I think pretty much everyone knows that you should drink more water. But I have to say, hydration never really seemed like a truly crucial issue to me, until I got the stomach flu in the middle of a Middle East summer.
Last week I caught a bug (or ate something bad) and spent three days in bed/the bathroom. Now, if you've ever been stricken with food poisoning/stomach flu, you know that water does NOT help things. The only thing I really 'consumed' was Coke, and after 48 hours small bits of bread.
You don't need all the details, but the new experience I had in all of this was being severely dehydrated.
On Wednesday, when my troubles began, I went to work in the morning. This means that I left my house at 8am (when it's already 75 degrees and humid) and immediately began sweating. But I couldn't drink water. It did not sit well. By 11am when I called it, left work, and headed home I had a fever, so I was cold, but it was 90 degrees outside, so I was sweating. I got home and took a shower, nursed a bottle of Coke, but all I wanted was water. I have never been more thirsty in my life.
Granted, this situation is far from an emergency, I was not dying of thirst in the Sahara. But I wanted water like I was, and I knew I couldn't drink any.
The long and short of it is, now that my body is back to normal, I'm drinking as much water as I can at every opportunity I get. I have never (not even after almost 2 years here in Israel) been more aware that hydration is key. It is basic. It is the number one need any of us have.
So folks, wherever you are...take a sip of water. Be grateful that you have enough whenever you want it, and keep your situation hydrated.