Fluid Intake - Drinking Lot of Water Helps in making your skin Healthy

Water is your body's principal chemical component, comprising, on average, 60 percent of your weight. Lack of water can lead to dehydration, a condition that occurs when you don't have enough water in your body to carry out normal functions.

Every day you lose water through your breath, perspiration, urine and bowel movements. For your body to function properly, you must replenish its water supply by consuming beverages and foods that contain water. Consuming enough fluid as part of the daily diet is an essential contributor to health and wellbeing.

Water makes up 70% of the body's weight and contributes to many functions:

• It helps to keep the body at the right temperature
• It helps to dissolve other nutrients the body needs
• Water makes easiest to assisting the lungs in the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Dehydration, even at a mild level, can lead to headaches, a loss of concentration and alertness, nausea and tiredness. Decision-making and reaction times can also be impaired by a lack of fluid intake.

Factors that influence water needs:

The main factors that influences the water needs are as:-

• Exercise: The more you exercise, the more fluid you'll need to keep your body hydrated. An extra 1 or 2 cups of water should suffice for short bouts of exercise, but intense exercise lasting more than an hour requires additional fluid. Drinking 16 ounces of fluid per pound of body weight lost during exercise is recommended.

• Environment: Hot or humid weather can make you sweat and requires additional intake of fluid. Heated indoor air also can cause your skin to lose moisture during wintertime. Further, altitudes greater than 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) may trigger increased urination and more rapid breathing, which use up more of your fluid reserves.

• Gender: Men typically have a greater muscle mass and a lower body fat percentage. Since muscle requires more calories to maintain, men tend to have 10-15 percent faster metabolisms and gain weight less easily than women.

• Age: Metabolic rate is higher in childhood than in adulthood. After 20 years, it drops about 2 per cent, per decade. This is why older people tend to gain weight even though their calorie-intake and exercise routines may not change.

• Mental Activity: The length of time per day spent awake makes a difference as we burn more calories when we are awake than when we are sleeping. The level of mental activity affects the use of calories. Our brain, although it is only 2 percent of the body's weight uses 20 percent or more of total calories burned by our body.

• Medications: The use of medications, such as anti-depressants, can interfere with metabolic processes and lead to weight increase. If you are worried about increasing weight as a result of taking a particular drug, ask your doctor for a list of common side effects.

Benefits of Water:

These includes:-

• Water is crucial to your health. Every system in your body depends on water.

• Dehydration can be avoided by drink lots of water.

• Water keeps your body organs in a well working condition.