FOODISMEDICINE

The Key To Summer Hydration

by Ari Redcross MS, RDN Augusta District Dietetic Association

As summer progresses, it’s important to think about how to stay hydrated. The average adult is made up of one-half to two-thirds water. However, the National Institute of Medicine reports that only 40% of the US population meets their fluid needs. We absorb moisture from the food and beverages we consume, and excrete water through our urine, sweat, and breathing. Weather conditions can affect how much water we may need to use to cool us down.

People typically use thirst to guide how much they drink, but this signal is not always accurate to begin with, and can decline as we age. Decreased fluid intake can lead to dizziness, fatigue or confusion.

Lighter urine color can be one way to assess good fluid status, although certain medications and supplements can also affect urine color.

The general recommendations for how much wa ter one needs can vary daily depend ing on activity level, weather, or even body size. About nine to thirteen cups or 72 to 102 ounces is appropriate for most individuals. Research about caffeinated beverages and how effectively they may or may not offer hydration is ongoing. However, a good rule of thumb is to aim for getting most of one’s fluid intake from unsweetened beverages without alcohol. Fluid is absorbed from both liquids and foods. Fruits and vegetables in forms such as soups, popsicles, smoothies, melons, and ice cubes can be ways to increase intake.

Drinking enough fluids and eating various foods should keep your body hydrated and provide essential electrolytes. Sports drinks are and perspiration. They can be high in sugar and sodium. While drinking too much water is rare, the resulting fluid imbalance can cause water toxicity.

In summary, water is an essential nutrient for our health. You can get your water intake from both foods and drinking beverages. Aim to drink nine to thirteen cups of fluids a day. Consider spicing up your plain water by infusing it with fresh fruits and herbs like mint and basil with berries or slices of lemon and orange.

Resources:

“Electrolytes: Uses, Imbalance, and Supplementation.” Medical News Today, www.medicalnewstoday.com/ articles/153188. Accessed 29 July 2023.

III, James L. Lewis. “About Body Water - Hormonal and Metabolic Disorders.” Merck Manuals Consumer Version, 27 July 2023, www. merckmanuals. com/home/hormonal-and-metabolic-disorders/ water-balance/ about-body-water. “Water.” The Nutrition Source, 6 July 2021, www. hsph.harvard.edu/ nutritionsource/ water/#:~:text=General%20recommendations,1%20cup%20 equaling%208%20 ounces.

This space has been devoted to various aspects of speeding a few times since the inaugural installment of Crash Course (which was 3 years ago today).

Let’s launch the 4th year of the Course with a discussion of, frankly, how foolish speeding is. Of course, one aspect of this particular sin is the penalty that may be exacted by Caesar. Speeding tickets are not cheap all by themselves, but they can also add major bucks to car insurance premiums over a considerable time period.

Another aspect of speeding that we don’t plan to focus on is the potentially massive expense of collisions. In a mere second or two, tens of thousands of dollars, possibly even hundreds of thousands, can be lost in collisions that would never happen except for excessive speed.

Crashes can also cost far more than the direct cost of the collision. Sometimes citations are issued. Sometimes insurance rates go up. Sometimes lawsuits are filed, and millions of dollars can go up in smoke, again from a situation solely caused by driving too fast.

But instead of those specific aspects of speeding, we’d like to explain our earlier comment about the folly of speeding.

First, let’s be realistic. Just about everybody speeds. Nationwide, an estimated 112,000 speeding tickets are written every day. Speeding can be unintentional, or it can be deliberate: most of us go with the flow of surrounding vehicles, so if they’re speeding, so are we. Maybe we don’t even know what the posted speed limit is, just what the flow of traffic around us happens to be. Other times speeding is deliberate because we’re in a hurry. We’re that one person driving faster than everybody else, weaving between lanes as necessary to keep our pace.

That is the particular aspect of speeding we’d like to discuss. Human nature being what it is, if we’re late for an important appointment, a job interview, or the first day on a new job, it’s practically impossible not to press it, pushing our speed as far as we think we can get away with, squeaking through lights that are no longer yellow, etc.

But here are a few numbers that expose the ridiculousness of speeding to save time.

Let’s say you have a 5-mile commute every day over roads that have a 45 mph speed limit. Assuming no red lights and smooth sailing all the way, that trip should take you 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Drive the whole way at 50 mph and you will save a grand total of 40 seconds. As we said earlier, maybe the flow of traffic will be 50 anyway since speeding is so common. So let’s assume that you push it farther, driving 55 mph the whole way. That will get you to your destination 33 seconds sooner than the person driving 50, and a whole 73 seconds quicker than someone who drove the speed limit the whole way. That’s not much.

The numbers are just as dramatic at higher speeds and longer distances. A 10-mile trip over a stretch of interstate posted at 65 mph will take 9 minutes and 14 seconds. Cover that same 10 miles at 75 miles an hour and you will get there in 8 minutes, a savings of 74 seconds.

It might be even more enlightening to enlarge the numbers. Drive down a straight road — no traffic lights, no construction, no school zones — that’s 1,000 miles long, and do so at the posted speed of 65 mph. It will take 15 hours and 23 minutes to cover that distance. Make the same journey at 75 mph at it will take you 13 hours and 20 minutes. Speeding 10 miles over the limit for a thousand miles only gives you a 2-hour payback? That just isn’t worth it, especially considering that the 2-hour gain might be offset by a speeding ticket or a crash. And when it comes to local driving, speeding offers dividends measured in seconds.

Speeding can be expensive, but for all its cost it doesn’t give a lot of value back in return. +

AS A PATIENT WITH SOMETHING SERIOUS, WOULD YOU BE UPSET TO BE SEEN BY A NURSE PRACTITIONER INSTEAD OF A PHYSICIAN? My opinion: Nurse practitioner 100%. Here’s why:

In order to be a nurse practitioner, most programs require you to first be an RN for X amount of years. That means you are at bedside, full-time caring for patients with all sorts of ailments and properly managing their treatment. Patients think that doctors make all the decisions and nurses just follow them. But have you ever thought about how that doctor knows the right course of treatment if they only see you 5 minutes once a day? It’s because the nurses update your chart and assess you at least twice a day. It’s because nurses ask you all the personal questions and recommend treatment based on your symptoms and history. The doctors take the info provided from nurses and lab results to formulate the treatment plan. Then those nurses get tired of the abuse from doctors and decide to get their masters and become a provider themselves. They typically know more about your condition and treatment in real life not a textbook than a physician would.

Nurses never get the credit they deserve because no one really sits down to tell average people what a nurse actually does. But trust me, they are behind most the good medical decisions your doctor makes.