Being an athlete can take quite a toll on the body, even with a great diet. Over weeks of training I’ve found that even on the best diet, I’m bound to run into injuries and soreness. That being said there are several things that make a big difference in how I feel the next day and rather or not I’m able to train the next day.

Currently, I’m training for a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu competition in May. I’m new, and my workload isn’t nearly that of a seasoned professional athlete, but for the average person, it’s intense.

Every day I do a full body weight lifting workout, yoga, stretching and breath control, 100 bodyweight squats, three sets of push-ups and pull-ups, drilling and training with my dad for about 20 minutes, a mile run, and training at the gym for 3-4 hours a day.

Most injuries I get heal quickly. Since starting Brazilian jiujitsu I’ve suffered jammed toes, a bruised trachea, a pulled quad muscle, and most recently a pulled muscle in my rib area near my spine. Every other injury has been quick to heal, gone in three days at the most. My rib injury took longer to heal. Even after it got better, I spent weeks being sore in that area and having to pay special attention not to reinjure it.

I’ve got a competition soon so extended time off isn’t an option, nor is any sort of pain management that would slow my healing long term. I don’t take pain medication of any sort, nor do I use recreational pain relief like cannabis. Cannabis and over-the-counter pain relief, as well as prescription pain medication all slow down the healing process exponentially for temporary relief.

I view my pain (and many other things in life) like a credit card. Using medication to relieve pain temporarily means dealing with a longer lasting injury, and more pain in the long run. For instance, if I have an injury that hurts at a 6 out of 10, I can smoke some weed or take some other pain medication. But once it wears off that 6 becomes a 7, maybe an 8. And of course, the next dose of pain relief won’t be as effective unless you up the dosage. That’s not my idea of a desirable feedback loop.

To promote healing, we do hot-cold compresses switching back and forth to attract blood flow and inflammation for healing. In the end, we use lots of deep tissue oil on the area. Deep tissue repair oil is my number one recommendation for pain relief and healing if you’re only going to use one thing to aid in the healing process. I use it multiple times a day when I feel sore and before or after a workout. Deep tissue oil has menthol crystals, cayenne, wintergreen oil, and other things to promote healing and attract blood flow to the target area.

I also do hot epsom salt baths as often as needed. It’s nothing revolutionary, but epsom salt does help release tension, relax the muscles and prevent soreness.

Many people recommend Boswellia, an herbal extract, to help with inflammation and pain. Although I’ve never used it, you can read more about it and its benefits in this article.

I stretch and do yoga every day to work on flexibility and aid in healing as well. Even if I’m injured to the point of being unable to workout, I still stretch for movement and healing.

Many other athletes have done down similar paths of using natural remedies to help heal, but very few go deep enough to get the full benefits. Acupuncture and chiropractic care are two examples of holistic routes that some people go down, but as great as they are, they’re really only temporary pain relief. Acupuncture and chiropractic work can be great aids for the body in addition to a healthy diet and routine, but they don’t fix any problems on their own.

Diet

Without a healthy diet, I wouldn’t be able to do this every day, but I’ve learned that there’s a difference between fueling my body for everyday life, and my diet when I’m training. When I’m training, I eat a high caloric diet with lots of protein. My main sources of protein are eggs, meat, and cheese. I generally eat less than a pound of meat a week. I have a little bacon in every salad, and between one and three nights a week, we’ll have sausage or bacon in dinner. I also eat homemade beef jerky for protein in between classes.

Eating an anti-inflammatory diet is probably the most important part of my healing process because it goes beyond just healing. My diet is even more strict than it was prior to fighting, although prior to fighting I ate better than almost anyone I knew. I have to eat a diet that not only aids in healing but prevents me from getting injured frequently. With the right diet, you can make your body impervious to injury. I don’t sit around and wait for an injury to start eating a diet that promotes healing.

Every day I eat a large salad with lots of different vegetables. Diversity is an extremely important part of a healthy diet that many people are missing. There are lots of professional athletes who have figured out that a healthy diet allows them to perform radically better, along with recovering faster and overall feeling better. That being said, not many people have figured out that there’s a big difference between eating some kale salad and eating a 10-cup salad with kale, collards, rainbow chard, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and more. My salads have at least 10 different vegetables and herbs in them. This article goes into how I make my salads and cranberry lemonade.

