How To Hydrate (It's more than just drinking water!)

Have you ever felt super dehydrated, downed a ton of water, then felt like it went right through you? Yea, me too!

Dehydration can cause all kinds of acute and chronic symptoms. Some, like headaches and constipation, are familiar friends. But it’s less known that chronic dehydration of cells and tissues in your body can cause the feeling you get when you feel “old”. Like when you’re stiff and creaky getting out of bed in the morning, not able to remember things like you used to, and that general sense of feeling toxic or inflamed.

It would seem then, that the best way to feel younger and more energetic is to drink more water. Boy I wish it were that simple. But as I’ve (and perhaps you’ve?) experienced, gulping extra water mostly just leads to more trips to the bathroom.

The keys, and yes there are a few, to acing hydration include high quality, electrolyte filled liquids, hydrating foods, and fats.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

A very good place to start. Hydration is called hydration because we’re adding hydrogen to our body. Water is an obviously superior vehicle for that, with all the hydrogen atoms it has (H2O, remember?). However, those H2O molecules can also hold on to minerals, better known as electrolytes. Back when we were hunters and gatherers, all our drinking water came from springs and other natural sources of clean water which already contained lots of minerals. But now when our water is processed to take out toxins, many of the healthy minerals are also processed out.

Why do we need those electrolytes in our water anyways? The short of it is that minerals are ions that magnetize water into our cells. So, instead of drinking water that goes straight through your digestive tract, into your kidneys, and out of your body, electrolytes help your cells absorb the water.

Please don’t go out and start chugging gallons of Gatorade though!! All the sugar just counteracts everything you’re trying to do here. Instead, here are a few options, from an inexpensive DIY electrolyte hack to some fancy water additives.

My favorite addition to water is called a saturated salt solution (SSS). Good quality sea salt contains lots of minerals that we need to get water into our cells. You can make a SSS at home and add it to all your drinking water throughout the day. Just add 1/4 cup of pink sea salt to a pint jar, then fill the rest of the jar with filtered or spring water. Shake the jar to distribute the salt and let that sit for at least a few hours. The goal here is for the water to become completely saturated with salt. Now that you’ve got your SSS made, just add a little to all of the water you drink throughout the day. Start with ¼ tsp per cup of water, and gradually work your way up to 4-6 tsp’s a day. Once the water gets low in your jar, just top it off, also adding salt as needed.

If you prefer, there are a number of companies that make mineral drops to add to your water. These can be great as well, just read the ingredient list to be sure they’re not adding sweeteners or other flavor enhancers. Your minerals should taste a little salty or mineral-y.

 So Sweet and Juicy

Now that your water game is on point, it’s time to get juicy! Fresh, cold pressed vegetable juice (you can add a little fruit in there too for flavor) not only brings an even higher level of electrolytes, but it’s also chock full of easily assimilated vitamins, enzymes, and antioxidants. Drinking a glass of fresh pressed juice is like a blood infusion for your digestive tract.

On top of that, regular juicing is a powerful cellular detoxification. In the same way that electrolytes magnetize water into your cells, cold pressed vegetable juices, and all the nutrition in them, is also shuttled into cells. This pushes waste products out of the cells where they can leave your body.

Now on to the nitty-gritty details. How and what you juice does have an impact on its ability to hydrate and detoxify. Ideally, drink as much of the best quality juice as you can afford. In a perfect world, you’d have a juicer at home and fresh press your juice every morning from organic vegetables (including plenty of leafy greens) with a little fruit thrown in for flavor, and drink it right away. Do it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, 30 minutes before food so that your body can absorb it immediately, without it having to go through your whole digestive tract.

But the reality of the situation is you may not always be in a place in your life where you have the energy or time to pull this off. Honestly, it’s all about priorities. If you’re quite sick, or healing is your top priority, I suggest going all in with juicing. But if you’re mostly healthy, you might decide that 3 times a week is what you can manage right now, and that’s pretty great too. If purchasing a juicer is out of your budget, it’s easy to find a cold pressed juice bar in almost every town these days. The final option in a pinch would be the cold pressed, unpasteurized juice at the grocery store.

