Get Healthy, Naturally: What You Should Know about Hydration and Supplements

Good health feels like an elusive state of being, when information is confusing and hard to follow. At Epoch, we believe there are simple ways to get started and to integrate healthy practices into your daily lives.

In this week’s Wednesday Wisdom, we break down some of the important things you should know about maintaining good nutrition and hydration in the body, in honour of the upcoming nutrition and hydration week from the 16th to the 22nd March.

In anticipation of this week’s important reminder about your health, here are Epoch’s key tips on what your body needs to function at its best.

1. Hydrate regularly for healing

Drinking enough water each day is vital for many reasons. It keeps body temperature regular, helps to lubricate your joints, prevents infections, delivers the nutrients you consume to your cells and keeps all your organs functioning correctly. It can also affect the quality of your sleep, cognition and mood.

This means that hydration has a healing factor twice over: not only does drinking water help the body maintain itself during the day, but also when you sleep at night. Sleep is the time when much of the body’s healing gets done.

If you’re struggling to drink enough water in the day, don’t forget that you can also get hydration though many other things you consume – like water-rich fruits and vegetables (e.g. grapes, watermelon, oranges, or cucumbers, celery, tomatoes, etc). You can also find water stored in foods like oatmeal, soups, and salads. If you simply don’t like the taste of water, consider adding lemon slices or fruit pieces.

2. Supplement vitamins and minerals if you aren’t getting enough of them naturally

Some of the most important vitamins and minerals you have to ensure you are consuming or supplementing enough of are:

Omega-3: The building block of cellular health

Omega-3 is an essential component of every cell in our bodies, which is why it’s often referred to as an ‘essential fatty acid’. There are three types of omega-3 fatty acids: ALA, EPA and DHA. It can be found in fish (like mackerel, salmon, oysters or sardines) as well as flax seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, soybeans, as well as other animal products and some vegetables.

Omega-3 is one of the most important nutrients for many other reasons, including its ability to help fight against depression and anxiety. This nutrient can also help improve eye health, reducing the risk of macular degeneration of the eye. It’s also crucial for brain health, especially during pregnancy and the early life of infants. 

Magnesium: Facilitator of enzyme reactions in the body

Magnesium is involved in over 300 enzyme reactions in the body, and plays a role in bone health, diabetes prevention, cardiovascular health, preventing migraine headaches and anxiety. 

At Epoch, we stock magnesium from a company called Cytoplan, who we chose because they create their supplements from whole food extract, rather than a chemical compound created in a lab environment. Taking magnesium as a supplement 30 minutes prior to going to bed can really help relax the muscles and aid our sleep.

Vitamin D3: Cellular repair specialist

Vitamin D3 is sometimes known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’ because we do produce it naturally when we are exposed to the sun. However, in long, dark winters, it’s tough to get enough Vitamin D3 naturally. This can be a real problem, as D3 transforms into a hormone in the body that helps us to absorb calcium and phosphorus. 

Though 99% of the Vitamin D in your body will be used to regulate calcium, the rest strengthens the immune system and maintains muscle strength. The role it plays in cell division and ensuring healthy bones and teeth makes it important to supplement sufficiently.

Probiotics: Gut health simplified

Taking a good probiotic can help ensure your gut is always healthy, absorbing the nutrients you digest efficiently. It’s all about balancing the bacteria in your digestive system and promoting healthy gut bacteria which can have benefits for weight loss, digestive health, immune function, and more. More studies recently have also shown that gut health can be linked to mood and mental health, as well as lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol levels.

3. You can’t supplement a bad diet

It’s important to note that you can’t supplement your way out of a bad diet. Here at Epoch, we’re passionate about the importance of a diet strong in leafy greens and other vegetables. In particular, it’s important to ensure you’re eating all sorts of colourful veggies, as the phytonutrients within will reduce free radicals, and therefore reduce the likelihood of being ill. This approach can also reduce the effects of ageing.

We also believe in these 3 big don’ts:

1. Wheat: wheat is likely to damage the gut and increase chronic inflammation, as well as being linked to poor brain health so limit or remove as much wheat as you can from your diet.
2. Dairy: dairy is primarily meant to be a hormone delivery system between a mother and baby, so it’s really not necessary for us as adults. It’s pro-inflammatory in the body, and can easily be replaced with other things. Consume leafy greens for calcium instead.
3. Sugar: the most addictive part of our diets! With a whole podcast on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5ea_m5GDEE, we’ve taken care to spread the message. Listen more to find out just how sugar can affect your health.

A combination of all these things can help your body to work more effectively, and help you to sleep better, promoting healing in the body. In next week’s blog, we’ll continue talking about how we can sleep better for better health and look more closely at the nutrients that can help us sleep.

With Love

The Epoch Team 🧡