Hydration = Performance

by Corey Boutwell October 5, 2022

“Water before a meal is nectar. It replenishes fluids and encourages juicy digestive organs. Small sips during a meal is honey. It helps turn the food into a sauce. Water after a meal is poison because it dilutes stomach acids.” – Dr. Vasant Lad”

Corey Boutwell

10/02/2020

,,,,Article Quick Glimpse

Are you feeling lethargic? Struggling to sleep or wake up? Experiencing headaches or struggling to focus and concentrate? These are symptoms of mild dehydration.
The purpose of this article is to help you to strongly understand the sheer importance and value of hydration.
I hope you recognise and become aware of how much water we need to drink.
MOST importantly I hope you develop the habit of drinking a quarter to a half of your water intake first thing in the morning which is KEY to good hydration!
Hydration is directly related to productivity and performance.
Majority of Australians show signs of dehydration.
Dehydration significantly reduces productivity and performance.
The real daily average water intake is 3L for men and 2.2L for women not 2L for all.
For those who exercise, roughly one hour of exercise requires 1 extra litre of water
Symptoms and causes of dehydration are explained below.
Sleep in a dry or hot room can rob your body of needed water. It is very common to wake up dehydrated.
Drinking the majority of your water in the morning is the most efficient and beneficial hydration habit to create.

Hydration = Productivity

Below is a list of truths about hydration:

If you’re only mildly dehydrated you’re 114% more likely to make an error, which is similar to drinking low levels of alcohol.
1% down in total body water content can negatively affect our cognitive ability and mood.
In order to maintain peak levels of productivity, the body needs to be fully hydrated.
Studies show 80% of Australians suffer from symptoms typical of dehydration and the majority don’t recognise the key symptoms.
60% of Australian workers show up unfit for work due to dehydration.
Just a 1% drop in hydration can lead to a 12% drop in productivity.
Chances are you’re dehydrated often.

Questions:

What would a 12% – 50% increase in productivity mean for you?
How easy and cost effective is it to increase hydration by 1%?……… Very

Studies show a 3% to 4% drop in hydration can lead to a drop in productivity of between 25% and 50%. Furthermore, 3% dehydration slows reaction time to the same level as a 0.08

Blood Alcohol Content. At a content of 0.08, you are 5 TIMES more likely to have a car accident.

49% of Australians falsely believe they should drink two litres of water a day to stay hydrated it’s usually a lot more. A further 20% believe drinking water when they are thirsty keeps them hydrated, not knowing that dehydration has already settled in.

How can you expect to perform or be productive if you are dehydrated? The answer is simply to be hydrated and recognise its value.’

The Body

Firstly let’s look at how much water our body contains:

So much of us is simply water!

Muscles are made up of primarily water which is required to drive nutrients to your cells and transport waste out of the body. Water helps form the structures of protein and glycogen.

Muscles are controlled by nerves without a good water and electrolyte balance muscle strength and control will decrease.

Water is needed to move, contract and flex your muscles without sufficient water the muscle performance will be impaired. Therefore, it is essential that you stay hydrated if you want to build muscle and experience optimal performance in the gym.

Increasing water intake will help prevent muscle cramping, improve the strength of muscle contractions and quicken muscle response. Hydration prevents sagging skin and the water fills out muscles, which makes skin look healthy, clear and resilient.

How We Lose Water

We lose water everyday, roughly 2L varying from person to person by:

What is Dehydration?

Dehydration occurs when the loss of body fluids, mostly water, exceeds the amount that is taken in. Dehydration means more water is moving out of individual cells and then out of the body than the amount of water that is taken in through drinking or eating.
Dehydration causes excessive loss of water and salts from the body. Hence, why sports drinks are loaded with salts and electrolytes.
Water is vital for the body to maintain blood volume, control body temperature to allow all body muscles to function properly
It takes only a 2% loss of total water content for your body to start feeling thirsty. Once you’re at this point your body is already in a state of dehydration.
Dehydration delays reaction time.
Muscle blood flow is reduced with dehydration during prolonged exercise in humans
Dehydration limits strength, power and high-intensity endurance and, therefore, is an important factor to consider when attempting to maximise muscular performance.

