Domestic Geek

In response to "Are you drinking enough water?", a lot of people say yes, I drink Gatorade (or SoBe or the like). The fact is, these types of drinks are being misused. Sports drinks like Gatorade are intended to replace nutrients lost during exercise (meaning you should exercise first). "Health" drinks like SoBe worry me. Quite frankly, the fact that most of them have some type of caffeine and/or manufactured sweeteners such as High Fructose Corn Syrup make them far from healthy. Energy drinks are just bad for you. I'm running across more and more people using them not as an occasional pick-me-up, but as a crutch to overcome lack of sleep and poor eating habits.

Let's start this off by talking about water. I know very few people who actually get enough liquids during the day and when they do, it's usually a sugar and/or caffeinated (and possibly artificial chemical) laden beverage.

The great debate raging now is whether you should be drinking tap or bottled. We use tap here at home that's been run through a Pur water filtration pitcher.

There are many important health benefits of drinking water. First, it aids in weight loss. The body that is not getting enough water will retain fluids. We need to flush fluids to get rid of excess stuff in our systems. The body also needs water or muscles to function correctly and to metabolize food.

Of course the experts all disagree as to how much you should be drinking a day. There's the standard 8 (8 oz.) glasses a day. This is probably meant to be a guide more than anything. Some people tell you to drink only when you're thirsty and then others telling you that if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated. I'm no expert, so I don't know the answer, but you do need to get a good intake of water into your diet to live a healthier life.

OK, you can tell by the timestamp of my last post that I was up quite late last night. I just couldn't get to sleep. I know I'm going to be regretting that in a few hours. But, here I am now up and wide awake getting reading to get going. Since I have yet to finish my new template, I changed the look of this one. I hope you all like it. Yes, I know the comment page and lost of stuff is still pink. I'll try to change some of that as we go along.

Over the next 24 hours, I've decided to write about health topics. Since the introduction of modern medicine, you'd think we as a society would be getting healthier. The obesity epidemic, cancer, diabetes and a whole slew of other problems show this is not the case. I'll be exploring several different topics (some suggested by some very good online friends of mine) and would appreciate anybody who is visiting's opinion.

Good luck, Blogathonners!

I thought it was all fixed, but I come home today and there are still doubles in my RSS feed. WTF? I think I know what's causing it, I just haven't figured out how to fix it. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Oh, no...I think I'm addicted. I've always loved Tetris and Tetris-like games. I've been playing this cool little Internet flash game called Statetris. You have a map of the United States and you get to place the falling states. Fun stuff!
[via GeekySpeaky]