Are you drinking enough water?

How do our bodies use water?

Our bodies consist mainly of water — 50–80% of your total body weight is water. Women typically have lower average body water content than men because they tend to have more body fat, which contains less water than muscle tissue.

And water is vital to all sorts of bodily functions. One key fluid — your blood — helps transport essential nutrients and oxygen around your body. Other fluids act as a lubricant for joints and eyes, help you swallow, act as a cushion for your nervous system, and help with waste disposal. On top of all that, water serves to regulate your body temperature — you sweat when you get too hot.

There are other ways in which water contributes to good health:

• It maintains the health of your kidneys by helping flush toxins and body waste through them.
• It reduces the risk of stones in your urinary tract (kidney stones or bladder stones).
• Some preliminary research has shown that drinking plenty of fluid (particularly plain water) can reduce the risk of cancers of the colon and urinary tract (including kidneys and bladder) and breast cancer. However, more research is needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn.
• It’s thought that drinking more water (but not fatty or sugary drinks) could help prevent childhood and adolescent obesity, partly because it creates a feeling of fullness and also because people sometimes mistake feeling thirsty for feeling hungry.