Do you want a cheap and flavorful way to improve your hydration game while improving other areas of your health? You just found it in the form of cucumber water! Water helps to lubricate the joints, flush waste from the body, and so much more. Adding cucumbers to your water can help you absorb the antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins in cucumbers, giving this drink a healthier bang for your buck.
As it turns out, cucumber water is not just a beverage that’s reserved for fancy spas and four-star hotels. In addition to the health benefits you reap from adding cucumber slices to your water, you also jazz up boring old H2O. Water is the best beverage for your health, but many people are adverse to it because it doesn’t taste as good as soda, juice, or other drinks. Not only is cucumber water refreshing, but it also makes you feel cooler when the weather is warm. Learn more about the health benefits of this cucumber water when you continue reading.
May Aid Weight Loss
So many people love to consume sodas, sports drinks, and sugary juices, all of which are high in calories. Cucumber water has almost zero calories, no sugar, and it contains vitamins and minerals. Sugary, high-calorie drinks cause unhealthy snacking or overeating of other unhealthy foods. The more unhealthy beverages you drink, the more unhealthy foods you eat; thus, you can easily gain more weight. Not only does water help to fill you up, but it also doesn’t cause unhealthy cravings. Replacing a 200-calorie drink with zero-calorie cucumber water every day would cut your caloric intake by 73,000 calories over an entire year. That means that swapping one beverage could help you thwart 20 pounds of weight loss, provided you also eat healthy and exercise.
Lots Of Antioxidants
Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other types of diseases can be caused by oxidative damage. Increasing your antioxidant intake can help reduce free radical damage, delaying cell damage that results from oxidative stress. Antioxidants exist in most fruits and vegetables in the form of vitamins A, C, and E, but antioxidants also include several flavonoids and carotenoids. Adding antioxidant-rich produce items like cucumbers to water gives your standard beverage a nutritional boost. Cucumbers contain magnesium, vitamin A, vitamin K, phosphorus, calcium, and potassium, all of which are antioxidants.
Promotes Hydration
Drinking cucumber water is a fun way to enhance your hydration efforts. By adding extra flavor to the water, cucumber continues to entertain your taste buds, making you more interested in water. Plus, the antioxidants and electrolytes in cucumber help you avoid entering a state of dehydration. There are various recommendations for how much water you should drink, but weather and physical activity also factor into the equation. This is why you should aim to drink half of your bodyweight in ounces of water per day to stay hydrated. If you weigh 150 pounds and divide that by two to get 75, you should drink 75 ounces of water per day.
May Help Lower Blood Pressure
One of the primary reasons that Americans experience high blood pressure is excess sodium consumption. The average adult regularly exceeds the recommended daily intake of sodium by about 1,000-1,400 milligrams. Excess salt intake causes the body to retain fluids, which raises blood pressure. Potassium can help you regulate the amount of sodium that the body retains. Cucumbers are great sources of potassium, and drinking cucumber water helps you consume more of this mineral. Drinking cucumber water on a regular basis, then, may help you lower blood pressure. Please understand that cucumber water alone will not fix the issue. A dietary intervention and regular exercise will probably be necessary to make a big difference.
How To Make Cucumber Water
Ingredients:
- 1 English cucumber, thinly sliced
- 8-10 cups filtered water
- Lemon slices (optional)
Instructions:
- Combine the thinly sliced cucumbers and filtered water in a large pitcher and stir the cucumbers around.
- Place the pitcher in the fridge four about one to two hours so that the cucumbers have time to infuse into the water.
- Remove from the fridge, serve, and enjoy.
