Are you drinking enough water to be healthy and hydrated?

Highland Spring is on a mission to encourage healthy hydration. Because when you’re 100% hydrated, you’re much more likely to be on top of your game – mentally, physically and emotionally.

As a fairly newish runner, who’s only been pounding the streets and treadmill since January this year, I’ve been drinking more and more water as I train, and often carry some with me on a run now, if it’s over 5k.  I find I need the hydration, even though other runners can often manage fine up to around 12k without any fluids at all.

The easiest way to stay hydrated for anything, is to drink water.  Research has shown that 66% of us Brits feel we don’t drink enough.

For an experiment, I had the boys drink nothing but water for a full day, to see how they got on.  For middler, it was simple.  He loves water, and always has done.  He happily went round with his bottles of H2O and needed nothing else at all.

For the other two, we had to change the format slightly, with the addition of a little squash, which did a great job along with the sparkling spring water.  It tasted like a fizzy drink, and looked like a fizzy drink, but without much of the sugar and additions we find in the regular fizzy drinks.

I have to say, that apart from running hydration or in hot weather, adding a little squash and ice to fizzy water, is my favourite way to imbibe a drink that’s good for me.

We do tend to buy quite a lot of bottled water normally, so I’m used to incorporating it into daily life at some level, but it was lovely to have our delivery from Highland Spring, and to drink it, quite literally, all the time for a while.  I tend to dislike tap water, and have to be organised, putting it into the fridge to try and reduce the chemical taint.  It’s also nice to have spring water.  I used to love going hiking when I was young, just to be able to drink the water streaming down from the hills, fresh and quite sweet to drink, just like my family would have, a few generations back.

I’ve always been someone who drinks a lot of fluid.  It’s one of the reasons my diabetes was missed early on, as drinking a lot of fluid has never not been normal for me.  If I ever have a headache, a glass of water tends to be the first thing I reach for, as it almost always seems to solve the problem.  I’ve never been able to understand people who manage to get through a day with one or two cups of coffee……  My mum is one of those, and I don’t know how people who drink so little manage to survive.  Just overnight, we can lose a fair bit of water weight while we sleep, just through breathing and surviving.  If you’ve never tried it, weigh yourself before going to sleep and again when you wake up, to see how much lighter you are.  I can lose a couple of pounds overnight, easily….

I often think children who struggle to concentrate at school can be helped along their struggles by keeping well hydrated.  Without enough fluid, concentrating is tough going, even for me…

How to get water into daily life.  Our tips…

• Drink from the regular plastic bottle with sports spout for the kids bags when out and about. These also make great packed lunch additions.
• For me, carrying a bottle while out for a run, and being able to bin it at the recycling station I pass on the way back is great.  I don’t have to carry my hand bottle for so long.  There’s nothing worse than carrying it when it’s empty, yet I still have a few kilometers to go.
• I made Broccoli, Sweetcorn and Asparagus Soup using some of our Highland Spring this week.  I wanted to see if it made a difference in comparison to using tap water, which can be a bit whiffy at times, due to the chemicals.  My soup did taste more creamy that I’d expected, so perhaps it was the lack of chlorine in the water which made it extra tasty.
• Use fizzy water to make your own drinks, including Bucks Fizz, with some orange juice, and a little alcohol if that’s your tipple.  Fizzy water mixed with a little fresh fruit juice is especially awesome, and healthy.
• If you can’t give up regular fizzy sodas, alternate them with healthy drinks and a water substitute in-between.  Add some whizzed fruit to jazz up the taste.  It’s easier to get young children into the habit of drinking water, so make the best use of their age while you can.
• As adults, aim to drink around 6-8 glasses of water a day, or a couple of litres.  The European Food Safety Authority recommends younger children drink smaller servings, around 150ml each, whereas older children need around 250-300ml.
• Drink plenty of fluid the day before exercising.  I find that if I’m well hydrated the day before a long run, I manage to run further.  If I’ve been skimpy on fluid the day before, it doesn’t matter how much I drink on the day, I can’t go so far.  Hydration really does help our performance.
• The glass bottles look fabulous on a table during a meal.  Very sophisticated.

Here’s the official skinny on water from Highland Spring….

• Drinking water can make you happier: brain scans show that when you’re properly hydrated the parts of your brain associated with anger, fear and alertness are de-activated.
• Lots of us visit the doctors for fatigue each year, when actually the problem could be due to dehydration. Keeping hydrated can help give you the energy you need!
• When you’re hydrated, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard. It’s much easier for your body to pump blood through the blood vessels to muscles.
• Staying hydrated before and during exercise helps avoid cramp. Hydration levels are affected by how long and how hard you are exercising, so if you are sweating or in a warm environment you might need to drink more than usual.

Highland Spring Water is natural water, that comes from Scotland’s beautiful Ochil Hills.  If you want to see other people’s tips for using water, check them out on Twitter, at the hashtag #HyGreat