll feel better than when you started, and I know your health will be improved.

Give it a try. Lemme know how it works for you.