Your body is made up of about 70-80% water content at birth, and can be measured at around 50% in senior populations. Depending on your body size and exertion level, it is often averaged for the majority of adults as 60%.

Suffice it to say that staying hydrated is indeed important to keep your body regulated and balanced. Haven’t we all heard about drinking eight glasses of water each day? Maybe more?

I tell people after almost every treatment to drink an extra glass of water when they get home, if not immediately after their massage. So where does this recommendation come from? Does it have to be water specifically or can it be coffee? Wine? You have questions and I have answers!

 

 

The short answer to the title of this post is: probably not, but are you thirsty? If so then you should try drinking some fluids. Water preferably but it really does not matter too much. Want to know why? Fill up your cup with knowledge by tapping in to the flow of information below.

I think that I just peaked as a writer there.

 

What is water used for within the body?

As pointed out in the very first sentences of this post, water makes up for the majority of the weight in our body compared to any one other thing. As a contrast, your skeleton averages about 10-15% of your total body weight. Where then is all of that water found? The H2O within your own body is found primarily on the micro-level within individual cells. This gives protection and cushioning as well as a simple way to transport nutrients.

Water is incredibly versatile and other functions of it within the body happen on a much larger scale (but I must stress that these are not done solely with H2O alone):

— Aids in the lubrication of joints

— Helps to keep sensitive tissues moist (i.e. eyes, mouth, organs etc.)

— Allows nutrient distribution throughout the body

— Normalize blood pressure

— Manage waste products (not just urine, but feces as well)

— Helps to regulate body temperature

 

How do I know when I should be drinking fluids?

As stated right off the bat, your body will let you know if it wants some water. If you are thirsty then you should drink some fluids. When you are perspiring (sweating) you are shedding some water from your body. Heck even when you breathe you are getting rid of water! Any instance where you are very warm or performing exercise should be in conjunction with you also drinking fluids to replenish what you have lost.

There is no hard or fast rule for the length of activity or amount that you have perspired equaling a measurement of fluids. Again just follow the thirst rule: if you are thirsty, then you should have a drink!

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You can use the colour of your urine to give you an idea as well. Urine should be light yellow. If it looks almost identical to water then you are drinking a slight bit more than is necessary. If it is dark yellow or orange than you should probably be drinking some fluids right away. If it is any other colour (make sure you did not consume beets earlier) or cloudy, then perhaps you should consult with your family doctor or call Health Link.

Given the title of this post, the topic would not be complete without giving you a list of the potential signs of dehydration:

— Increased fatigue

— Confusion

— Irritability or anger

— Poor short-term memory

— Presence of a headache

— Dizziness

— Dry lips / mouth

— Poor reaction times

— Fainting

 

What kind of fluids are the best for consumption?

You do not have to exclusively drink water to deliver fluids to your body. You can drink milk, coffee, wine, beer, juice… you name it. Some people will claim that coffee will make you even more dehydrated, but this is a myth.

The reason to not drink as much coffee as straight up water is simply because of the caffeine or other additives within. The same can be said for juice — except it is the sugar and overall caloric content that is the killer here.

Wine and beer follows suit with the above, but the alcohol content is the focal point. As with anything in life it is more so about consumption in moderation (so maybe only one glass of mango juice in a day), but all of these fluid examples will deliver water to your body.

 

Where does the 8×8 approach come from?

Eight glasses with 8-ounces of water daily, totals out to about 2 Litres or half a gallon. Where did people get this idea? It can be traced back to a dietary guideline from around the end of World War 2; one that has since been taken wildly out of context. It was recommended in the United States by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences that people should be consuming so much H2O daily (as outlined above). But literally the next sentence to follow this recommendation stated that most of this water content would come from the foods that we eat anyway.

All foods contains water. Even dehydrated food like beef jerky (~20% by weight); or perhaps surprisingly wheat flour (~10%) or bread (~30%). Fruits and veggies contain the most, although you probably could have guessed that. In researching this topic for supporting evidence I found a claim that strawberries contained up to 93% water by weight — which is not all that hard for me to believe either. Cucumbers and radishes are noted as 95% water content.

My point is just that you already consume water even when you are not actively drinking it each day.

 

Are there downsides to drinking too much water?

Yes, even in the 8×8 example, some people will end up eating less food then they normally would have because they are tricked in to feeling full with the amount of water in their system. This can mean not actually meeting their dietary requirements for the day. Counter to that many other people have found that they end up having to use the bathroom more frequently.

Imagine if you ate your usual daily amount of food and also drank two or three litres of water that same day? The more fluid you take in that you don’t need, the more your body will try to get rid of it as waste. The more that you get rid of waste, the faster your body has to try and processes the nutritional value of the food and fluids that you took in (i.e. the vitamins, minerals, etc.). This also means that it has less chance of absorbing all of the nutrients because it is just trying to do it as quick as possible.

Just in those two examples you have opposite ends of a dietary spectrum, yet the end result is more or less the same.

 

What if you don’t take frequent bathroom breaks, or what if you have a job that does not afford you the ability to go to the bathroom more than once or twice in the day? Well if you are taking in lots of fluids and notice that you have newly discovered swelling around your ankles, abdomen, or eyes then this may be a sign that your body is inefficiently retaining water.

