The importance of water and hydration. How much and how we should consume fluids
It takes about five minutes for all the blood to pass through the kidneys. It arrives laden with residues and exits clean after passing through thousands of microscopic filters. In this vital process, the kidneys only ask for water, but be careful, drink it wisely.
The hypothalamus is the command center in the brain. When you haven't had water for a while, receptors in the blood vessels signal that blood pressure is dropping and the salt level is rising.
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As a result, the hypothalamus increases the secretion of the anti-diuretic hormone. Blood vessels contract, and blood pressure returns to normal. The anti-diuretic hormone tells the kidneys to absorb water and retain salts.
We may not realize it, but we feel these chain reactions. We feel thirsty. We don't drink water because we can't, because we're busy, because we forget. Urine becomes concentrated and dark in color, becoming objective evidence of dehydration.
We are at the Clinical Nephrology Hospital Dr. Carol Davila, where the specialist tells us how the kidneys want us to drink water.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cristina Căpușă, primary nephrologist: "Returning to the comparison between a gymnast and a bodybuilder, the body surface area through which water is lost via perspiration differs, so the bodybuilder will need more water than the gymnast. This is why you can't say there's a fixed amount of water you should drink in a day. If you don't have a brain disorder, the body is smart and its thirst sensation works, so when you're thirsty, you drink water. Water is better than any other tasteful liquid and even homemade juices. True hydration is attained through water consumption tailored to your thirst, considering the environmental conditions you are in".
PhD, Prof. Ștefan Voicu, Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology: "It's not water per se that hydrates us, but water that has a salt content. What kind of salts? The essential ones: potassium, sodium, calcium. Do we have such salts in water? Yes! It would be indeed a problem to drink water that doesn't have them. Which water doesn't have salts? Distilled water, pure water or ultra-pure water. This is very harmful to health because once introduced into the body, it does nothing but dilute the salt level, and this very diluted level can even lead to death".
The salts called sodium, potassium, calcium make the heart beat, that is, have electrical activity, and cause the brain to have electrical activity, in other words, to live.
