Drink water – be healthy

The health benefits of drinking water at work are well documented and it’s no real secret that we should all try to consume roughly 7 – 8 glasses (2 litres) per day.

Numerous books have been published on the subject with ‘Your Body’s Many Cries for Water’ by Dr F Batmanghelidj being probably the most famous and widely read of the genre.

Reported benefits are as wide ranging as boosted concentration, greatly reduced levels of stress and anxiety, weight loss and alleviating ailments such as arthritis, high blood pressure and headaches.

Other benefits of drinking plenty of water include:

1) It improvess concentration – Because our brains are constructed with around 85% water becoming dehydrated can affect your concentration and even your short-term memory. It has a particularly negative effect on your maths skills and it’s all because it lowers the brain’s energy levels.

2) It boosts your energy – In the same way that not drinking enough water makes your brain slow down it has effects similar to this on your body. For example, our muscles are around 3/4 water, our bones are about 22% and our blood is around 83% water. If you’re dehydrated, all these body parts don’t work at their optimum level leaving you with little to no energy and feeling tired or lazy.

3) It supports your heart – The hardest working muscle of all needs an abundance of water to keep running at full speed. Dehydration can cause blood to thicken so the heart has to work even harder. And if your heart is weak it can lead to more serious heart problems later in life. A study found that drinking more than five glasses of water a day could cut your chances of having a heart attack by 41%, compared with people who drank less than two glasses a day.

4) Water stops headaches and dizziness – Resist the temptation to reach for the pills straight away, your headache could be a symptom of simple dehydration so drinking water may well shift it. Even tension headaches and dizziness, which can be brought on by fatigue can be cured or helped by drinking water – this is because fatigue is also a sign of dehydration.

5) Water clears your skin – Most people know that drinking more water can be good for clear skin and it can also help the symptoms of acne. If you’ve got dry skin, drinking water will give it more moisture but that’s not all. Water flushes toxins out of your body and anything else that shouldn’t be there so it clears your skin of any dirt and bacteria.

The Waterpoint are an Edinburgh based supplier of water coolers and accessories with depots and customers throughout the UK.