How Water Affects Your Body

Dr. Travis Stork: Now your body is made up of 60 sometimes up to 75% water. And
anyone never know how much water that actually adds up to. For
the average, a 160 pound female, that’s how much water you are.
And of course it depends on how much muscle mass you have, et
cetera. That’s quite a bit.

And water is the fuel that your body absolutely needs. We’re
talking about water, not soda, not coffee. When you drink water, it
goes down your digestive tract. It gets absorb in your small
intestines. And then that’s 50% water. What you’re seeing those
green pallets, those are nutrients to water helps to pull that to your
bloodstream, to your kidneys now. What your kidneys do is it
takes unfiltered blood and it filters out waste and then returns
filtered blood to your body. And believe it or not, this is what’s
amazing. In this kidney, there are these little micro filters.

And we have over a million of these tiny filters called nephrons.
And they work overtime if you’re dehydrated. If sometimes
kidneys stones are caused by build up of calcium. And believe it or
not, one of the things that we recommend to people with kidney
stones is to drink plenty of water, because it helps flush things
through — it prevents those crystals from forming. And it’s
important when it comes to --

Dr. Lisa Masterson: Muscles and your joints. Water is really important for building
muscles and maintaining the protectiveness of your joints. Water is
the main component in muscle and did you know that water makes
up 75% of your muscles. 75%, that’s huge. So when you’re
working out, that’s one reason why you have to hydrate yourself
really well when you’re working out because even if you drop a
little bit, it can decrease your productivity for the muscles by 15%.

Dr. Travis Stork: This is what’s called skeletal muscle, like say the bicep. This is
called smooth muscle in your digestive tract; the muscles that help
propel food through your system.

Dr. Lisa Masterson: So you see a difference there.

Dr. Jim Sears: I know we stay -- try to stay so hydrated because the moment you
get dehydrated just a little bit, your strength just is zapped.

Dr. Lisa Masterson: It goes down.

Dr. Travis Stork: It really is.

Dr. Lisa Masterson: But the other thing that’s made up of water is bones. The bones
have 20% of water, a little bit more than that. But the other thing is
the water also keeps the joints lubricated so that they can move and
it cushions and protects them as well. But this wouldn’t be
complete if I forgot about my pregnant women. Pregnant women
especially have to drink water hydrate themselves because their
blood volume doubles.

This also protects them against constipation, against preterm labor,
so they need about eight to 10, eight ounces of glasses a day. And
then the caveat is breastfeeding women don’t need even more than
that. More water won’t necessarily make more breast milk but they
need to drink when they’re thirsty. Drink at meals, drink when
they’re breastfeeding because that does help breast flow and
breastfeeding. So it’s really going to --

Dr. Jim Sears: That’s a good point because I’ve heard a lot of people talking on
message boards like maybe getting too much water when they’re
breastfeeding.

Dr. Lisa Masterson: Guys, yeah, you don’t want to do that. It’s not that you have to
drink tons, tons while you’re breastfeeding that will make more
breast, no.

Dr. Travis Stork: Jim, you got a quasi muscle on your hand that I don’t know much
about this muscle.

Dr. Jim Sears: This actually we’ve removed the brain from a certain Beverly Hills
plastic surgeon and we have it here today to show to you --

Dr. Drew Ordon: -- you’re the man with two brains.

Dr. Jim Sears: Yeah, I’m the man with two brains. This is your brain and if you
feel -- this is actually very heavy and your brain actually contains
about a liter of water. And that’s about how much water is shown
right here. I’m going to soak this up with a sponge. If your brain is
dehydrated, stress hormones are released, and that actually, can
actually damage your brain over time.

That’s why you really want to keep your brain hydrated. It’s really
important. If you start to get dehydrated, your brain actually won’t
work as well and that’s one of the reasons I advocate putting a
bottle of water in kids to school lunch’s that way, they’re at peak
mental performance in class. Right exactly. It’s like the brain move
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