Three to four times a week I drink my “anti-inflammatory smoothie“. I make it with an abundance of anti-inflammatory foods like ginger, pineapple, cranberries, tart cherries, and turmeric (to name a few). I drink lots of cranberry lemonade to flush out toxins and inflammation, as well as stay hydrated. Lastly, I obviously avoid inflammatory foods. I limit my grains and avoid corn (although occasionally we make homemade tortillas). I don’t even eat oatmeal anymore, because it’s too similar to gluten in the way it digests and causes inflammation.

Many fighters and bodybuilders eat lots of oatmeal as a good source of protein and fuel. For many people, it’s great. But, like most other grains, it’s inflammatory. I feel it when I eat them. I’ll bet if you’re paying attention, you can too. When I’m in need of protein and fuel I stick to things like eggs, homemade beef jerky, walnuts, chia seeds, and raw sheep’s cheese.

It seems like the list of foods I can’t eat is extremely long, but the list of foods I can and do eat is even longer. The guidelines are pretty simple, make everything from scratch, eat tons of raw veggies, eat tons of cooked veggies, and avoid any and all things processed.

Supplements

With a healthy diet the average person shouldn’t need to take supplements everyday when they’re healthy, but someone who’s pushing their body on an athletes level may find that they function better with supplements.

Currently, I take Sf722 every day, generally because I eat a lot of fruit. Sf722 also helps pump my body full of good stuff similar to salads. Without Sf722 my skin can be prone to breaking out from rolls on the mats, and my healing and recovery slows. I also take Abzorb, or other enzymes to help with digestion, especially if I eat pasteurized nuts. I take vitamin D, Vitamin B, and thyroid and/or pituitary glandular supplements to prevent endocrine system crashes.

When you’ve taken antibiotics or medication or done anything to eradicate your gut microbiome, your gut isn’t producing enough vitamin B. This can be one of the last things to correct itself after you’re healthy. Taking vitamin B helps heal your gut and helps the endocrine system by providing your body with vitamins that your gut should be producing.

When you’re overweight, even just a small amount your body has a hard time assimilating vitamin D from the sun. not to mention most of us don’t get enough sunlight anyways. Being overweight also leads to extra stress on the kidneys (and lower back) and the endocrine system.

Sleep

Diet and sleep are equally as important for overall health, and when it comes to how sore I am and my recovery time for an injury. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get a good night’s sleep when my injury is severe enough, but it’s always a top priority.

I always get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep. Regardless of the quality of sleep, I’m in bed trying to sleep for at least 8 hours. Sometimes depending on the workout the day before, or how an injury is healing, I can get more than 10 hours of sleep.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Training

While training anything contact or combat related it’s extremely important than you learn how to protect yourself from injury while drilling and rolling. It took me way too long to learn how to fall properly in jiujitsu, and it’s still a work in progress. Falling down wrong was the number one cause of injury for me while training.

Related: Running Without Knee Pain

That being said, once I learned how to protect myself from injury I found that training was actually extremely important for healing my most recently injury. So, if you can move, move. Staying active and using your body is extremely important for working your muscles and building them back stronger after an injury.

Generally, I use the rule use it or lose it. Broken bones often don’t need casts (and strong healthy bones are harder to break). Staying active is usually your best bet for healing quickly.

Conclusion

Some days I wake up barely able to move! Training this hard has been really intense, but I know that with the way I do things, my recovery time is radically faster than anyone else I know doing the same thing as me.

In my experience the most important thing to do is to be in tune with your body to an extreme. The moment something isn’t right I can tell, and I can feel a difference in the way certain foods fuel my body. I track my sleep and my diet, and when things aren’t working the way they should I back track and examine where I might have gone wrong.

This takes time, and it takes mistakes. I’ve experimented with lots of different foods and routines and I’ve seen how certain things make me feel, and how they effect my performance. Working out and being active is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean much if you’re not healthy enough to sustain it.

A new study conducted by UC Riverside suggests that exercise and healthy diet in childhood lead to adults with bigger brains and less anxiety. The study aimed to examine the long term benefits of a healthy diet and exercise as the two are usually examined separately, or short term.