Symptoms

Mild dehydration symptoms 1% and above:

Feeling lethargic
Struggling with concentration
Always suffering headaches
Struggling to sleep
Thirsty
Sunken eyes
Dry or sticky mouth, lips and tongue
Dry skin
Headaches
Muscle cramps
Mood swings
Darker urine
Be dizzy or light-headed, particularly when standing up
Decreased peeing frequency
Feeling tired or lethargic

More severe dehydration symptoms:

Dark pee if any
Strong dizziness or light headedness
Real low blood pressure
Rapid heart rate
Rapid breathing rate
Fainting
Fever
Poor skin elasticity
Lethargy, confusion, or coma
Seizure
Shock

Causes of Dehydration

What increases the frequencies?

Causes:

Hot or cold weather
Being sick
Exercise
Stressful conditions
Alcohol
Diabetes
High blood sugar levels
High sugar and processed foods e.g. doughnuts
Low carb diets
Sleep deprivation
Dry air
Air conditioners
Increased heart rate

How Hydration Works and the Benefits

Fluids in the diet are generally absorbed in the proximal small intestine, and absorption rate is determined by the rate of gastric emptying to the small intestine.

The stomach empties water into the small intestine once it is full. Water and fluids are absorbed in the small intestine. The rate at which fluids are absorbed by the small intestine depends on the rate the stomach releases water into the small intestine. Hence, with a consistent influx of water going in, the more the stomach will need to release the water the more the small intestine will absorb and the more hydrated you become.

If you are in a dehydrated state it would be most beneficial to increase fluid intake. If you are already hydrated, you will not become more hydrated.

Benefits

Cellular hydration has immense importance & value for peak performance you lose 5 – 10% of bodies water exercising

Why?

Hydration is good for:

Muscle Repair – Exercise causes muscles to break down and rebuild them. This rebuilding process needs muscles to be well hydrated to heal effectively. Dehydration causes this rebuilding process to slow down and not heal properly.
Digestion – Hydration allows the body to produce digestive acid in the stomach to break down food. Dehydration restricts the body from creating this fluid which can be harmful to the gut.
Reduced Fatigue – A common sign of dehydration is fatigue. Dehydration causes your total blood volume to decrease, increasing your heart to work harder to pump blood all around your body. This restricts post workout recovery and causes you to feel fatigued and lethargic, reducing motivation to get to the gym.
Heart Rate Recovery – A 2012 study of the role of hydration in athletic performance found that hydration had a large impact on recovery (Moreno et al., 2012). The study showed that those who hydrated after a workout found their heart rate recovered significantly faster than those who did not. This means their bodies recovered more quickly and efficiently after exercise.

You will also find that being properly hydrated will allow the following benefits during and after exercise:

Increased focus / concentration
Improved function & movement
Reduced fatigue
Support recovery

What Can You Do?

Dehydration is common to occur in the morning. You breath all night without re hydrating, you may experience night sweats or sweat in your sleep, you may use air conditioning and you may wake up to pee in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. These are all methods of losing water.

So what would be the smart thing to do? Drink water in the morning. Even better: drink up to a third of your daily water intake in the morning. If you’re male that’s roughly 1 litre, female, 750 ml.

Drinking a third or more of your daily water intake is smart because you then have less water to drink during the day and you can drink water less frequently. Therefore, you don’t have to think about drinking water as much.

Drinking water in the morning also has a whole range of benefits which are:

Re-hydrates you from the night beforehand
Helps lower bowel movements
Removes toxins from your body
Fights food cravings
Prevents kidney stones, protects your colon and bladder from infections
Healthy hair growth
Kick starts metabolism
Improves concentration, short-term memory, and physical performance
Increases alertness levels
Strengthens immune system – less likely to get sick
Fuels and primes your brain (brain is over 70% water)
Improves mental performance

Strategies to get your water intake up

To hydrate effectively to increase your productivity, energy, healing and thinking, use the some of the strategies below:

Make water accessible at home and at your workplace
Prepare your water the night beforehand
Use reusable and fun 1 to 2 litre bottles
Set up reminders for remind yourself of the importance of water
Set up automatic reminders to drink
Create a culture with your friendship circle around hydration
Log water intake into devices or apps
Set up your own Hydration Stations
Sparkle options (mineral or sparkling water)
Beware of your environment
Movement
Train yourself into drinking more water by linking the action with other habitual activities like walking between rooms, washing your hands or switching tasks

Action Plan

1. Add these 3 ingredients to increase water absorption.

These ingredients bind to water molecules to make delivery into the body faster:

Add a teaspoon of unrefined mineral salt like Celtic Sea Salt or Pink Himalayan Saltto every 32-ounce container of water.
Squeeze lemon into your water.
Add some raw ginger in your drink bottle

2. Move Your Water

Water requires the body to move, twist, contract, stretch and squeeze to hydrate properly. Moving water is energized water. To cleanse and heal the body water needs to be moving.

