The Importance of Staying Hydrated while Exercising
Your body requires water for everyday functioning. Water helps to regulate body temperature, transport nutrients, remove waste material, digest food, lubricate the joints, and is also important for cellular reactions. Staying hydrated is important for everyone, but most people could get dehydrated without realizing, while exercising or engaging in a physical activity.
What causes you to sweat?
When you work out or engage in any physical activity, your body temperature increases. In order to remove this additional heat, the body secretes sweat, which eventually helps cool you down. Sweat consists of electrolytes (like sodium) and water, and hence, you lose a lot of water with perspiration.
What could lead to loss of water/fluids while engaging in a lot of exercise or physical activity?
Most of us know that sweating leads to water loss. But besides perspiration, physically active people lose water due to other reasons as well:
Increased sweating and water loss via skin, as the body tries to regulate temperature
Fluid loss during respiration, urination
High fibre diets: These could lead to a slight increase in faecal water loss
High protein diets: Digestion and excretion of metabolites because protein intake requires additional amount of water. Usually this amount is insignificant but it may become important if the athlete is consuming less fluid for training purposes
How does dehydration affect the body during physical activity?
While everyone knows that water is required for the proper functioning of the human body, not many know that being adequately hydrated significantly affects how the body functions during physical activity. Under severe dehydration, the following complications may be seen:
Mental performance may be affected
Under certain conditions, dehydration can lead to impaired mental capabilities and negatively affect working memory, short-term memory, mood, visual motor skills and arithmetic capabilities.
The ability to exercise and other physical functions may be affected
Dehydration could affect cardiac functioning, sweat production and the ability of the body to regulate its own temperature.
How much water should you drink during exercise/physical activity?
The fluid requirement varies from one person to another. The type of physical activity, duration and intensity of the activity, metabolic rate, humidity, temperature, level of physical fitness etc., impact how much water an individual may require.
However, here are some general guidelines for avoiding hydration during physical activity:
Before you exercise:
Drink about 500-600 ml of water at least 4 hours before exercising/playing a sport.
Drink 250-350 ml of water about 10 to 15 minutes before exercise.
While exercising
If you are exercising for less than an hour, drink 100-250 ml of water every 15-20 minutes.
If you are exercising for more than an hour, drink 100-250 ml of a sports drink (containing electrolytes and carbohydrates) every 15-20 minutes.
After exercising
For every pound of weight loss during the intense exercise, you need to drink 600-700 ml of a sports beverage or water; athletes often weigh themselves before and after a work-out to determine this.
However, it’s equally important that you don’t drink too much fluid (more than 950 ml in an hour) while exercising, since “over-hydration” could also lead to side effects.
Having said this, it’s always advisable to introduce a water purifier for these everyday requirements. A Pureit water purifier with its advanced purification process gives you just that – pure, rich water for a healthier you!
FAQs
1) Why is staying hydrated important?
Water is necessary for a multitude of functions, including controlling body temperature, transporting nutrients to cells, avoiding infections, keeping joints lubricated, and maintaining normal organ function. Being hydrated improves cognition, sleep quality, and happiness.
2) Why is dehydration bad during exercise?
Your body's capacity to regulate heat is harmed by dehydration, causing you to sweat a lot, and your heart rate to rise. This causes you to become exhausted when exercising.
3) Is it good to drink water constantly while working out?
When you exercise, you expend energy, your heart rate rises, and you sweat. Dehydration can be avoided by drinking water throughout your workout. It is beneficial to drink 7 to 10 ounces of water every 20 minutes during your workout.
4) Why we shouldn’t drink water after exercise?
After a workout, you can sip some water as it helps to regulate body temperature. However, it is best if you wait for 15 to 20 minutes and if you are feeling hungry drink water as our bodies confuse thirst with hunger. Drinking cold water straight after exercise, on the other hand, may shock the digestive system and internal organs, resulting in chronic stomach aches.
5) How do we prevent dehydration during exercise?
Four hours before your workout, drink 8 ounces of water. During the workout, every 10 to 15 minutes drink another 7 to 10 ounces of water. After waiting for 15 - 20 minutes, drink some water to prevent dehydration.
