Can Drinking A Glass Of Water Make Your Brain Work 14% Quicker?

Think about all the things that your brain has to do. If you think that your day is hectic, or that managing a household or a department at work can get harried, think about the poor misunderstood brain. There are millions of messages coming and going out continually. The post office that never shuts down, what if there was a way to give it a break? What if something as easy as drinking water said to your brain “You take a rest, I got this covered”?

Have you ever been staring at a piece of paper wondering how to spell “are”? You can’t believe that you actually can’t remember how to spell the word. The reason why, is that at certain times, the brain is just literally overworked. There are times when something has got to give. When you find yourself in those situations, unable to come up with an answer, pick up a glass of water, take a breath and wait for it to come. There is research that indicates that the act of drinking a single glass of water can sharpen your thinking skills.

Like trying to think when you have to go to the bathroom, there is a constant distraction somewhere in the recesses of your brain. Not being able to focus if your body is sending you messages that it is thirsty, you are wasting your brain energy for no good. Simply give it what it wants and then you can focus on more important things at hand.

The University of East London wanted to study the effects of thirst on brain power. Their hypothesis was that if a person is thirsty, and squelches that thirst instead of holding onto it, the brain is allowed to focus on more important things. So they set out to experiment whether they were indeed right. Their results were that when the study participant took out the factor of thirst by satiating it with water, they were able to respond 14% quicker on average than those who held onto the thirst and allowed it to distract their brain processes.

The study results were not the first to suggest that water is the solution to a slow response rate. Dr. Edmonds concluded in previous research that children who were allowed a cup of water before beginning an exam, tested better a third of the time.

There is other research to suggest that a brain which is dehydrated can have parts of the grey area which are shrunken, leading to having a harder time thinking. Others believe that it is just the action of drinking that brings a person’s focus back to center. What we do know is that there has been no evidence to suggest that drinking water can in anyway hinder the thought process. For those who subscribe to the idea of philosophy of “do no harm”, there is no argument against keeping your body well hydrated, or taking the additional step of drinking a small glass of water to give yourself a little heads up on your next task.