Feed Me All Night Long

And let’s not forget about hydrating with food! Every food has varying levels of water, so what we eat influences our body’s overall level of hydration. It’s obvious that a cucumber or melon has a higher water content than a potato or green bean, but there’s so much more to it than that.

Let’s take whole grains as an example. When you eat them in their whole form (like, say, brown rice or quinoa) you take that grain and cook it in water, essentially hydrating it. But if you instead took that grain that has already been dried, grind it into flour, make it into a dough, bake it into bread, then make toast; you’ve now double-downed on dehydration. The baking process evaporates a lot of the moisture in the dough, and then toasting the bread basically takes the rest of it out. So you can see how eating a whole grain in its unprocessed form is so much more hydrating than whole grain toast.

Because water can cause food to mold and rot quicker, almost all processed foods are devoid of moisture so they can keep for longer. This includes crackers, cereal, granola bars, jerky, chips, baked goods, etc. But by considering the cooking process, you can add or subtract hydration into your diet.

The most hydrating dishes are soups, stews, congees, and curries. Maybe not always the sexiest, most exciting meals, but by simmering your favorite proteins, vegetables, and spices in a pot of liquid you can make a quick, easy, and delicious one-pot meal that actually adds to your hydration levels.

Most raw fruits and veggies have a decently high water content, so salads are also quite hydrating. However, raw foods can be harder to break down for people with digestive issues, so if you struggle at all in that department, I suggest just noticing what happens after you eat raw veggies, and moderating your consumption, at least until your gut is happy.

Fat Bottomed Girls

It’s been so great to see fat – the once maligned macronutrient – getting its well-deserved day in the sun.  Far from making you fat, healthy fats and oils are the final key for staying hydrated and well moisturized!

Side note, dehydration is a lack of water-based liquid, and dryness comes from a lack of oils and fats. So if your skin, hair, nails, or any other parts of you are dry, they are actually lacking moisture, or fat. Just another reason to get plenty of healthy fats into your diet.

Ready to get all science-y again? In order to get truly, deeply hydrated, it’s important for water to get into your cells. It’s also imperative that each cell wall is strong, can retain water, and is flexible enough to allow toxins and waste products to exit. In order to do that, we need to support our cell membranes.

The outside of each cell, or the cell membrane, is made up of what is called a “phospho-lipid bilayer”. The lipid in this name refers to, you guessed it, fat! Imagine a super exclusive club, with a whole row of bouncers out front. Each bouncer is a fat molecule. And these fat bouncers have the job of deciding who gets into the club (water, nutrients, people who want to have fun and spend money) and who to keep out (toxins, angry jerks). They also have to pay attention to what’s going on inside the club and throw out anyone who has overstayed their welcome (waste products from metabolism, someone who’s about to throw a punch).

Healthy fats include olive oil and olives, avocado oil and avocados, coconut oil, milk, and meat, and nuts and seeds. Animal fats are fantastic too, as long as they come from animals who eat their natural diet and spend time in the sun (or clean water in the case of seafood). This is important because the ratio of fats an animal has in its body is directly related to what it eats. When animals eat their natural diet they produce more monounsaturated fats and omega 3’s, as opposed to being fed a diet of cheap grain that makes them sick.

I recommend staying away from industrial seed oils that easily go rancid. This includes “vegetable” oils like corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, and the rest of the “hateful 8”. These guys can be sneaky and make their way into foods without you even realizing it. You’ll find at least one in almost all processed food products – another reason to avoid them as much as possible – but also many restaurants cook with them as well. I’m not suggesting that you never go out to eat, just know that if you’ve been overdoing it on the takeout, one more thing that is going to be affected is your hydration.

And just to quickly recap, if you’re on a mission to get healthy and hydrated, here are the 4 things you need:

1. Lots of good quality, electrolyte rich water

2. Some fresh pressed vegetable juice

3. Hydrating Foods like soups, stews, congees and curries

4. Plenty of healthy fats