If you lose focus, you may need to drink water before you feel thirsty

Mild dehydration causes brain activity to decline, but you may not be thirsty yet.

If you feel distracted or have trouble thinking, you may be suffering from mild dehydration. A recent comprehensive evaluation study found a link between dehydration and poor performance in tasks that require concentration or complex brain processing.

Although it is well known that ensuring the body has enough water (also known as hydration) in many respects, this meta-analysis of new research is considered to be the most reliable standard of science. It will confirm and take a closer look at the effects of dehydration on brain performance.

According to research results in the Journal of Medicine & Sports Science, mild dehydration, equivalent to 2% of body weight can silently cause impairment of mental activity. Therefore, you should not miss the opportunity to compensate yourself early.

If you feel distracted, you may need to drink water before thirst comes.

"We find that when people are mildly dehydrated, they really do not do well on tasks that require complex handling or concentration-intensive tasks , " Mindy Millard-Stafford, lead scientist Early research from the Georgia Institute of Technology said.

Millard-Stafford and his colleague Matthew Wittbrodt reviewed 33 previous studies that linked brain performance to dehydration.

Studies listed 413 cases of mild dehydration ranging from 1-6% of body weight. For an average person weighing 60kg, that is about 0.6 to 3.6 kg.

What they discovered is that at 2%, the amount of water loss triggers a marked decrease in mental performance. According to experts, it can take up to an hour since your body begins to dehydrate until the time of reduced brain performance.

During that time, you may not feel thirsty, so the decline may happen silently, while you miss an opportunity to drink water to hydrate your body to increase your productivity.

The analysis in this study backs up results from previous studies, indicating that dehydration weakens some brain functions over other functions.

Such as concentration, operating functions, campaign coordination will be affected first. Lower-level tasks such as reflexes are not severely affected, according to meta-analysis.

Make sure your body has enough water, you will be most physically and mentally active.

As we know, 60% of the human body is water. Water is an essential component, carrying out complex functions such as assisting transporting nutrients throughout the body, to simply lubricate the eyeball and keep lips and skin from cracking.

We have to constantly rehydrate the body every day, because water is often lost through sweat, urine . When the body does not have enough water, its basic functions are gradually broken.

You start thirsty when your body loses more than 2% of its weight from water. Your kidneys will not fill your bladder any more, and your urine will be darker. With that, your sweat will be retained, your body temperature increases. Your blood also becomes denser and moves slowly.

To maintain oxygen levels to cells, your heart must work harder to push solid blood. Therefore, your heart rate also increases in thirst.

At higher levels of dehydration, 4% of your body weight, your blood will thicken and your body temperature may increase to a level that causes you to fever and faint. If you lose water to about 7% of your body mass, you begin to develop kidney failure.

When water loses up to 10% of body weight, equivalent to 5 days in the desert, you may die.

You don't need to drink 8 glasses of water every day.

So when should you drink water and how much water per day? The truth is that no research can answer that question.

In 2004, the US National Institutes of Health proposed: Men should load 3.7 liters of body and women are 2.7 liters of water from food and drinks every day. But they insist that the exact amount of water everyone needs is something no one is sure of.

"Most healthy people fully meet their daily hydration needs by listening to thirst," the National Institutes of Health writes.

In fact, thirst is a delicate reaction of the body telling you when you should drink water. However, because thirst may be late after your brain performance has decreased, listen to your body more carefully to make up for it.

One last thing, even though rehydration is important, do not sanctify it and turn it into a drink of 8 cups / day.