One of the weirdest things that i remember when someone tells me to drink more water is this video. It shows the magician David Blaine calmly and purposely drinking a fair amount of water. And, then barf a live frog (back and forth). It’s fairly disgusting.
Each body is different but it still responds to the basics in almost fantastically universal fashion. On one extreme, we have people like Mr. Blaine who can carry an aquarium with live creatures to boot and on the other end are folks like me — who weren’t aware of the wide variety of problems that lack of proper hydration was causing.
Our blood system is amazing. Its composition though known exactly cannot be manufactured to carry out the same functions. You can take a quick diversion of the staggering set of changes that happen through our seemingly static bodies in the article below.
One thing that i had learnt through my own experience is the strain that a consistent state of lower hydration levels can put on my heart. The fitness level as measured by VO2 max levels shows that i am in a pretty bad shape. This means that even for a relatively short burst of speed my heart rate goes up pretty quickly.
Even as i am writing this article, i feel a connected set of frequent conditions could all be possibly related — easily tired, lethargy in the afternoon, irritability, congestion, weaker immune response. A small attack by cold virus (the common rhino virus) spiked my heart rate strongly. The common thread amongst all of these seems to be — Water.
When your body is not hydrated enough, the blood volume can drop and so to support the same amount of oxygen, the heart has to pump faster. Also, lower water level can cause the pH levels of the blood to change with increase in the sodium concentration — this affects the blood viscosity and thereby result in your heart working harder.
In one of my readings (i forget the exact source though), i came across the story of a salesperson who gamified his work. Each day, he would start with about a hundred paper clips in a styrofoam cup. For every call he made, he transferred one of the clips from cup to another. This was his ritual. His goal was very simple — transfer the clips from one cup to another by the end of the day. Simple but powerful ritual with a solid physical anchor.
Now, think about this — we do have a lot of apps that serve us well for reminding us to drink enough water everyday. A key thing that they might be currently missing is that physical connection. The smart watches are here to stay. With Amazon entering the fray, it is going to be a dominant customer space over the next decade.
Imagine your smart watch offering you a physical way of tracking your water intake. Like a shortcut idea that we came up with below? How cool would that be — because, the need is real and the problem of water intake tracking and awareness is just there — below the surface driving an inferior health condition in unsuspecting people like me. And, most likely, you.
