You might be familiar with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation for how much water to drink daily, which is at least two liters.
You might also be familiar with how vital water is to the human body, especially as it works to fight off…well viruses.
Writing about water is exciting, because our circulatory system is so fascinating! Bear with my enthusiasm here…
Knowledge check: Water is responsible for carrying and circulating the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in our blood.
We also can’t talk about water and blood, without talking about the heart! Oh no…(Catch my sarcasm?)
From an exercise perspective, let’s talk about why water is so important!
When we exercise, our muscles are working incredibly hard to keep our bodies moving and afloat. Consequently, they need a lot of oxygen, which helps to create energy, and they accumulate a lot of waste products.
I mentioned two important factors there:
Oxygen (Muscles need this.)
Waste/Carbon Dioxide (Muscle don’t want this.)
This is where your blood comes into play! Water allows your blood to travel smoothly and quickly to working muscles, picking-up what your muscles don’t want (carbon dioxide) and dropping-off what they need (oxygen).
There exists this beautiful network (I’m still excited…) of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. This circuit exists, because water keeps your blood flowing.
Without water, your red blood cells would not make it to your lungs to pick-up oxygen and dump-off carbon dioxide. Without water, your muscles would not receive the oxygen that they need during exercise. Without water, your muscles would be forced to hold onto carbon dioxide.
I don’t need to tell you that life without water would be rough!
I also don’t need to tell you to drink more water, because our bodies are pretty amazing when it comes to letting us know if we’re dehydrated.
Here’s to staying in tune with what our bodies are telling us.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can work out with UA while at home, please follow this link: urbanathlete.wodify.com or send us an email at urbanathletephiladelphia@gmail.com!