You are waiting for the page to load, it’s taking forever. It finally loads, and you fill in the form, but every time you type a letter, it takes five seconds for it to show up. Which means you’re making spelling mistakes, deleting too many letters, re-typing things three times.

You can hear the hard drive whirring, it’s trying it’s hardest but it’s just too overloaded, and every little thing you ask it to do is a struggle.

Except that today, it’s not your laptop that’s struggling, it’s that computer in your head…your brain.

Having brain fog can be incredibly frustrating, concentrating is such an effort, remembering anything is a disaster, and you make mistakes and spend way too much time fixing them up. You’re physically fatigued, clumsy, and slow.

Want to know the one simple thing you can do to help clear brain fog?

Hydrate.

And here’s why…

Just 1-2% dehydration starts to affect you.

Compared to being fully hydrated, just 1-2% dehydration starts to affect not only your physical body but also your ability to think. Physically, you will experience effects such as reduced endurance during exercise, less effort exerted during physical tasks such as exercise or manual labour, higher ratings of fatigue, and experiencing headaches.

These might seem logical, but the effects on cognitive functioning are much more interesting.  Mood changes such as tension and anxiety occur, energy levels drop- even during sedentary activities, and the ability to concentrate or remember things is impaired as well.

But I’m not even thirsty…

If you are feeling thirsty, you are already past the 1-2% dehydration point, as our body doesn’t receive the signal to drink more water until we have reached a mildly dehydrated status.

Going by the amount of water you’ve had to drink that day isn’t going to be an accurate way to tell if you are hydrated enough either, as you can lose around a litre of body fluid through sweat per hour during physical activity, you will lose more water on hot days, and you may not make much progress improving your hydration status with an average amount of water if you start the day off already dehydrated.

The easiest way to tell how your hydration status is looking is to check the colour of your urine- dark urine is a sign of dehydration, your urine should be either a pale yellow or clear.

But I’ve had my 8 glasses today…

To say that a 50kg female would need the same amount of water as a 100kg male doesn’t make much sense does it? Each person will have varying requirements for water depending on weight, activity levels, environment, muscle mass, whether pregnant or breastfeeding, and health factors etc.

In general people need around 35ml/kg body weight a day- roughly a litre a day can come through food eaten, and the rest needs to be through fluids, and anything containing caffeine such as tea, coffee, energy drinks etc achat cialis 20 france. will cause increased urine output so aren’t great options if you are trying to improve your hydration status.

Of course, water is the perfect fluid as there aren’t any extra hidden calories, or salt or sugar, so start carrying around that water bottle with you and pay a little more attention during your bathroom trips so see if you need to up your intake.

Water isn’t going to fix this level of brain fog…

If you’re sure you are well hydrated, and still you are struggling with energy levels, your ability to focus, remember things, and generally just feel at your best, your diet may be to blame.

Healthy eating is often underestimated when it comes to our energy levels, which is why we offer nutrition seminars at our Devon Weight Loss Retreats. The changes our guests have seen in how they feel after just a few days of eating the right things has been reported over and over again.

If you are wanting to lose weight, get fit, and improve your energy levels and wellbeing, why not check out why our proven program makes our Devon Weight Loss & Fitness Retreat so popular.

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