Water's Counterintruitive Properties

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• For some illnesses/conditions, it can seem like water is the last thing we need more of, yet often popular advice is to drink more (water) anyway

  • Examples of this include bloating, diarrhea, and a runny nose

  • Today’s main feature looks into why this is, and also offers resources for kidney health

• As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily. Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

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❝Why are we told to drink more water for everything, even if sometimes it seems like the last thing we need? Bloated? Drink water. Diarrhea? Drink water. Nose running like a tap? Drink water❞

While water will not fix every ill, it can fix a lot, or at least stop it from being worse!

Our bodies are famously over 60% water (exact figure will depend on how well-hydrated you are, obviously, as well as your body composition in terms of muscle and fat). Our cells (which are mostly full of mostly water) need replacing all the time, and almost everything that needs transporting almost anywhere is taken there by blood (which is also mostly water). And if we need something moving out of the body? Water is usually going to be a large part of how it gets ejected.

In the cases of the examples you gave…

• Bloating: bloating is often a matter of water retention, which often happens as a result of having too much salt, and/or sometimes too much fat. So the body’s homeostatic system (the system that tries to maintain all kinds of equilibrium, keeping salt balance, temperature, pH, and many other things in their respective “Goldilocks zones”) tries to add more water to where it’s needed to balance out the salt etc.

  • Consequently, drinking more water means the body will note “ok, balance restored, no need to keep retaining water there, excess salts being safely removed using all this lovely water”.

• Diarrhea: this is usually a case of a bacterial infection, though there can be other causes. Whether for that reason or another, the body has decided that it needs to give your gut an absolute wash-out, and it can only do that from the inside—so it uses as much of the body’s water as it needs to do that.

  • Consequently, drinking more water means that you are replenishing the water that the body has already 100% committed to using. If you don’t drink water, you’ll still have diarrhea, you’ll just start to get dangerously dehydrated.

• Runny nose: this is usually a case of either fighting a genuine infection, or else fighting something mistaken for a pathogen (e.g. pollen, or some other allergen). The mucus is an important part of the body’s defense: it traps the microbes (be they bacteria, virus, whatever) and water-slides them out of the body.

  • Consequently, drinking more water means the body can keep the water-slide going. Otherwise, you’ll just get gradually more dehydrated (because as with diarrhea, your body will prioritize this function over maintaining water reserves—water reserves are there to be used if necessary, is the body’s philosophy) and if the well runs dry, you’ll just be dehydrated and have a higher pathogen-count still in your body.

Some previous 10almonds articles that might interest you:

• Hydration Mythbusting

• When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)

• Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better – by Dr. Wendy Suzuki

We talked about Dr. Wendy Suzuki's research in the category of exercise and brain-benefits in our main feature the other day. But she has more to say than we can fit into an article!

This book chronicles her discoveries, through her work in memory and neuroplasticity, to her discoveries about exercise, and her dive into broader neurology-based mental health. So what does neurology-based mental health look like?

The answer is: mitigating brain-busters such as stress and anxiety, revitalizing a fatigued brain, boosting creativity, and other such benefits.

Does she argue that exercise is a cure-all? No, not quite. Sometimes there are other things she's recommending (such as in her chapter on challenging the neurobiology of the stress response, or her chapter on meditation and the brain).

The writing style is mostly casual, interspersed with occasional mini-lectures (complete with diagrams and other illustrations), and is very readable and informative throughout.

Bottom line: if you'd like the more in-depth details of Dr. Suzuki's work, this book is a very accessible way to get 320 pages of that!

Click here to check out Healthy Brain, Happy Life, and give yours the best!

Wishing you a day full of vitality today and every day,

The 10almonds Team