Researchers divided young mice into four groups, those with access to exercise, those without, and those with a standard healthy diet, and those with a standard western diet.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Mice were put on their assigned diet as soon as they were done weaning and stayed on the same diet for three weeks until sexual maturity. The mice then went through an additional eight weeks of “washout” where they were kept with out wheels on the standard healthy diet. Researchers then measured aerobic capacity, did behavioral analysis, and testes different levels of hormones.

Previously, the research team found that eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter the microbiome for life, even if they later eat healthier. Going forward, the team plans to investigate whether fat or sugar is more responsible for the negative effects they measured in Western-diet-fed mice.

Childhood diet and exercise creates healthier, less anxious adults

Researchers concluded that early life exercise resulted in less anxious behaviors in adult mice and led to increases in adult muscle and brain mass. When fed standard western-style diets the mice became fatter and grew into adults with a preference for unhealthy foods.

Running on a regular basis has numerous health benefits. Studies show that running for just 5-10 minutes a day can benefit the heart, help prevent neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, result in a lower chance of cancer, and of course, build excellent lung capacity, and function as a great leg and core workout. Additionally, a runner’s high is very real. The endorphins and other chemicals you release in the brain while running are not dissimilar to those released from getting high on cannabis. Not to mention, when a runner’s high wears off, you’re left with the benefits, as opposed to the crash some feel after smoking too much weed. Running can help with depression and other mental health issues as well.

All that being said, running can be a pain, literally. Running is difficult. It’s hard on your joints if you’re not healthy enough. It can leave you feeling beyond sore and tired, and if you’re wanting to run every day, you might be feeling like you don’t have enough time to recover in between runs. I’ve put together a list of some of the most common problems new runners face, and the best way to fix them, based on my experiences. 

I’ve found that pain from running is caused by four major things and can generally be fixed with one thing. Pain while running is often caused by poor form, poor shoes, poor diet, and obesity. If you were to fix your diet, all of your problems while running would get better and would eventually go away, but you might need a few other things to fix the problem completely in a timely fashion.

Hip Flexor Pain

Hip flexors are muscles that bring your legs up towards your torso while bending your torso towards the hip. In other words, they flex the hips (hence the name). You can feel the hip flexors through the sides of your thighs up to the hips.

When I moved away from a slow jog and started trying to run as fast as I could, my hip flexors became extremely sore. If you notice your hip flexors are sore, the best thing you can do is stretch them. In my experience, if I notice the soreness in the hip flexors one day and then stretch, they’re worse the next day.

Low lunges and the pigeon pose are my two favorite stretches that I do almost every day to combat sore hip flexors. They’re also great for opening up the hips in general. Check out this article for some other good stretches for the hip flexors. I’ve also found that any post-runners yoga routine is great for stretching the hips. This is my favorite yoga routine for after a run. 

Knee Pain

Knee pain and overall joint pain (more on that later) is often caused by inflammation and can be fixed by diet. But that can take a while. So, in the meantime, you can correct your running form a couple of different ways to alleviate knee pain. You should be running on your toes, not running on your heels. The impact of running on your heels often causes knee problems.

I also recommend running in Vibrams. Regular running shoes are not as good for your feet as they’re made out to be. You can read more about that in this article. Regular running shoes make it difficult to run on your toes, and they weaken your foot muscles. Vibrams are made to mimic the natural way we walk when we’re barefoot, and they build up your muscles in your feet. 

Lower Back Pain

Lower back pain comes from poor kidney function and/or excess weight. I still experience lower back pain while running if I’m not taking practically perfect care of myself. Diet is key, and it will fix most problems. But to target the lower back, I drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade a day to keep my kidneys working properly.

I still have about 40 pounds of extra weight to lose. This is the other factor in lower back pain! Having extra weight puts stress on the kidneys and can also result in lower back pain, so, as much as it sucks to hear, losing weight will help with your lower back pain.

In the meantime, when you’re on your feet, tighten your abs to relieve pressure on your lower back. I use this trick when I’m running, when I’m on my feet for prolonged periods of time, and whenever my lower back is bothering me. I also do ab exercises every day to strengthen my abs and relieve lower back pain. I find that yoga helps, too, but if I’m doing yoga solely to relieve lower back pain, then I’ve been slacking on the actual methods to prevent lower back pain. Ideally, I do these things on a regular basis to prevent lower back pain, not make lower back pain better (although it works for that too).

