6 ways to increase your water intake to avoid heart problems

1. Why does dehydration affect cardiovascular function?

If you become dehydrated, the amount of blood circulating in your body will decrease. Your heart will try to compensate by beating faster, putting stress on your heart, as it has to work harder than usual.

If this condition persists, it will affect heart function, causing abnormal heart activity.

2. Does drinking lots of water help prevent heart disease?

The heart is constantly pumping blood throughout the body. It beats an average of 72 times a minute and pumps about 7,600 liters of blood each day. Staying hydrated makes it easier for the heart to pump blood through the blood vessels to the muscles. This puts less strain on the heart and means it doesn’t have to work as hard to do its job.

Additionally, drinking enough water can prevent or at least slow changes in the heart such as left ventricular hypertrophy, which can lead to heart disease.

The recommended amount of water to drink can vary depending on a number of factors, but generally the usual recommendation is 2-2.5 liters per day.

3. Measures to increase water intake for the body

Water is the main chemical component and accounts for about 50 - 70% of body weight. People tend to drink less water during winter, which can lead to dehydration and cause many health problems.

To ensure that you drink enough water during winter, you can follow some of the following measures:

- Set reminders: There are many mobile phone applications that you can use to set alarms to remind you to drink water. However, you need to make sure you set alarms and monitor them regularly to avoid missing the alarm time and forgetting to replenish water for your body.

Set reminders to help you remember to drink water.

- Eat fruits and vegetables: There are many seasonal fruits with high water content that you can add to your diet. You should eat at least 3 servings of green vegetables and 2 servings of fruits like papaya, apple regularly.

- Add vegetable soups and juices to your diet: Combining fruit juices in your diet along with soups such as mushrooms, broccoli, pumpkin... is an effective way to keep your body hydrated.

- Drink warm water: Drinking warm water has the effect of soothing the throat. However, you should be careful not to drink cold water or water that is too hot because it can irritate the throat and cause discomfort. You should only drink warm water to replenish enough water for the body.

Staying hydrated helps prevent heart problems.

- Exercise more: Exercise habits are greatly affected by the weather. When the weather is cold, you tend to reduce or stop exercising, which also causes you to drink less water because you do not feel thirsty.

However, you should maintain the habit of exercising 30 minutes a day to improve your health and hydrate your body with electrolyte water or smoothies.

- Avoid tea and coffee: Tea and coffee have diuretic effects, causing the body to urinate more, leading to dehydration, which makes dehydration worse. Therefore, you should cut down on your daily tea and coffee intake.

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