Over the past year and a half, I’ve been on a personal quest to improve my overall health and fitness. I read a lot of health and beauty advice and learned quite a bit during this time.

I adopted a new philosophy about really taking excellent care of myself. I feel that we as a culture spend lots of time on making sure our outfit is designer and that our hair looks good. We spend time feeding our souls through spirituality. We have time to learn and nurture our minds. We have time for friends and partying and going to the club. But somehow we just never have the time to eat right or exercise. Why is that? Well I decided to quit the excuses and really put forth an effort to improve myself on the inside and out.

I began reading and doing research to find out how to eat healthier. I went to anyone physically fit that I saw and asked them what they did to stay fit. I’m also constantly researching and learning and finding that it’s not as hard as it seems to stay fit. One important factor in fitness is drinking water and staying properly hydrated.

Water makes up more than two thirds of the weight of the human body, and without it, humans would die in a few days. The human brain is made up of 95% water, blood is 82% and lungs 90%. A mere 2% drop in our body’s water supply can trigger signs of dehydration: fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on smaller print, such as a computer screen. (Are you having trouble reading this? Drink up!) Mild dehydration is also one of the most common causes of daytime fatigue. An estimated seventy-five percent of Americans have mild, chronic dehydration. That’s a pretty scary statistic for a developed country, where water is readily available through the tap or bottle.

Here are just a few benefits that drinking water can provide:

• Water serves as a lubricant
• Water transports nutrients and oxygen into cells
• Water detoxifies
• Water forms the base for saliva
• Water forms the fluids that surround the joints.
• Water regulates the body temperature, as the cooling and heating is distributed through perspiration.
• Water helps to alleviate constipation by moving food through the intestinal tract and thereby eliminating waste- the best detox agent.
• Water regulates metabolism In addition to the daily maintenance of our bodies, water also plays a key role in the prevention of disease. Drinking eight glasses of water daily can decrease the risk of colon cancer by 45%, bladder cancer by 50% and it can potentially even reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Water is important to the mechanics of the human body and the body cannot work without it, just as a car cannot run without gas and oil. In fact, all the cell and organ functions made up in our entire anatomy and physiology depend on water for their functioning. So instead of drinking soda and sugary juices grab a glass of water and drink up, your body literally depends on it.