Foot Pain 

People are often wearing the wrong kind of shoes for running. Tennis shoes are not good for your feet. The extra cushy arch support flattens your arches and can contribute to all sorts of problems. You’re better off in the long run with Vibrams or other toe shoes.

I will warn you, toe shoes can take a bit of time to get used to when you first start running. As your feet muscles begin to get stronger, your feet will probably be sore while you adjust. If you’re running on gravel paths, look out for rocks! The soles of your toe shoes are thinner than regular tennis shoes.

You might find that if you’re running every day with Vibrams, they wear out faster than tennis shoes. Make sure you are wearing the proper size shoe when you’re running. If your shoes are too small, you won’t have room to compensate for swelling. If your shoes are too large and your feet have too much room to move around, that is also a problem. When you buy running shoes, you want them to be slightly too big to compensate for swelling. 

Overall Joint Pain 

Joint pain and excessive soreness from running are often caused by inflammation and the body’s inability to recover quickly. This can be fixed by diet. I wouldn’t be able to run every day the way I do, at my current weight, if I didn’t eat as well as I do! Check out this article to learn more about how to achieve homeostasis through diet. You are what you eat! Pay attention to what you put into your body so your body is able to perform at the level you want. Check out this article to learn more about joint pain, the causes, and how to fix it.

Side-aches 

You’d be hard-pressed to find a runner who hasn’t suffered from side stitches at one point in time. Remember to breathe deeply throughout your run (I know it’s hard, but it will get easier as your lung capacity gets better). Don’t run on a full stomach. I prefer to run first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.  

Conclusion

Running on a regular basis and recovering enough to enjoy it every day, is certainly a challenge. That being said, it can be done, and running is one of the best forms of cardio. Running boosts my mood, gives me energy, and creates a routine in my daily life. I’ve found it to be my favorite way to start the day. In fact, it’s a guarantee that my day is going to be better if I start it with a run.

Developing daily running habits isn’t easy, but taking care of yourself so you have the physical ability to develop daily running habits, is a good place to start. 

Running Without Knee Pain

A new study has shown that curved toed shoes may weaken the muscles in your toes and feet, leading to common foot problems like plantar fasciitis. Stress develops strength in your body’s muscles. Similar to the way stress develops strong muscles in the gym, studies show running barefoot develops strong muscles in the feet. When we remove these sources of stress, our bodies don’t adapt in the same way.

While curved toe running shoes may make it easier or more comfortable for us to move, a new study has shown that we pay for comfort in the long run by developing weaker foot muscles. These weaker foot muscles can, in turn, cause knee and foot problems.

Related: Running Without Knee Pain

Our toes were designed to bend backward while we lift our bodies forward and upwards. Curved toe shoes make this more difficult, and while they’re designed to remove some of the effort from moving our feet, this has shown to not be good long term.

 Our toes, which are shorter than our ape-like ancestors, help us use less energy when walking and running. There is less muscle work required to stabilise and control the movement of smaller toes.

Curved shoe tips make it easier to move – but research suggests they may also weaken foot muscles

Researchers gathered results from 13 healthy adults who always wear shoes. They had each participant walk in four different types of sandals with the curve of the shoe set at 10, 20, 30, and 40-degree angles. Researchers then measured the movement of participants toe joints and compared the measurements to when they walked barefoot. The numbers showed that the range of movement in the toes decreased as with the increase of the toe spring angle, and consequently, the total amount of work required at the joints also decreased.

Related: What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good

The plantar fascia is a long and broad elastic tissue that runs the length of the sole of your foot. It becomes injured from repetitive strain associated with constant deformation of the arch.

Curved shoe tips make it easier to move – but research suggests they may also weaken foot muscles

The job of foot muscles is to stabilize the toes while supporting the arch. Modern shoes can cause weaker foot muscles and higher rates of flat feet than those who regularly wear shoes that mimic being barefoot. Plantar fasciitis is the most common injury when running. Evidence has shown that running barefoot on the grass can help with plantar fasciitis.

