Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Drink Water & Tea, All Day

I used to be a Diet Coke fiend, drinking 6 to 8 cans a day, leaching the calcium out of my bones, eating away the enamel at my teeth, and requiring a constant supply of expensive Nexium to counter-act the massive doses of acidity the Diet Coke & Coke Zero provided.  It also used to make me insanely hungry, driving the next can to be addicitively opened, sequentially, 2 or 3 dozen a week.

In 2008, I switched over to tea, and drink caffeinated teas throughout the working day, refilling at least once an hour, sometimes twice an hour, depending on how much sleep I had and what quality slumber it was the night before.  I also keep a 12 ounce glass of reverse osmosis water, next to the tea cup, to "refill" when I'm stuck on multi-hour phone calls.  All of this ingested liquid keeps the renal system working really well AND it helps to AVOID kidney stones,  especially being in very low humidity Arizona, where dehydration can easily become an issue.

So when I saw this chart the other day on the interwebs, I thought to myself "how useful!"  ...it gives a quick, easily readable, graduated scale of color intensity that can help early identification of renal issues.  And, I used to be a boy scout too - my dad was the Scout Master, and my older brother was already in the troop, so I sort of 'had to', but after I got my "Scout First Class" badge (my brother stopped at "Second Class") and my dad stepped down to "assistant", and High School began, I hung up my olive green scout shirt, and shelved my scout hand book. 

2 comments:

  1. Every 2 summers I take a herd of scouts on a wonderful backpacking trip into NM mountains. Our mantra is "clear and copious."

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    Replies
    1. I am curious, did you see much haze / smoke from the AZ fires last time you camped in NM?

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