16

Water, Water, Everywhere

The three macronutrients — carbohydrate, protein and fat — are
often the key focus in discussions on nutrition. In this book, we’ve
expanded on those to discuss vegetables and fiber as other very
important dietary components. But there’s another nutritional com-
ponent that’s at least as important as these others. This nutrient is
water. Pure, clean water can be the most essential of all nutrients. You
can live for weeks without consuming food, but go more than a few
days without water and your very survival will be at risk. Proper
intake of water is so vital to optimal function that a deficiency of less
than 1 percent can begin producing signs and symptoms of dysfunc-
tion. Slightly more dehydration can produce serious health problems.
The key to maintaining proper hydration is to drink plenty of water
throughout the day.
Water is the key ingredient in maintaining chemical balance in
your body. This includes transporting nutrients to the cells, maintain-
ing the function of blood, and eliminating wastes from the lungs, skin
and colon. Water also plays a major role in hormone regulation and
balancing acid-base levels. More importantly, water is like your car’s
radiator, cooling the reactions that create heat in your body. For exam-
ple, muscle contraction, digestion and the processing of nutrients pro-
duce large amounts of heat, which must be cooled by water. If this
regulation did not occur effectively, your temperature would rise to a
level that would destroy your enzymes and other protein-based sub-
stances, and you would die. The water literally absorbs the excess
heat and carries it to the skin, where it is dissipated through evapora-
tion and other means.
About 60 percent of the body is made up of water, with different
areas accounting for various percentages. For example, about 80 per-
cent of your blood, heart, lungs and kidneys is water; your muscles,