At OLM, we’re big fans of the Vibram FiveFingers shoes. We always wear them for running, and for pretty much every activity besides running as well. Vibrams mimic the feeling of being barefoot. If you make the switch over to Vibrams, your feet and toes will likely be sore as you get used to them- but fear not! This is just a sign that the muscles in your feet are getting stronger. After a few weeks of regular wear, your feet should feel fine, in fact, you’ll probably never want to wear any other shoes ever again. Wearing Vibrams has fixed any knee and feet problems that we’ve experienced while running, but just a word of caution, be sure to look out for rocks when you’re running in your Vibrams.

The other day, I went to the grocery store with my little brother. While loading the car, I turned around, shut the trunk, and in a lapse of judgment, took my eyes off of my 4-year-old brother and accidentally hit his head with the trunk of the car. He had leaned his head forward to look inside the trunk and I had not noticed. 

I picked my brother up and put him on the hood of the car as I examined his injury and tried to decide what to do. A store employee had seen the whole thing happen and offered him some ice. I quickly thanked him and took the ice, holding it to my brother’s head as I thought to myself, “Are you even supposed to ice injuries?” I took the ice to appease onlookers, but found myself, as I have with so many things in the past year, wondering if that was, in fact, the right thing to do. The more I learn about health the more I learn that most things I thought I knew were not true.

Related: What Causes Chronic Inflammation, and How To Stop It For Good

After telling my dad about the whole thing, he confirmed that ice was in fact, not necessary or desirable in most cases. So, when should you use ice? 

As far as temporary pain relief, icing an injury is better for your health than taking something like ibuprofen or Tylenol. In some cases, it may be beneficial to ice. For example, when you need to avoid swelling and inflammation for mobility reasons like sports events where one has to continue participating, ice makes sense. A pitcher, for instance, may need to ice their shoulder in order to numb pain and prevent swelling so they have the mobility to continue pitching. However, once the event is over, it’s better off to the body heal naturally without ice.

When we injure ourselves, the body’s response is typically inflammation, swelling, and pain. During inflammation, blood clots form, and vessels constrict to stem the flow of blood from damaged tissue, while healthier vessels signal the body to get to work repairing the damage. Local nerve endings become more sensitive as a way of letting the body know what it should and should not do. 

All these responses are very natural and necessary. However, when we ice injuries, we slow blood flow to the area and prevent inflammation and swelling. In other words, ice can slow down the healing process.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

While many people still learn the “RICE” method in school, today the doctor who wrote the RICE method no longer recommends it. 

When I wrote my best-selling Sportsmedicine Book in 1978, I coined the term RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) for the treatment of athletic injuries (Little Brown and Co., page 94). Ice has been a standard treatment for injuries and sore muscles because it helps to relieve pain caused by injured tissue. Coaches have used my “RICE” guideline for decades, but now it appears that both Ice and complete Rest may delay healing, instead of helping.

Why Ice Delays Recovery -Dr.mirkin.com

Additionally, many pro-ice studies are based on anecdotal and/or circumstantial evidence while many other studies have come to inconclusive results on cryogenic therapy. One study done in 2008 by the Emergency Medicine Journal came to the conclusion “There is insufficient evidence to suggest that cryotherapy improves clinical outcome in the management of soft tissue injuries.” Another study done by The Journal of Athletic Training, in 2012 found similar results saying “Insufficient evidence is available from randomized controlled trials to determine the relative effectiveness of RICE therapy for acute ankle sprains in adults.”

Next time you injure yourself, in most situations, you’ll likely be better off letting the body do its thing without the interference of ice.

When intimation is chronic condition, we recommend: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections 

  Sources:

A recent study done by the University of Bath shows that exercising before eating breakfast can have a significant positive impact on overall health. The study was conducted over a period of 6 weeks with 30 men classified as overweight or obese. During the study, researchers examined a group who ate breakfast before exercising, a group that ate breakfast after exercising, and the control group who made no changes. 

The results of the study showed that while eating breakfast before or after working out did not make significant differences in terms of weight loss, those who ate breakfast after working out increased their body’s ability to respond to insulin. Additionally, those who ate breakfast after workout burned more fat and saw general improvements in their overall health.  

We found that the men in the study who exercised before breakfast burned double the amount of fat than the group who exercised after. Importantly, whilst this didn’t have any effect on weight loss, it did dramatically improve their overall health.”