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EDIT (immediately after posting): After reading over this post I have realized that I did not really make it too clear that every individuals dietary needs / nutritional requirements are drastically different. It might sound like an obvious statement, but it must be said.

I can even use examples of a few different clients of mine who constantly drink out of a four litre jug of water all-day, every day. They are healthy individuals and do not have any medical conditions that would require them to drink more fluids.

They are not over-consuming their water however, because their fluid intake fits with their body size and lifestyle. Any examples that I use within this post were just that (examples), and are not meant to say “take this exact approach.”

 

What does current research say?

Current researchers are stalwart and outspoken on this topic. The average person does require about 2-2.5L of H2O in a day. However the 8×8 approach is a myth. They are also pretty unified that our body utilizes H2O much more effectively via food that we eat. Some researchers like Dr. Howard Murad (associate clinic professor of medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles) even state that this method of eating your water is up to twice as effective as purely drinking your water.

There is even evidence to suggest that a portion of the fluids that we drink are simply shunted through the body (even if we are not over-drinking fluids). Of course it must circulate thru our organs, and a lot of those organs will utilize some of the fluid as it does so (for some organs their sole purpose is to try to reabsorb water before it exits the body as waste).

 

The argument in favour of food being a better water conduit is two pronged, yet they are similar concepts. The first idea is that because water is trapped within the cells of the food that we eat, it has a slower release to our body. Meaning that we only get the water once we have broken down those cells during the digestion process.

The second idea is in regards to the bio-availability of the water contained within. This means that it is more effectively utilized by the body after it becomes accessible because it synergizes with some of the other contents of the food. Things like phosphorous, fiber, or vitamins / minerals.

 

Here is a different example of bio-availability: when comparing the calcium in a supplement pill versus the smaller amount of calcium that you might consume when eating fresh dark green vegetables. The smaller amount of calcium is more readily available and easily used by the body because of the other things found within the dark green vegetables. There are obviously reasons to still have supplements or take vitamins in pill form, but from a purely bio-availability standpoint: whole foods will never be beaten in their flexibility. Let’s get back on topic here.

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A different summary of the current literature in research is that a healthy body is not so much hydrated by the water that passes through it, but the water that is stored within. This is an important distinction because there is no proof that drinking water is going to smooth wrinkles from your skin, or clean out “toxins” from your body.

Even weight loss is promoted with this idea, but that is another myth. You can manage hunger by tricking your body in to believing that it has just been satiated by drinking a bunch of water, but again this is simply a cognitive trick to curb that hunger. It is not a healthy approach to weight loss. I know that I kind of wrote about this a bit earlier, but it is worth noting again here.

As for my two-cents on the current research here: I would say that it is not this black and white issue where water gained from food is vastly superior and drinking fluids is essentially just a funny habit that we still have. I think that is ridiculous.

If the water content in food is slowly released, then we still need a water source that is almost immediately usable. Similar to how there are different types of protein, I think that we just need to use a combination of the two. The good news is that most of us instinctively do this anyway. So… that’s that.

 

Does anyone REALLY need to drink more fluids then?

Yes! Nurses / doctors and dietitians may tell their patients to drink an excess of fluids in some specific medical conditions. Cases such as:

— Kidney stones

— Urinary tract infection

— Influenza

— Diarrhea

 

How does this relate to massage?

Now we come to the whole point of me writing this post! There are really two answers to this question. For starters, if you are getting a therapeutic massage where we are trying to solve issues such as correct poor posture or get rid of trigger points, then your body undergoes some changes within the tissues.

This can mean breaking apart adhesions and then smoothing those tissues out; or it can mean getting the wall of the joint capsule to not stick to the tissues around it. There are many possibilities. No matter the case of a therapeutic massage, you will have cellular debris floating around the focused-on areas of your body afterwards.

Think about when you pop a water balloon: the water exits the balloon and pieces of the balloon are left scattered. Despite your therapists best efforts to flush the area with both kneading and long (+) flowing massage strokes, this is still bound to happen.

It is one of the reasons you may feel sore for a couple of days post-treatment. It is also one of the reasons that I try to use mint essential oil after focusing on specific areas. Water may assist in flushing this debris out, or allow your body to be more efficient at doing so. And when your body is going through that healing process it will help to build up new cells that will require water within.

 

The second portion of the answer to how this post relates to massage is that when your nervous system starts to relax it almost tricks your body in to thinking that it is falling asleep. This will change how your body is processing certain things within the time-frame of the treatment. Processes such as regulating blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and digestion.

To help kick-start these processes and make your body more alert post-treatment, sometimes the most effective method is to simply pound back a glass of water. Have you ever done this instinctively when you first get up in the morning? If you have then you surely would have experienced the immediate effects of what I am trying to talk about here. It is kind of like dumping some gasoline on a dying fire.

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Would it be possible to shrivel in to a raisin if you did not drink water or have a snack right after your treatment? Well, you would have to be incredibly unlucky (fall-into-a-coma-while-roaming-the-desert-barefoot levels of unlucky) or to rephrase: no. But you would be foolish to not give your body immediate ways to help it deal with any problems it may be facing. Especially when the answer is so simple.

As stated before: no, it does not have to be water-specifically that you drink right after your treatment. But why would you opt for a glass of grape juice with all of the extra sugar or calories – when you can simply have a glass of water post-treatment and be on your way to a swift recovery?