Hydration ~> Mood ~> Leadership – Luciana Pierangeli

What does hydration have to do with Leadership? You may ask.

Let’s Talk About Water

Two big parts of nutrient richness are hydration & the consumption of whole foods.

Water is the root of all life, our body is largely made up of water. In fact, our bodies are made up of 70% water. That means water is very important for our health & performance. As high performance individuals, business leaders, CEOs, high performance athletes, we don’t tend to worry about de-hydration or super-hydration as health concerns. We rather want to focus on hydration for performance.

When we are dehydrated, the first thing that gets affected is our mood. Yes, our mood. Dehydration also affects our cognitive abilities

Dehydration also masks our “hunger” signals, many times all we need is to be hydrated, instead of ingesting foods.

Now a days, we tend to be regularly or consistently dehydrated because we used to consume foods that had lots of water in it when we came into this earth. Currently, because most of our foods are really rich in things like salt, sugars and chemicals, and on top of that we don’t drink enough daily water to deal with these imbalances we end up with being dehydrated.

How do we know that we are optimally hydrated?

* Follow our thirst

* The colour of our urine should be light yellow (towards transparent)

Habits that can help us stay hydrated:

* Have a big bottle of water (minerals added) with us everywhere we go

* Drinking water and hydrating are two different things. In order to make use of water in our body, we need electrolytes

* In the morning to help replenish electrolytes, add 1 pinch of pink Himalayan salt or Celtic salt (any natural salt rich in minerals) to your water (it shouldn’t taste salty)

For people with hypertension, always check with your doctor first, usually, this tiny bit of extra salt shouldn’t have any effect on your blood pressure

So it’s really really important that we top up our water consumption on a daily basis (with minerals in it)

For example; consuming distilled water will not contribute to our hydration as water is magnetic. For example, if we drink distilled water, it will go through our system and it will attract minerals currently in our body, these minerals will then be expelled out of our system via urine, sweat, etc.

Important to remember:

* Quality of the water. Have minerals in the water consumed daily. Ensure the quality of the water is great. Spring water would be first choice.

* Quantity of water. 6 -8 glasses per day. You can check with your own body, what is the correct amount for you.

* Timing. When to drink water?

Ideally 1 hour before meals and or 45 mins after the meals.

Not during meals as it dilutes the digestive juices and slows down digestion.

So, have your meal, wait half an hour or 40 minutes then consume more mineralised water.

It’s actually wonderful to start our day with a nice glass of water right at the start of the day, as when we sleep our body is restoring and uses its resources within, thus, we do wake up mildly dehydrated. This, also shows in the fascia system by being tight when we wake up.

Remember, to stay hydrated as certain activities that we may undertake require a lot more hydration, such as travelling, playing sports. Then, what we can do is anticipate these things because here is a very important thing; when we drink water we don’t get to use it right away, the body needs time to integrate the water into the body at a cellular level, therefore, it does take time between we ingest the water and when it gets absorbed by the body.

Water is one of the most fundamental aspects of health in fact the only thing really more important to our body, is air.

We can live minutes without air, days without water, weeks or even months without food.

Get your mineralised water as a matter of priority.

As leaders we are able to regulate our mood, behaviour and actions to build and enhance performance by managing our own emotions.
As change is constant and people behave in erratic ways, emotionally intelligent leaders are always looking to be better at what we do and how we work with others.

Great news! ~> Emotional intelligence can be developed through appropriate coaching.

Join me on this journey in becoming the Emotionally Bold leader you are.

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