“Be like water; water has form, yet is has no form. It is the softest element on earth, yet it penetrates the hardest rock.” Bruce Lee
Inside I was a desert. Arid. Dehydrated. Dangerously so.
You’ve heard the mom’s rule to drink at least eight cups a day, although that’s not based on any hard science. The Institute of Medicine, a scientific research organization, says women should drink at least 11.4 cups of water a day. For men, it’s higher: 15.6 cups per day. But, according to the CDC, 43 percent of Americans drink less than four cups per day. That includes about seven percent who drink none. I’ve heard that as many as 75 percent of Americans walk around dehydrated and don’t even know it.
Dehyration is bad news, especially if you are sick, as I had been for weeks. Wiped out by a nasty virus, I ran between teeth-chattering chills and sauna-like sweating. I was too weak or too lazy to sit up to drink. All I wanted was to curl up and sleep. Big mistake. When I couldn’t shake a high fever and difficulty breathing, my doctor sent me to a local hospital ER. There doctors ran a slew of tests, one of which indicated what they said were ridiculously high lactic acid levels, an indication of severe dehydration.
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