The best way to start the day.

The best way to start the day – drink two big glasses of warm water.  Here’s why.

1. Flushes through the kidneys.
2. Rehydrates the body after a night’s sleep.
3. Warm water beats cold: its less of a shock to the stomach.    Cascading half a litre of cold water into a still gently snoozing stomach is like jumping straight from bed into a cold shower.  Not nice for the normal.
4. Each day we should drink our bodyweight in kilos x 0.44 = litres of water per day.  This is for the active on a normal temperature day. Its x 0.33 for the couch potato.  If we’re going to get sweatier than normal, then we need more.  For many, this is a surprising amount of water, so drinking 2 big glasses gets us off to a flying start in achieving our water goal.  For instance, an active person weighing in at 70 kg/11 stone/154lbs should drink just over three litres/5.4 pints of water.  More of a wisp, weighing a feathery 60kg/9stone 6lbs/132.25kg should drink 2.64 litres/4.64 pints a day. ((People argue about whether we need to drink water at all, saying we get all the water we need from the fruit and veg that we eat – or not, in many cases.  I think Jonny Bowden summed it best: would we rather drink water from a clear spring or from a murky pool?  Drinking pure water flushes through the whole body.  Our pee is pale in colour.  Getting dehydrated leads to feeling hungry by mistake, leads to headaches, grumpiness and so on.  Also anyone with kidney problems who is not drinking plenty of water is daft.  Yes, drinking too much water is not good for us either, leading to a dangerous loss of electrolytes.  From experience all I can say is if dehydrated, water tastes absolutely horrible.  So peg on nose, be an adult and just get the water down; once hydration levels are better, water tastes nice.  Now if we drink too much water, water starts tasting wonderful and we want more and more – oops.  So keep an eye on how much water is being drunk every single day and all will be fine.))
5. Starting the day with a coffee or tea shocks the adrenal glands into action.  All caffeinated drinks are stimulants, and drunk on an empty stomach are extremely powerful.  So for our whole system this is like being hurled from our slumbers by someone bawling at us, ‘WAKE UP!’.   Coffee is the favourite ban of many healthy living advisors – and part of their reasoning lies in its effects on the adrenals.  In fact, coffee is a good source of anti-oxidants and, if treated with respect, its overall good effects out guns its negatives.  So drink coffee after breakfast and stop drinking it by the early afternoon.  Drink organic proper coffee – decaf is a minefield of toxins due to the decaffeination process.  Click on the link to the blog about Why Coffee is Good for you.
6. Finally there is the vexed question of what type of water – corporation pop or water hand pumped by a Druid at the equinox?
7. The first answer is any water will do – just get going with it.  The problem with corporation pop – or tap water – is that unfiltered tap water is quite nasty stuff, containing chlorine (thank goodness, or we’ll all be dying of dysentry), remnants of the contraceptive pill, fluoride and various other drugs peed out by all and sundry.
8. The cheapest way to drink tap water more safely  is to buy a Brita filter and change the filter when it says so.
9. Then there is bottled water, fine provided water in plastic bottles is treated with respect: don’t store it, don’t reuse the bottle and don’t let sunlight get at it.  ((Water is plastic bottles can be troublesome if the plastic leaches into the water.  Plastic has an oestrogenic effect, so will give a man moobs and a limp willy, and a woman a fat arse and cellulite.))
10. The ultimate is to get an Akai water filter fitted.  This will do an excellent job of sorting out all the baddies in our water.
11. Fizzy?  Certainly an exciting start to the day heating a couple of glasses of fizzy water in a kettle……Otherwise, if fizzy floats your boat, then get on with it.