How much we move impacts how hydrated we are…..get moving!

Our fascia the connective tissue between our skin and muscles and within our muscles is an electrical system. All the triggers that tell our muscle to grow, squeeze contract or cramp all come from our fascia.

Water conducts electricity, fascia requires a good current to work effectively and communicate what it needs to instantly. Good hydration ensures this, dehydration causes our fascia to dry out causing poor conduction and healing and performance.

3. Calculate Your Water Needs

Formula: Your Age for ml x your body weight in kg = 0.000 Litres per day

Age: Young Adult 16 to 30 years – water per unit of body weight: 35 — 40 ml/kg or 0.54 — 0.6 fl oz/lb
Age: Adult 31 to 54 years – water per unit of body weight: 30 — 35 ml/kg or 0.46 — 0.54 fl oz/lb
Age: Adult 55 to 65 years – water per unit of body weight: 30 ml/kg or 0.46 fl oz/lb
Age: Adult > 65 years – water per unit of body weight: 25 ml/kg or 0.38 fl oz/lb

Example: Sammuel – 47years old weighing 60 kg

Metric:

30 ml /kg x 90 kg = 2700 ml or 2.7 liters
35 ml / kg x 90 kg = 3100 ml or 3.1 liters

Intake range = 2.7 liters — 3.1 liters

Exercise Note* If you exercise regularly this result will change.

“On average, you roughly lose about one liter of fluid per hour of exercise. Extreme heat and humidity can raise that amount to three liters in one hour.”

This means if Sammuel exercised for 1 hour a day he would need to replace another liter = 4.1 liters, if its a hot day he will need to replace and extra one or two litres = 5.1 – 6.1 Litres.

This totals his total water intake on exercise days to 4.1 Liters

Calculator link: https://goodcalculators.com/water-intake-calculator/

4. Drink at least a quarter to a third of your water first thing in the morning.

This is the best time to drink water as after a night of sleeping it is likely you are dehydrated. Water in the morning hydrates and kick starts your body.

By drinking a large amount of water in the morning significantly reduces the amount of water you need to intake during the day and you get to worry about it less.

Genius in simplicity.

Water from food, salt, and movement = proper hydration

Contact

If you resonate with this article, would like to talk to us, are interested in one of our programs or workshops, we would love to help you or even come do a talk at your workplace.

You can email me at: boutcore@gmail.com

Or call me on: 0414556322

Corey Boutwell

References

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APPENDIX

Water recommendation levels

Adults

Age & Total Water Fluids (Food and fluids)

(Including plain water, milk and other drinks)

Men

19-30 yr – 3.4 L/day

31-50 yr – 3.4 L/day

51-70 yr – 3.4 L/day

>70 yr – 3.4 L/day

Women

19-30 yr – 2.8 L/day

31-50 yr – 2.8 L/day

51-70 yr – 2.8 L/day

>70 yr – 2.8 L/day

Hydration status impacts the perception of dehydration symptoms, as reported in a study the perception of dehydration symptoms (headache, tiredness, poor concentration and thirsty) was different across dehydrated and non-dehydrated students

“You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” – Dr. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize winner – Celtic salt full of minerals

Adults drink only one liter (~ 4 cups) of water a day on average (40) – which is less than half of what is currently recommended by the IOM (25). The signs and symptoms of dehydration and overhydration can mirror each other, sharing light-headedness/dizziness, headaches, nausea, and fatigue – all subjective parameters sometimes used in hydration and cognition research (4,21,22,30,36).

Despite having the good knowledge of dehydration definition, the knowledge was lacking for the less common symptoms, causes, and of potentially serious consequences of dehydration

symptoms headache, dizziness, light headedness, lack of focus and muscle weakness.

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