I Encounter Two Types of Hydration Issues in Clients
- Drinks a ton of water and still not feeling hydrated or peeing like crazy
- Knows water is necessary, but doesn’t like it or want to drink it
Tips to Balance Water Drinking and Hydration
1. Don’t Force It – Listen to Your Body
In the beginning, if you have lost your connection with natural thirst, you might want to make sure you drink water 30 minutes before meals and 1 hour after meals and see how you feel. Folks experiencing chronic digestive issues, like bloating, abdominal pain and gallbladder issues may feel averse to drinking water because it feels uncomfortable. Others with incontinence may feel similar (this can be connected to digestive issues, bloating and pressure on the bladder).
Invite your body to signal you when you need water. In my own recovery, it took awhile, but I just started listening and feeling for signals. It could be fatigue, hunger-ish feelings when you have already eaten and aren’t really hungry, cravings for sweets when you aren’t really hungry can be thirst too. A general dry or depleted feeling (dry mouth, mental or physical low energy that has nothing to do with real hunger).
Sip just a little at a time, instead of feeling like you have to guzzle.
2. Use Additives to Balance Water and Help with Hydration
- 20 to 30 cumin seeds in a jug that holds 4 to 8 glasses of room temperature water: Whole cumin seeds help to balance the overly cooling nature of water. If you steep them in the water for 20 minutes or more, you’ll get a very subtle, lovely flavor and slight golden color to the water. You can leave them in the water the whole time and sip the water. Plus, you’ll get the benefits of cumin — balancing your blood sugar, aiding digestion, aiding bone density and cancer-protective properties.
- 10 seeds each of cumin, fennel and fenugreek in a jug filled with 4 to 8 cups room temperature water – this is another nice, subtle way to balance the cooling nature of water and bump up your body’s digestive fire. Fenugreek also helps with weight loss, eye health, blood sugar balance, bacterial and fungal infection (this is so helpful if you have candida, SIBO or UTIs), also helps prevent or relieve stones (kidney, gallstones) and lowers histamine. Fennel is great for digestion, heart health, memory and menstrual cramps.
- Minerals – when you add minerals to your water, you help your body hydrate! They give a bit of a salty taste, which you can disguise with some lemon juice or lime juice. Minerals are the spark plugs of your body and are ambassadors of the cells — they decide what comes in and goes out of cells. They are responsible for every enzymatic function in your body, which pretty much means they rule. Since our soil and food are so low in minerals and we’ve been told to avoid sea salt — when the real culprit is toxic table salt — it’s gotten even worse. I’d say about 95% of my clients have some type of mineral imbalance. When that gets fixed, what happens is ENERGY comes back — hooray — we all deserve energy!
- Schisandra Berry – I recommended Schisandra Berry to a client of mine who was having trouble sleeping and she was thrilled with the results. Schisandra berries are called ‘five flavored berry’ because they have all 5 flavors in Chinese medicine (sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent), making them a very balanced medicinal herb. More about this stress-busting superfood schisandra berry …
Minerals get burned when we are stressed and you can tell you don’t have enough minerals if little things bother you a lot. Heads up energetically sensitive friends — if you get wiped out when you are with people, near electromagnetic fields or you feel like you are getting drained picking up people’s energy, minerals are going to be a lifeline for your nervous system!
I like these liquid sea minerals: Anderson’s Concentrated Mineral Drops (Sea MD), Aussie Minerals, ConcenTrace. My favorites are Anderson’s. Seaweed is also great, but not so easy to digest for people with small intestine issues. The liquid minerals have a wide base of sea minerals that can really give your body some serious mojo. Both calming and energizing at the same time. Calm stress, build energy. They are the natural armor for the energetically sensitive person. Some people use sea salt in their water. That’s great too!
3. Flavor
Juice from a fresh lemon, a couple teaspoons of organic tart cherry juice concentrate, a little honey or stevia, some citrus bitters or Swedish bitters — this room temperature elixir can also add some flavor to your water. Sometimes, I think we just need our senses awakened. When we taste things in our water, our senses wake up and if we like the taste, we get the added sense of delight. This can be a nice way to get back into water and after awhile, you may find you don’t really need flavor anymore.
4. Love – Drink love
If you have read Dr. Emoto’s work, you know that what we say to water gets reflected back to us in how the water is structured. Saying your affirmations as you drink your water, feeling love go into your body…all of this is good stuff and is yet another way to wake up your senses as you drink water.
What are your ideas? I have heard so many wonderful ideas from all of you and I’d love for us to share what’s worked, what hasn’t worked or let’s chat about your questions and see what wisdom can come of it!
This article started from a conversation we had on Facebook!
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