Drinking Water Before Bed and How it Affects?
One of the key reasons for the good health and metabolism of an individual is proper hydration. While drinking water throughout the day in optimum amounts is fairly essential, drinking water also plays a key role when you are sleeping.
For many people, drinking water before bed keeps them hydrated and helps with good sleep. Is the practice actually healthy? Let’s find out.
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Benefits Of Drinking Water Before Bed
1) Acts as cleanser and detoxifier
Warm or hot water is one of the best choices for detoxifying the body and acts as a natural cleanser. Drinking warm water in the morning and before going to bed helps you keep hydrated at night. It also enhances blood circulation and aids in removing all the toxins from your body.
Eventually, drinking water before bed, especially warm, also helps in relieving GI pain ( bloating, acidity etc.) and curing muscle cramps.
If you do not wish to consume plain water, you can add your own flavours to it like lemon, etc.
Related: Top 10 Homemade Detox Drinks: Weight Loss, Fat & Cleanse
Drinking water also helps us stay cool by preventing headaches and promoting sweating. The more you sweat, the more you get the need to consume water which helps you to maintain hydration.
Drinking water before bed helps you to get over the dehydration you might face during sweating at night. Again, if you consume excessive water before you go to bed, you may disturb your sleeping pattern. So, moderation and balance is the key here.
2) Helps in mood relaxation
If you are dehydrated and devoid of proper water intake, it may hamper your mental health, especially causing negative conflicts in your mood. You feel irritated, upset and can have frequent headaches if you are constantly dehydrated, especially at night.
Drinking water before you go to bed helps in mood relaxation and aids in curing problems like depression. It also helps you in staying hydrated which again brings us to the starting point of the circle, outcoming positive emotions and a good mood.
Negative Effects of Drinking Water Before Sleep?
When it comes to whether you should drink water before going to bed, the notion has many aspects. Firstly, when you have a fluid or water intake just before going to bed, the first thing that affects is your sleep cycle.
The body tends to urinate more often (also called nocturia) if you have had an excess water intake before going to bed. This disturbs the sleep cycle since you have to wake up every now and then.
Now, the fact that comes up here is that if you are short on sleep, you are more likely to go through dehydration, thus proving an interlink between the two factors.
Again, a short sleep of, say just 5-6 hours can lead to many health complications like obesity, heart issues, mood depression, etc (source).
Moderate intake does not really impact your sleeping pattern in a detrimental way but gulping down a whole bottle or more than a glass of water before going to bed can be sketchy from your end.
The body loses the majority of its water through urination, but it also loses fluid through the skin and respiration. Breathing alone leads to a loss of around 300-400 ml of water daily. Since the majority of this water loss happens at night when a person is asleep, there is a high chance you may be losing more water.
Best Time To Drink Water
Frankly speaking, drinking water before bed isn’t really a very good option since it can disturb your sleep cycle. However, you can have your water intake around 2 hours before you go to sleep. Just too close to your sleeping time might not help.
There is no particular time which can be termed as ‘the best time’ to drink water. The crux here is to drink water throughout the day.
The standard optimum amount of water intake in a day is set as 8-10 glasses. So, you should focus on getting your hydration throughout the day. The amount may vary depending upon your body metabolism, your lifestyle and many other aspects of your health.
Read More: ORS: What is it, Usage, Benefits, Side Effects
You can stay hydrated all day by drinking enough water. You even have the choice to choose different water types as different water has different hydrating properties in them.
Consuming water rich foods would also help a lot if you do not wish to stick on just plain bland water. Similarly, a liquid diet can also go well for hydrating yourself. However, with liquid diet you need to be restrictive regarding its duration.
Bottom Line
Drinking water before bed might not be a very good alternative for you always. So aim on sipping on water and other sources of water and electrolytes the whole day.
If you have been drinking water before going to bed and feel uncomfortable symptoms, contact your doctor and stop having the water intake at night time for the time being.
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