H2O

[c9]

Dehydration is AwesomeAwful!

I woke up this morning and weighed a new lowest-weight-since-high-school record!  Nice way to start the day, but it's just because I'm all dried out.

Did you know that most North Americans are chronically dehydrated? At Burning Man, we always said that if you didn't pee clear, you weren't drinking enough water. This is also true in the real world, not just in the desert. Your body loses 8-10 cups (2-2.5 Litres) of water every day just from breathing, peeing and sitting around. Exercise makes it worse. So drink more water. Caffeinated drinks (which I drink too many of) don't count, but Kool-Aid, milk, and tea do. Just pretend you're back in university and imagine a bunch of frat boys crowded around you yelling "DRINK DRINK DRINK DRINK DRINK!"

Some dehydration information which may be a little bit suspect, since it's on a site that sells water filters and purifiers. But the sidebar on that page is all information I have read elsewhere, such as:

• In 37% of [North] Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.
• Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.
• A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page.
• One glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.

Comments

[zanate.livejournal.com]

You just inspired me to refill my work nalgene! (it's .5L, bright yellow, and says "metrohm-peak ion chromatography", ironically acquired from the American Water Works Association conference in Quebec last fall. :) )

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

That's not ironic at all. It makes perfect sense!

[zanate.livejournal.com]

Well, I admit, it's not Alanis Morrissette ironic, but it's still slightly ironic that I'm using a a bit of Water conference swag to drink water.

And if that's not, then the bit where I filled it from our water cooler, rather than the tap, that's got to be slightly ironic, yes?

[c9.livejournal.com]

I've been told that in Ontario there are more laws protecting the content of tap water than there are for water cooler water.

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

That is absolutely true for bottled water...not sure where "water cooler" water falls on the regulatory scale, if it counts as bottled water or if it's slightly more regulated.

[zanate.livejournal.com]

An interesting point, but one that does not guarantee that bottled water is less safe than tap water. :)

Anyway, to be totally truthful, the water cooler is hooked up to a filter which takes in tap water, instead of being fed by bottles or jugs.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I forgot to add the other thing I planned to put in that post. Our water cooler uses jugs of water that are bottled somewhere in the county I think, and when it sits for the weekend the calcium in the standing water crystalizes and shows up in chunks in your water on Monday morning. Nothing like chewable water cooler water.

[zanate.livejournal.com]

The standing water crystallizes? That can't be right. I mean, those solids are supposed to be dissolved. Dissolved won't crystallize or precipitate (correct me if I'm wrong, oh fair water goddess) unless the liquid's saturated, and the only way that'd happen is if the temperature of the liquid drops. I imagine sitting in a warehouse it gets warmer.

No, it sounds to me like there's some serious crap in your water, in suspension, rather than dissolved, and like a glass of nesquick it's all sinking to the bottom once you stop stirring it.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Oh, probably true. I don't claim scientific knowledge of what's happening. I just know it's little chunks of calcium.

There is a lot of crap in our water at the office, maybe there's a lot of crap in the water that our water supplier brings us too.

[zanate.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone at your office is insanely paranoid about osteoporosis and is "salting" the water. :)

My suggestion? Run your water through a coffee filter. :) Ironically (there's that word again) that was my solution for this office's old coffee maker, which was supremely ironic-- having to take the coffee that it made, and run it through a coffee filter, to get all the grounds out of it. Hee hee. Good times. I still haven't broken the habit of leaving dregs in my coffee cup to avoid that gritty afterbirth.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we do that for the hot water for students. the tap water here is so bad that it eats dishwashers within a year. So we run a coffee cycle through a filter with no coffee, then store that water in a thermos-type big urn for students to use for tea.

I'll look at the water jugs next time I refill and figure out what part of Ontario in which I should avoid drinking directly from the rivers.

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

I'll look at the water jugs next time I refill and figure out what part of Ontario in which I should avoid drinking directly from the rivers.

That would be pretty much every part, no?

Unless you went REALLY far north...

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going for irony there.

(Just kidding!)

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

Actually, what IS ironic in this case...is that the icon associated with this post features the author posing with an alcoholic drink, which is not exactly a great way to hydrate yourself. :D

[c9.livejournal.com]

You win the amusing juxtaposition prize! It consists of this comment. Not a very good prize.

[rebelprince26.livejournal.com]

these pretzels are making me thirsty!

[c9.livejournal.com]

LOL!

I *hate* Seinfeld. But that's the one line even I quote sometimes.

[rebelprince26.livejournal.com]

you hate seinfeld?

you're dead inside.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Naah. I forget why I hate it, but I always did. I think I hated it just like I hated Doc Marten's shoes: everybody liked them and had them, and I wanted to be different.

[thespos]

I have actually heard those statistics cited away from water filter/purifier retailers. I know that drinking water has also made my skin look better, I am more awake, and it does help with midnight hunger pangs.

It also makes one get up at 3am to pee.

:-)

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

Wow, me too this morning about lowest weight since high-school.

I have read those stats before. I now drink a lot more water than I did a couple of years ago.

[ex-thrasymac191.livejournal.com]

You can also die from drinking too much water.

[c9.livejournal.com]

This is true. Maybe that's why my tummy hurts today.

[leapfish.livejournal.com]

Water intoxication. You feel drunk just before you die.

[sarah-sosiak.livejournal.com]

Does sparkling water count? I've heard that it doesn't...but the flavoured sparkling water we have in the fridge at work is yummy, so I like to think that it does. (We don't seem to stock non-sparkling water. Or, at least, I can't find it. I did find the soy-milk stash today though.)

[c9.livejournal.com]

Legally speaking, sparkling water is pop.

[sarah-sosiak.livejournal.com]

Crap. Even with no sugar or caffine?

[c9.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't know. I'm just guessing. But in the US, it's legal to sell caffeinated water, caffeinated orange juice, etc, and I think legislation just tends to take all soft drinks (i.e. bottled and canned beverages of any type) and deal with them together.