LAST month’s blog post dealt with the perils of drinking flavoured water, and how “real” water also helps the body with temperature control. But drinking water also has many benefits; three of which are controlling calories, energising muscles and keeping the skin healthy looking.
Counting the calories
Researchers have found that drinking just before eating and during a meal increases the feeling of being full, which in turns leads to a lower overall calorie intake and, therefore, the ability to lose weight.
It’s thought that drinking water may provide thermogenic (heat producing) increases in your metabolic rate, and a faster metabolism burns more calories.
But water is also essential for breaking stored fat into energy, so much so, that the body’s metabolism could be slowed down by even fairly mild levels of dehydration. The slower your metabolism, the harder it is to lose weight.
It gets better though; the more water you drink the less need you have for drinks containing calories and the fewer calories you consume, the more weight you'll lose!
Muscle power
Keeping well hydrated before hitting the gym and while you’re there will really help your performance because water helps fuel your muscles. Bear in mind that water composes 75 per cent of our muscle tissue meaning that dehydration can lead to weakness, fatigue, dizziness, and electrolyte imbalance.
A small loss of just five per cent water can cause a loss of muscular strength and endurance; so the more dehydrated you become, the more strength you will lose.
According to Biochemistry Journal, decreased levels of water result in cell shrinking which causes muscle protein breakdown. This is because the water content within a muscle cell (myocytes) plays a critical role in muscle breakdown, so maintaining adequate hydration levels will reduce this protein collapse and help with protein synthesis.
Healthy skin
Drinking water combats dry skin, flushing out toxins and bacteria, so preventing dehydration makes lots of sense.
Your skin is the largest organ in your body, and a regular and plentiful flow of water can improve the colour and texture of it by helping it to build new cells. Drinking water also helps the skin do its job of regulating the body's temperature through sweating.
According to Dr Richard Besser, chief health and medical editor at ABC News, when your blood gets thick and water-deficient from organs pulling water from it, the blood in turn pulls water from skin cells.
This causes your skin to look dry and your eyes to look darker and sunken so that over time the condition can age you faster. When your skin is dry, it’s less resilient and elastic, making it prone to wrinkling.
There we go, keep drinking (unsweetened) water and start to look and feel great!