How do you know if you are hydrated enough?
How much water is it recommended to drink each day?
Hydration and taking care of your daily water intake is key to staying in shape. Indeed, maintaining a good level of hydration on a daily basis is one of the keys to well-being in order to keep your body healthy and feel good!
Each of us, depending on our typology and environment, expresses a different water requirement. Health institutions agree to recommend the intake of at least 1.5 L of water to drink each day... but this benchmark changes in practice according to your age, build, climatic conditions, your diet, and your physical activities...
This article will give you tips to prevent dehydration, even mild, and learn to recognize the symptoms of dehydration with simple tests.
Adopt the right actions to prevent dehydration
- Start the day with a large glass of water. This will help to better eliminate toxins, burn more calories and maintain a consistently efficient metabolism. Otherwise, a less hydrated body will have a slower metabolism.
- Remember to drink throughout the day, about a glass of water every 20 minutes. It is ideal to always have a water bottle with you! For seniors, we recommend Auxivia which allows you to monitor the senior's hydration on a daily basis.
- Favor foods rich in water. Our article " Body hydration: How to hydrate yourself properly to feel good?" will describe which ingredients to favor in order to optimize your water intake through food.
How do I know if I am well hydrated on a daily basis?
Measuring your daily hydration with the skinfold test
The state of suppleness of the skin is a useful indicator to measure its hydration at a given moment. The suppleness and elasticity of the skin are due to the presence of a protein synthesized in the dermis, "elastin". It forms a dense network under the epidermis, and allows the elastic fibers of the dermis to be extensible.
Although it is one of the most resistant proteins in the human body, its production generally stops at puberty. Its presence then decreases with age, explaining the sagging of the skin and the appearance of wrinkles.
In this test, we look at the skin's ability to return to its original shape after being stretched, and after how many seconds it returns to its original appearance.
Perform the skinfold test on yourself, infants and children, or the elderly.
- Lightly pull a piece of skin on the back of the person's hand between your thumb and index finger, then release it.
- Observe after how many seconds this skin returns to its initial appearance.
- You can do the same thing on yourself for comparison.
In a normal case, the skin should return to its original appearance instantly. Otherwise, there is a delay, the skin lacks hydration, and therefore a sufficiently elastic structure.
This test can be easily performed on yourself or on your loved ones. It will be easily interpretable in elderly and malnourished patients due to loss of this elastin, but more subtle in children and obese patients. In the event that you identify even slight dehydration, have the reflex to lay the person down and offer them water or another drink.
1) Test the color of your urine to test your hydration
Professor Armstrong of the University of Connecticut has developed a simple test to judge for yourself your state of hydration at any time of the day based on the color of your urine ( Hydration Check: The Science )
The lighter the urine, the higher the hydration level, and vice versa. A numbered scale of colors ranging from very pale yellow (number 1) to brownish green (number 8) allows for a simple comparison. If the colorimetry of your urine is too dark, think about hydrating yourself!
2) The impedance meter, a scale with 17 different indicators!
Never has a scale been so versatile! Body mass, BMI (Body Mass Index), protein or fat mass rate, visceral fat percentage and of course hydration rate... But how does it work and does it really work?
This scale measures your water content using a bioimpedance process. A small, imperceptible current is transmitted by diffusing through the body. The measured resistance, induced by your water content, allows a rate to be displayed within a minute.
This method is not 100% accurate, but it has the merit of making you visualize your biological evolution without great constraint. The ideal is to use this measurement and see its evolution from day to day with the objective of improving it. Make sure to reproduce the weighings in identical circumstances (same device used, preferably in the morning at the same time, etc.).
3) The LVL connected watch, a traveling companion that notifies in real time!
What if we could quantify our water consumption at any time of the day, and without making any complicated calculations? This is what the Texan startup BSX Athletics ( BSX Athletics - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding ) is trying to do with its smartwatch project.
Unlike the green light commonly used in all other connected tools, its sensor here uses red light . A light ten times more penetrating that measures much more than the hydration rate. Heart rate, sweat rate, amount of calories burned and steps taken are displayed on the touch screen connected to your smartphone via Bluetooth.
With a battery life of around four hours, the LVL watch will advise the user from the dedicated application, with advice such as the amount of water to drink before exercising or going to bed.
Although LVL is not yet available on the market due to insufficient funding, its benefits seem promising. For a relatively reasonable price (128 euros), it would make it easier for elderly people to stay at home and reduce the number of hospitalizations for dehydration, a number that is still too high.
4) Medical technique
The technique reserved for professionals is blood sampling. An excessive presence of sodium and potassium in the blood, or even a hemoconcentrated state, then confirms the management of the seriously dehydrated subject. Except in cases of hospitalization, extreme precision of daily measurements is not necessarily necessary. The important thing is to keep in mind that a physical examination can already be revealing.
When to use Hydratis?
If with these different methods your hydration rate does not yet appear satisfactory, the Hydratis solution can allow you to reach it much more easily. Based on hyperosmolarity, it allows a much faster and more efficient absorption of water.
While water alone would only enter the bloodstream after a certain digestion time, the osmolar concentration of the drink allows for more efficient assimilation of liquids.
