Water and Healthy Eating
Our bodies need the water to effectively digest food and perform all the necessary functions we ask of it each day. You don’t stop to realize what we ask of this marvelous machine, we just take it for granted that it’s going to function properly. Let’s take a look at the relationship of healthy eating and our body’s daily intake of water. There is a direct correlation between eating healthy and consuming enough water to absorb the vitamins and minerals we need from the healthy food we’ve eaten.
Do you know that your body is 98% water? Do you find this fact hard to believe? Most all of our body fluids are water, and many of our organs are mostly water. Do you suppose water is important to our daily functions? I would hazard a guess of YES.
During the course of consuming our food, we drink water with our meals. We don’t even stop to think about the role this water plays in our digestive process. We drink it because we become thirsty when we eat.
What happens to the food and water as they enter our digestive system? They are both necessary components of the digestive process. Stomach acids need the water in order to properly breakdown the food as it travels through our stomach, and nutrients are absorbed by the blood. The food continues down the path of the intestines, still being broken down and absorbed through the lining of the intestines, still requiring the presence of water. All of the digestive process must have water in order to happen as designed.
At times, there are imbalances in our intestines that create an environment that won’t allow for proper processing of food particles, or doesn’t allow us to absorb any of the nutrients we need at all as they pass through our intestines. Stepping up our consumption of water can often correct this without the need for medication. We simply need to flush our system, as you might flush a slow drain.
Proper flushing of the body, filtering of the blood, and transmission of waste from our bodies can only occur when there are enough fluids present. The only way for enough fluids to be present is in our consumption of water. Only through the intake of necessary amounts of water do our kidney’s function as designed.
Many of the body’s organs depend upon fresh blood supplies in order to function properly. The kidneys and intestines require vast amounts of water in order to accomplish the difficult task of flushing the waste from our body. Now, if you don’t realize the importance of this task, you need to stop and think about waste. Wastes are produced from the daily processes your body goes through, toxic by-products that we don’t need to live, and don’t need to retain in our bodies. As a general rule, whatever we might need for our body should be absorbed as the food has passed through the intestines, whatever is left, is not needed.
Proper digestion, from beginning to end, cannot take place without water, lots and lots of water.
