We all want to give our best every day. We know how important proper hydration is for physical efforts and for athletes, but making sure to drink enough water also applies for cognitive work as well.
Your brain is mostly water — it stands to reason it needs it to work well! Water accounts for 75% of brain mass, and researchers are uncovering more and more associations between staying hydrated and being able to think at your highest and best levels. Dehydration causes your brain cells to shrink in size and mass, and alters the way electricity is sent through your neurons .
Broadly speaking, dehydration has been shown to have a number of unwanted effects on your psychological state, including:
Impaired short-term memory and attention Decreased arithmetic ability and visuomotor tracking Reduced psychomotor skills and perceptual discrimination Slower mental processing speed Decreased ability to concentrate Increased fatigue and mood disturbances Even small amounts of dehydration can have noticeable effects You might be thinking — of course when you’re parched of thirst you’re not thinking straight! Dehydration eventually leads to death! This makes total sense! Even slight dehydration can significantly impact mental performance . Participants who did not drink water during a 4-hour period at 30°C/86°F experienced decreased memory and focused attention, increased thirst-related anxiety, and reduced subjective energy.
Conversely, those who consumed 10oz (half a soda bottle!) of water showed improvements in cognitive functions, finding tasks easier and maintaining better mental clarity.
How do I understand how hydrated I am? You can look at your urine color to understand how hydrated you are . Urine that's clear to yellow is usually a sign of good hydration. If your urine is darker yellow or orange, you might be dehydrated.
We know that can be kind of a pain, especially if you want to keep track of your hydration status over time. Throne will analyze your urine so you don’t have to, giving you a more precise understanding over just eyeballing it. With Throne, you’ll have historical data to start to understand how hydration affects your health overall, from sleep to exercise to mental clarity. You can't draw correlations with data you don't have.