-Dr Javier T. Gonzalez, Department for Health, University of Bath

Subjects not in the control group ate a breakfast of cornflake cereal in skimmed milk with wholemeal toast, sunflower spread, and strawberry jam. The group who ate breakfast first, ate breakfast and then allowed for a 90-minute “rest and digestion” period and then exercised by cycling on stationary bikes for 60 minutes, the group who ate breakfast after working out participated in the same exercise and then immediately ate breakfast. 

Related: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

Breath samples and blood samples were collected at the 25-30 minute mark, and again at the 55-60 minute mark, to determine which fuels were being used to power the cyclist. The results of the data collected show that moderate-intensity exercising before eating breakfast can help regulate insulin, regulate blood sugar, as well as burn more fat. Both those who ate breakfast before and after working out lost weight at the same rate, however, the group who ate breakfast before working out saw no changes in their body’s response to insulin.

The group who exercised before breakfast increased their ability to respond to insulin, which is all the more remarkable given that both exercise groups lost a similar amount of weight, and both gained a similar amount of fitness. The only difference was the timing of the food intake.”

Can Excercising Before Breakfast Dramatically Improve Your Health?

The co-author of the study has noted that it is not recommended that you participate in high-intensity workouts on an empty stomach. The long term effects as well as rather or not this benefits women, in the same way, have yet to be studied. 

Recommended: Homemade Vegan Nut Milk Recipes

Sources:

• Can Exercising Before Breakfast Dramatically Improve Your Health? -Scientific American
• Lipid Metabolism Links Nutrient-Exercise Timing to Insulin Sensitivity in Men Classified as Overweight or Obese -Academic.oup

A new report in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise discovered that athletes who lost fluid equal to 2 percent their weight showed lower levels of cognition. Water loss at that level is considered a mild to moderate case of dehydration, but researchers still found symptoms impaired cognition, including difficulties focusing on tasks requiring attention and lowered motor coordination. Executive function, the processes that allow you to manage yourself and achieve goals, also declines when dehydration happens.

“We’ve known that physical performance suffers at a threshold of 2 percent of body mass, particularly when it’s from exercise in a warm environment,” said study co-author Mindy Millard-Stafford, a professor in the school of biological sciences and director of the physiology lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“So the question was, what happens in the brain with the same amount of loss, which is pretty common with people who are active or work outside in the heat. Just like a muscle cell needs water, so do the cells in our brain.”

Recommended: What’s the Best Water for Detoxifying and For Drinking?

Drink

Water is still the gold standard of hydration. Eight glasses is the recommended daily amount of water. From there it can be difficult to sort through the latest and greatest hydrating hacks. These include but are not limited to coconut water, aloe water, fruit-infused water, and probiotic water. There are benefits to be had from these, but your best bet for hydration without side effects is filtered or spring water and cranberry lemonade (unadulterated cranberry juice, lemon juice, and stevia).

Caffeinated, alcoholic, and sweetened beverages like coffees, tea, beer, and sodas are classified as diuretics, which is thought to lead to dehydration in the body. Beverages with high sugar content leads to a feeling of dehydration, as water in the body rushes to blood left unbalanced by sugar. Interestingly, milk does not cause dehydration as the sugars in the lactose cause the body to retain the water from it for longer, but dairy causes phlegm and inflammation in the body. Avoid these.

Eat

What you’re eating is at least as important as drinking water. Fried and ultra-processed foods are high in sodium and notorious for drying out the body. Processed foods high in protein like cured meats are a doubly problematic, as they make your kidneys work harder.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are vegetables and fruit. You know, those foods you should be eating. Summer is the perfect time to eat for hydration, with water-heavy fruits and vegetables like melons, tomatoes, and cucumbers are abundant. Eating a salad daily will provide the body with nutrients it needs to function its best while also maintaining healthy water levels.

Recommended: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

You Can Do It

It’s only getting hotter, and this study confirms that dehydration can lead to serious issues. Even if you aren’t an athlete, proper hydration is an important part of staying healthy. Most of the food available at the grocery store can dehydrate you. If you aren’t peeing clearly, maybe it’s time to take a look at what you’re eating.

Sources:

• Dehydration may muddle your thinking – Reuters
• Here’s Why Sugar Makes You So Thirsty – Health.com
• How to Tell If You Are Dehydrated – Livestrong
• 9 Foods That Will Dehydrate You (Slideshow) – The Daily Meal