Researchers warn that not drinking enough water can lead to serious health risks

It is often said that you should drink plen­ty of water to stay healthy. A new study pro­vides yet anoth­er rea­son why stay­ing hydrat­ed can reduce chron­ic dis­ease and increase your chances of liv­ing longer.

The study is based on a study of 11,255 adults who were asked five ques­tions over 25 years about fac­tors such as socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus and fam­i­ly med­ical history.

Blood sodi­um was mea­sured by clin­i­cal exam­i­na­tion and used as an index of water intake. Nor­mal­ly, the more water you drink, the low­er the sodi­um con­cen­tra­tion in your blood.

“These results sug­gest that ade­quate hydra­tion slows aging and increas­es dis­ease-free lifes­pan,” said Natalia Dmitrie­va, a researcher at the Nation­al Heart, Lung, and Blood Insti­tute (NHLBI) in Mary­land. increase.

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies have focused on the asso­ci­a­tion between high blood sodi­um lev­els and an increased risk of heart fail­ure. The nor­mal range of sodi­um con­cen­tra­tion in human blood is usu­al­ly 125 to 146 mil­liequiv­a­lents per liter (mEq/L).

In this study, serum sam­ples with high­er sodi­um con­cen­tra­tions also tend­ed to have high­er con­cen­tra­tions of up to 15 mark­ers of bio­log­i­cal health and aging.

For exam­ple, peo­ple with sodi­um lev­els above 142 mEq/L were found to be 10–15% more like­ly to be bio­log­i­cal­ly old­er than their more nor­mal range.

They also had a 64% high­er asso­ci­at­ed risk of devel­op­ing chron­ic con­di­tions such as heart fail­ure, stroke, atri­al fib­ril­la­tion, chron­ic lung dis­ease, dia­betes and dementia.

The authors of this study sug­gest that mea­sur­ing blood sodi­um lev­els may allow physi­cians to be instructed.

Peo­ple whose water intake is in the dan­ger­ous waters should try to take in more water from juices, veg­eta­bles, fruits, etc. in addi­tion to drinking.

“The goal is to see if patients are get­ting enough flu­ids, while also assess­ing fac­tors such as med­ica­tions that con­tribute to flu­id loss,” said NHLBI prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor Man­fred Boehm. .

“In addi­tion, it may be nec­es­sary to refer to the patien­t’s cur­rent treat­ment strat­e­gy, such as restrict­ing flu­id intake in the case of heart failure.