Water

Everything that lives on the earth needs water and that includes you!  Do you know that almost 70% of your body is just water?  If you didn’t have enough water, your body would just stop working!  Without water, you can’t survive for very long, just few hours (in very hot weather) or a few days. 

So what does water do?  Water does many very important jobs, from making up your blood that carries oxygen to all of your cells to helping you to digest your food.  All of your other body’s systems, including your respiratory and immune systems also need water to function properly - you can’t even sweat or go to the toilet if you don’t have enough water in your body!

Everybody needs different amounts of water.  Some people exercise more than others so they need more as their bodies loose a lot of water when they sweat.  If you move to a warmer room or during the summer, you also sweat more so your body will need more water.  A general rule is that you should have 6 – 8 glasses of water every day but you should also drink more in hot weather, if you are exercising and always when you are thirsty!

When you don’t have enough water in your body you are dehydrated.  This means that everything, from your speed as you walk to your thoughts, slows right down as everything needs water to work at its best. You can get headaches and feel very tired and unable to concentrate or make decisions.  You body can tell you that you are dehydrated by holding on to water when it needs it to make everything work properly.  This means that you have less water in your wee or sweat.  If your wee is a much darker colour than it normally is you could be dehydrated (ask an adult for help).  You can increase the levels of water in your body easily by just taking a drink or two of water.  If you have too much water in your body, your wee will look very light yellow in colour as your body will just get rid of what it doesn’t need! 

If someone is dehydrated very often, they can have problems like constipation or kidney stones (which are very painful).  People who get severely dehydrated become very sick and in some cases can even die.

Your body gets water from the food you eat and the liquids you drink.  Fruit and vegetables have a lot of water but other foods you might eat like soups will also have some.  You can take lots of different drinks to get water but its best not to have too many fizzy or sweet flavoured drinks because they contain a lot of sugar.  Also, tea, coffee and hot chocolate can be poor choices because of the amount of caffeine they can contain.  Remember to have a look at the labels on the packs or bottles to find out how much of what you are drinking is just water and how much is something else like sugar that you’d prefer not to have too much of!  All in all, plain water or milk is usually the best choice, so drink up!