Hydration

Consuming a sufficient amount of fluids every day is important. Not drinking enough can cause a headache. It’s just one of the thousands of bad things that can happen to you if you dehydrate. But it’s a reason enough for me to make sure I get my minimum of 1,5 liters of fluids a day poured inside. Fluids = tea. Summer version of fluids = tea or water. I hardly ever drink anything else. Do you have a problem with that? I don’t.

I mean, I didn’t. Until a smartass friend of mine (I love my friends, really!) said the other day that tea dehydrates and this needs to be compensated for with more fluids. So all this time I’ve been drinking just enough to avoid headaches, but not enough to prevent all those hundreds of other bad things from happening! I didn’t have enough energy to panic.

I was just determined to google out a formula that would help me to calculate how much tea is equivalent to 2l of ‘regular’ (non dehydrating) fluids. And I was going to make sure I compensate. So I googled a little (a couple of minutes). And then I googled a little more (some more minutes). And then I suddenly found a review of black tea published by The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (yeah!).  And this fantastic review says 'there is no evidence base for the assumption that all caffeine-containing drinks should be avoided in situations where fluid balance is, or might become, precarious'. According to the review ‘it was found that tea consumption did not produce a diuretic effect unless the amount of tea consumed at one sitting contained more than 300 mg of caffeine (equivalent to six or seven cups of tea)’.

I am going to whack my friend with the review from The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Eat (or rather drink) this! And stop scaring the hell out of me (like the last time with the dentist's x-rays photos).

Oh, and I am going to drink more tea, because it’s good for my heart, my teeth, my mental state and helps me look young so I can still get attention of those twenty-something boys. ;)

Discovered by pure chance:  Boozoo Bajou – Night Over Manaus