The biological importance of water to humans goes back to the beginnings of time
Humans evolved drinking water. Just water.
To neglect the biological importance of water places you at risk for all kinds of physical [roblems.
You can't trick our nature. The biological importance of water on human evolution is clear from everything we know about our body and our history.
How long have humans been quenching our thirst by going for a can of soda? Or, maybe a glass of OJ "fresh" from the carton?
Maybe a hundred or so years, huh?
That's the problem.
For hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, humans and other life forms have drunk water.
Just water. Some small exceptions apply.
Life originated in water, the sea and the lakes. Some forms moved out but still depended on the very water it left.
In fact, life that moved out of the water brought the water with it.
That's why many land mammals are mostly made of water.
We are mostly water. We brought the sea with us. The liquid part of our blood resembles sea water. Our very cells are mostly water. Our cells are bathed in water.
This makes continuance of life outside of the sea possible.
All our bodies have asked us to do is to drink lots of water. Just water.
It's like a contract between man and water.
"You could move out of me but be sure to drink lots of me and you will be ok."
Only in the last hundred years have humans really started to intentionally break that contract. Now we ask, "Is it ok if we have a few cups of coffee and maybe soda pop at lunch and dinner and..."
Well the sea shrugs and we get ill.
Now let's get back to some facts.
The biological importance of water is impressed on us in so many ways. For example, we have a management system that determines the entry and exit of liquids. It is a very complicated network which makes decisions on the spur of the second and hopes for the best but plans for the worst, like dehydration.
Ingesting liquids is a matter of life and death.
We could live without food or sunshine for a long time but if we fail to ingest liquids for just 7 days we die.
Ok, just to sum up, we come from water, water is in us, we are required to drink in water quite often. There's no getting around it.
And yet, in only the last 100 years, modern society has given us a way to get around this relationship. We can now get water in any number of ways and be fooled into thinking it's the same thing.
For all eternity, humans got their water from, well... water. That's right. You know that hundreds and thousands of years ago, humans quenched their thirst by drinking water. No soda.
Yes some of the water need was met by eating vegetables and fruits. And some of it was squeezed out of a few fruits and maybe a coconut or two. But by and large, we drank water.
Our bodies developed adapting to this fact. So we need water. Many animals drink first thing in the morning. Before eating. That shows a wisdom lost on many of us.
Imagine the harm done to our health by waking up and grabbing a cup of coffee and donut. At work we take a few sips of water from the company fountain and we're off to lunch. Of course nothing goes better with burgers and fries than a cold soda, right. Maybe we throw in a bottled water in mid-afternoon, grab a candy bar and we're off to our home.
A glass of alcohol is supposed to be healthy so we go for two and then it's time for dinner. We down soda or two, make it a diet one, relax awhile and then, because we are health conscious, we march on over to the gym to do some weights and cardio. In the process we gulp a glass of water. Then we head back home, feeling good about ourselves. Now it's time for a post workout snack or maybe dessert.
It doesn't seem so bad, huh?
But this typical man's body is screaming out one question,
"Where's the water?"
Yep, this routine actually insures health problems. They may be mild but chronic or they might be serious and acute. But clearly this typical man or woman is not drinking enough water.
He's probably drinking less than half of the water he needs.
And, mind you this isn't a worst case example.
Most people don't exercise, don't drink water conscious of a need to and perhaps gulp a quart or more of soda and juices in a typical day.
Some people almost never drink water and claim that they hate the taste of water.
Could you imagine how far they have strayed from our biological and evolutionary need for water. The contract with water has been completely destroyed.
The price for ignoring the biological importance of water will be dear. Just like my favorite example, the smoker who eventually pays the toll, so do we when we fail to drink water.
