Does It Bother You? Do you know what is underrated? Being hydrated

By Pat Glenn ’16

Photo by Jordan Alworth
Staff photo

Does it bother you that no one in this school hydrates enough? When I look around the school, and watch my peers walk by, I notice one thing above all else: barely anyone is pumping their body with some much needed fluids. I mean, c’mon guys, water is essential. While the amount of water needed to be consumed daily varies from individual to individual (depending upon body weight, physical activity and various other factors), the bottom line is that a large portion of people at West Essex are not drinking enough water.

While I try to write on diverse topics for this column, some topics hit closer to home than others. In this case, the topic is very near and dear to my heart. Personally, I discovered the wonders of hydration early in my high school career as a freshman football player. At the tender age of 14, I was struggling through the hot summer heat during the grueling summer training camp. My body felt depleted of resources at all times.

After a few weeks of this, I started to take the coach’s recommendations of drinking as much as possible very seriously (Freda loves his glasses of water). Although back then I didn’t even have a rough estimate of how much to drink daily, I knew that as long as I constantly had a bottle of water in my hands, I was getting somewhere.

After training camp came to a close and the school year began, I stuck to the program that I had recently adopted, and was amazed by the results. I was more alert in the classroom, energized for practice and overall felt like a (reasonably) well-oiled machine. Although my transition to wasteful plastic bottles to my signature jug was still years in the making, I was still making some serious strides in my quest toward ultimate hydration.

I understand that this may not sound like a pertinent issue or an exciting topic. Even people in this very classroom doubt the importance and relevance of hydrating. What I want to do is turn my frustration with the student population into constructive criticism that will ultimately (hopefully) lead everyone down the path of hydration prosperity. What I’m talking about is hydrating responsibly.

Now, many of you may be saying to yourselves “Hey guy! Where do you get off? I drink a lot already!” My answer to you is that while many may be drinking water and “hydrating,” you are not doing so properly.

By hydrating responsibly, we are ingesting the appropriate amount of water, using reusable bottles that reduce the number of plastic bottles consumed, as well as limiting the amount of money we spend on one of our basic human necessities, which brings me to my second point: reducing plastic waste. This is one component of the disastrous hydration situation that has global environmental implications.

If an individual drinks a gallon a day (128 oz.), then they would be consuming eight water bottles a day. Over the school week and through the entire school year, those bottles add up, both in your wallet and out in the environment. While recycling these plastic bottles can be effective (shame on those in the cafeteria who choose to blatantly throw away their Poland Spring bottles), it is far more environmentally sound and effective to use a BPA-free, lead-free reusable bottle.

We must all hydrate adequately throughout the day and feel the positive benefits of ingesting nature’s purest resource. However, we must also remember there are good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. If you’re gonna hydrate, then do it responsibly.