HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 19, 2 September 1946, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

DRINK MORE WATER (By the Department of Health) To keep your body machine going nicely, you require a lot more water than you realise. For example, every 24 hours two gallons of digestive juices of different sorts are poured into the stomach or the bowel at appropriate places. For this reason alone you must drink plenty of fluids. Actually two-thirds of your body is water. Your cells find their nourishment in, and return their was to your circulatory blood and lymph systems—those systems are mainly water. Your kidneys keep back useful material and let through wastes. You get rid of moisture also through your lungs in the exhaled air, and through your skin in the perspiration. Through your lungs, your kidneys, and your skin, you get rid of more than two quarts of water each day.

This loss has to be made good. Normally you take in a lot of water with your food. Your daily loaf will be three or four-tenths water, your fruits and vegetables mostly water. Maybe you’ll take in up to one pint of water through eating solid foods. The rest has to come from soups, drinks of any type and water. We are all more or less right in the amount of fluid obtained from our food our soups and sauces, and our beverages. But we are inclined to be short in drinking water. Of the total of four ~or five pints of water lost from our bodies each day, it is said that at least two pints shall be replaced in the form of straight pure water. Of course if you are a foundry worker or toiler where the heat causes excessive sweat, you will need more. Adding a little salt—say half a teaspoon to the quart—improves the drinking water for excessive heat workers.

Two pints of water are required each day to keep your body machine going smoothly and to help it stick out a long life.