Two speakers explain how dehydration clouds focus and mood by slowing blood flow, making it sluggish like mud instead of a fast stream. They recommend 2 liters daily in four 500ml portions spread across the day, and suggest marking a bottle with hourly increments and keeping it within arm's reach to make the habit stick.
Chapters
I love your 5 pillars, and I think whilst I knew all of those, I'd never put them all together collectively. But again, the first one you mentioned, hydration, that's something that I find especially with teenagers. Again, they're, they're not very good at drinking non-caffeine-based drinks.
Yeah.
But similarly, us, or many of us as adults, don't drink nearly enough water as possible. And the way I tend to think about it is, you know, your, your transport system is your blood. So if it's flowing freely, a bit like, you know, a fast-flowing stream, all of those sugars and oxygen and stuff is going to travel well. Whereas if it's sludgy and like mud, that ain't going to do too well for your overall mental health. Is that overly simplistic?
No, not at all. Not at all. I think that's a really good way to put it. You know, your cardiovascular system needs you to be hydrated. And if you're, if you're dehydrated, you will struggle with your energy levels. levels and, and your productivity and your focus, etc., etc. And that's when you naturally end up eating sugar because you want something to lift you back up again. Whereas if you focus on the hydration, your hydration levels and how hydrated you were, um, your energy levels rise naturally. So you don't need to be reaching for sugars in quite the same way. Um, one of the easiest ways to make sure you're getting 2 liters of water into your system is to break it down in the day, break the day down into 4 chunks. and have a 500ml bottle, say, before 10 o'clock, have a 500ml bottle before 1 o'clock, another 500ml before 5 o'clock, and then the last bottle in the evening. And that way you've done 2 litres without even noticing it. I think some people look at the amount of— in 2 litres, the amount of water there is, and think, God, when am I ever going to be able to get through that through the course of the day? So rather than looking at the whole, break it down into the sum of the parts. And just, you know, focus on the sum of the, one of the parts to start with, rather than trying to, to think, I've got to drink that all in one go kind of thing. And the amount of energy you will have if your body is hydrated, you will, you, you won't be able to get your head around it. So again, put you in a much more positive space, a much better space mentally when your body's hydrated. But just giving you more energy, more of an ability to be able to function throughout the course of the day. Perfect.
And that's, um, that's a great tip because I have often thought about having a 2-liter because it's very easy measure, and then, um, putting marks so that, let's say, doing that over the 12 hours, you do 12 increments and each time going down by the hour. But one of the things I find is, is really important is keeping that water close by because quite often, even when I'm sitting here working, I just think, oh, I'll go and get myself a drink in a minute, and an hour will go past.
Yeah. Yeah.
Before I've gone down 14 steps to the kitchen to get it. Yeah. Really, it's not that difficult, but if it's here and you keep sipping, it's, as you say, it is amazing how quickly you can get through that volume.
Yeah. And the other thing I do as well, so my water is my, I always drink sort of warm water, so I have it in a cup. And that when, when someone's drinking coffee, for example, to give them a lift because their energy levels are low, what I encourage clients to think about doing is how can you swap that coffee out for just warm water? Or, you know, just so that you're Still drinking and hydrating rather than drinking coffee to give you energy, which is actually a diuretic, which will make you even more dehydrated. Just swap out. Look at your day and go, where am I drinking coffee? How can I swap out 1 or 2 cups of my coffee for warm water? And I know that's another way then of getting some good hydration into my system.
