Water for Detox and Better Digestion

I am almost sure most of you know already that doctors and dietitians recommend 8-10 glasses of water to be consumed daily for a “healthier body”. Again, I am almost sure that they don’t take the needed time to tell their patients WHY they should drink that much water. And that is a really important thing to know, because, for one, I would never do something “just because”.

So let’s see what benefic effects water has on our digestive system and why we should drink about 10 glasses per day (of course, it is good for other things, but since this blog is about IBS and digestive system-related problems, that’s our topic!)

On average, in the human body, water makes up around 60% of body weight – this argument only is enough for you to understand that water is pretty important! The more water we lose via dehydratation, the weaker our body (thus digestive system) will be. However, you should know that our body gets water from all the aliments that have water, so not all the water in our body is made up by that we drink.

Also, water is very, very important in digestion of the food, and that is another big factor when it comes to problems like irritable bowel syndrome or constipation (chronic or not). It could also be very helpful in high acidity gastritis problems, as well as general diets:

1. It is said that drinking water before meals helps us feel full. This is not 100% true, since water is the only thing we can consume which has exactly 0 calories! Also, it has no nutrients so it is passed on immediately. However, drinking a glass of water before eating will help us identify if we are hungry or thirsty, therefore helps us to avoid overeating.

2. Generally, drinking water during meals is very bad for our digestive system (especially for those with IBS) since it slows down digestion and thus it facilitates deposits of waste in the colon’s walls – and they keep adding up, becoming more and more dangerous.

3. You can also combine water and eating in a more pleasant way – soups and teas also help up with the hydratation of the body and they speed up the digestive process (water is a very important factor when it comes to waste movement in our intestines and the lack of it lacks to constipation).

So, all in all, if used correctly and in a big enough quantity, water will help our digestive system and aid in our battle for a happy, healthy abdomen. There are many people who say something like: “if your body needs water to be cleaned on the outside, it needs water to be clean on the inside, too”. And that is correct – there are some alternative medicine concepts that go as far as suggesting a one day diet per week, meaning that on any given day (Friday, usually, for the best results) one should only drink water for the entire day, to clean his or her body. However, radical stuff like that should usually be avoided since they could do much harm to an already sick body. But one thing is clear: drinking enough water will help you fight against toxic waste in your body and help improve your overall digestive properties.