8 Benefits of staying hydrated: Energy, clarity, and beyond

We all know we need to stay hydrated. After all, when we’re dehydrated, we can feel it: fatigue, poor athletic performance, sluggish-ness, headaches. Not to mention actually feeling thirsty.

But beyond preventing dehydration symptoms, the other benefits of staying hydrated are often overlooked. And they can be quite far-reaching, from mental to physical. Here are the eight we’ll talk through in this article:

1. Better energy
2. Athletic performance
3. Mental clarity
4. Mood support
5. Fewer muscle cramps
6. Healthy blood pressure
7. Skin hydration
8. Digestive regularity

If you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll also know the other important part of this conversation: Electrolytes. Because staying hydrated — and the benefits of doing so — doesn’t just mean consuming enough fluids. It actually means supporting your body’s fluid balance, which requires both fluids and electrolytes to maintain.

If you’re just here for the science behind the eight benefits of hydration, jump here. But if you want a refresher on why the fluid:electrolyte balance matters, that’s where we’ll start first.

What Hydration Means

Staying hydrated is synonymous with maintaining proper fluid balance in your body. Fluid balance means having the right amount of water in the right places — which is where electrolytes come in, particularly sodium and potassium. Sodium maintains water balance outside of cells, while potassium maintains water balance inside cells.

You can think of it a bit like maintaining a Goldilocks balance. You don’t want too much, or too little, of one or the other. And when you get this fluid balance right, it helps keep your blood flowing, sweat glands sweating, muscles contracting, digestion moving along, and much more.

Your fluid balancing system runs mostly on autopilot — thanks, hormones and kidneys for helping us excrete and retain water! But you have direct control over two factors:

1. The water you drink  
2. The electrolytes you consume

For most healthy folks, thirst is the best guide to optimal water intake. Ignoring thirst can lead to net water loss (dehydration) or net water gain (overhydration) in the body. Both dehydration and overhydration cause similar symptoms like fatigue, muscle cramps, headaches, and weakness. Drinking to thirst is a helpful rule of thumb to avoid these symptoms.

Electrolytes are the other factor within your control. Yet many folks don’t get enough of these important minerals. Science-backed ranges to shoot for are 4–6 grams of sodium and 3.5–5 grams of potassium daily.

8 Hydration Benefits

The benefits of hydration manifest when you get enough water and electrolytes. Let's see what you'll notice when hydrating correctly. 

#1: Better energy

Low energy is a common symptom of both dehydration and sodium deficiency. Let's talk about sodium since that’s the part many folks are unfamiliar with. 

Sodium supports energy in a variety of ways. It helps convert food into cellular energy (ATP), helps your nervous system send the signals that tell your muscles to contract, and supports hormones that affect how you feel. 

Active and low-carb folks are especially prone to low-sodium issues. Active folks lose lots of sodium through sweat, and low-carb folks lose lots of sodium through urine. Ever heard of the “keto flu,” hallmarked by fatigue and sluggishness? Yeah, oftentimes it’s a sodium deficiency issue. Fix the sodium deficiency, and you may get a nice energy bump. 

#2: Athletic performance

Dehydration is linked to poor performance. A 2010 meta-analysis found that dehydration greater than 3% of body mass loss impaired athletes' power output during endurance exercise. A 2015 meta-analysis found that a similar level of dehydration impaired athletes' muscle strength, endurance, and power.

Proactively guzzling water to prevent dehydration isn’t the answer, though. Remember fluid balance? Drinking plain fluids beyond thirst dilutes blood sodium levels, leading to exercise-associated hyponatremia — which leads right back to performance-impairing symptoms like fatigue, muscle cramps, confusion, and worse. 

Instead, drinking electrolyte water to thirst can replace both the fluids and electrolytes lost in sweat, and simultaneously protect against dehydration and overhydration. Check out our performance hydration guide for more science behind hydrating for athletic performance.

#3: Mental clarity

Adequate water and sodium levels support brain function. If water or sodium becomes unbalanced, folks may have difficulty concentrating, aka "brain fog." They may also get headaches. 

Sodium is especially important to brain function. Your brain is a tight bundle of nerve cells — sodium helps pass the electrical signals between cells that allow them to communicate and form thoughts. Proper fluid balance also keeps your brain the right size and suspended in the right amount of liquid, supporting cognition; poor hydration can lead to brain swelling or shrinkage, impairing cognition.

#4: Mood support

Researchers have also linked dehydration and sodium deficiency to mood impairments. For instance, sodium-depleted rats loaf around their cages, ignoring popular rat pleasures like drinking sugar water. Researchers believe this depressive behavior stems from changes in the brain's reward centers. Essentially, sodium depletion rewires the mammalian brain to be unhappy until the salt appetite is sated. 

The animal evidence may translate to humans. For instance, a 2020 study found a link between blood sodium levels and depression in dialysis patients. Anecdotally, I've heard from many active folks reporting enhanced mood from increasing sodium intake, and have felt this effect myself.

#5: Fewer muscle cramps

Insufficient sodium is a key contributor to muscle cramps. Consider the following:

• Industrial workers in the 1920s stopped cramping after receiving salt supplements.
• Football players who lose more sodium through sweat tend to cramp more.
• Dialysis patients cramp less when sodium is normalized.

It’s interesting to note that sodium is the more important part of the hydration equation when it comes to cramps, and insufficient water doesn't appear to cramp us up. The research suggests dehydration (even over 5% body mass loss in water) doesn't increase one's susceptibility to cramps. Other electrolytes like potassium can also play a role — learn more about muscle cramps here.

#6: Healthy blood pressure

Proper hydration with water and electrolytes helps your blood maintain its volume. And maintaining blood volume helps you maintain blood pressure, a key marker of heart health. 

If you're dehydrated, blood volume drops (less fluid, less volume). Low blood pressure, fatigue, dizziness, and nausea can result. Insufficient sodium can also decrease blood volume and blood pressure. 

But wait, aren't we supposed to restrict sodium to prevent high blood pressure, a primary heart disease risk factor? While sodium increases blood volume and pressure temporarily, a large body of data suggests that sodium restriction below 2.3 grams/day is NOT linked to better heart health outcomes.

Potassium is less controversial. Higher intakes are correlated with lower risks of high blood pressure. Why? Because potassium balances the blood-volume-raising effect of sodium by increasing sodium excretion through urine and relaxing blood vessels. 

TLDR takeaway? Consume enough fluids, sodium, and potassium to maintain healthy blood volume and blood pressure. 

#7: Skin hydration

Dehydration can cause dry or cracked skin. Water supports the stratum corneum, the outermost skin barrier the world sees. When you're low on water, the stratum corneum dries up. Lotions won't fix this internally-caused problem. Peruse our article on restoring dehydrated skin if this summary grabs y

#8: Digestive regularity

Getting enough water keeps your bowels moving regularly (fun fact: feces is about 75% water molecules). Unsurprisingly, constipation is a common dehydration symptom. Stay hydrated to stay regular, folks.  

How To Stay Hydrated

Want to maintain fluid balance and snag those sweet hydration benefits? Drinking electrolyte water to thirst is a good rule of thumb to follow. 

The thirst part is self-explanatory. Just keep fluids handy and sip when thirsty. This’ll work for most folks (the exceptions being older age and some medical conditions, which can disrupt the thirst mechanism).

For the electrolytes portion? The evidence suggests you should include about 1 gram of sodium per liter (~32 oz) of fluid to replace sweat sodium losses — and that your mileage will vary. Play around with the sodium-to-fluid ratio until you minimize low-sodium symptoms and quench your thirst. You'll feel the difference when you get it right.