Drinking water in the morning is very important for everyone. On a small scale, it can affect a person's mental state for the day, and on a large scale, it can prevent various diseases. However, not all water is suitable for drinking upon waking up in the morning. Below, I will introduce you to the types of water that are not suitable for drinking upon waking up in the morning.
1. Tap Water
Some people are used to turning on the faucet in the morning and filling a glass with tap water to drink, which is incorrect. The tap water that has been stagnant in the faucet and pipes overnight is static. This water and the metal pipe walls and faucet metal chambers will undergo hydration reactions, forming metal-contaminated water. Moreover, residual microorganisms in the tap water will also multiply. This water contains a large amount of substances harmful to the human body and may also harbor an acute respiratory infectious bacterium that threatens human health—Legionella. Therefore, the tap water that flows out first when you turn on the faucet in the early morning is undrinkable stagnant water. So, if you have this habit, please correct it immediately to avoid harming your health.
2. Boiled Water that has been Left for a Long Time
After boiled water has been left for a long time, the nitrogen-containing organic matter in it will continuously decompose into nitrites. Especially for boiled water that has been stored for too long, it is inevitably contaminated with bacteria, which accelerates the decomposition of nitrogen-containing organic matter and thus produces more nitrites. After drinking such water, nitrites combine with hemoglobin, affecting the oxygen transport function of the blood.
Therefore, the residual water in a thermos that has been boiled multiple times over many days, or water that has been boiling on a stove for a long time, has already had its composition changed and is undrinkable. You should drink water that has been boiled once and not for more than 24 hours.
In addition, various types of bottled and桶装 (barreled) purified water and mineral water should not be stored for too long. Large bottles or barrels of purified water and mineral water should not be consumed after 3 days.
3. Salt Water
Some people believe that drinking light salt water is beneficial to health, so they drink it upon waking up in the morning. This understanding is indeed mistaken. It is true that drinking light salt water is beneficial to health, which is necessary for replenishing fluids after sweating in the summer, but for replenishing fluids upon waking up in the morning, it is not only useless but also a harmful practice that endangers health.
Physiological research suggests that during a full night's sleep, a person does not drink a drop of water, yet respiration, sweating, and urination are ongoing. These physiological activities consume and lose a lot of water. When you wake up in the morning, your blood is already in a concentrated state. Drinking a certain amount of plain water at this time can quickly dilute the blood and correct the hyperosmolar dehydration that occurred during the night. Drinking salt water, on the contrary, will worsen the hyperosmolar dehydration and make you feel even more thirsty. Besides, the early morning is the first peak when human blood pressure rises, and drinking salt water will make blood pressure even higher, which is harmful to health.
4. Beverages
The first glass of water in the morning should preferably not be commercially available juices, colas, sodas, coffee, milk, or other beverages. Most carbonated drinks like sodas and colas contain citric acid, which accelerates the excretion of calcium and reduces the calcium content in the blood during metabolism. Long-term consumption can lead to calcium deficiency. Other beverages have a diuretic effect, so drinking them in the early morning not only fails to effectively replenish the body's needed water but also increases the body's demand for water, thus causing dehydration in the body.
Juice, milk, and coffee are also not suitable as the first beverage in the early morning because these substances cannot provide the water that the body needs most at this time. They also cause the digestive and absorption systems to work when the body is in a state of dehydration, which is not good for health.
Therefore, everyone should remember for their own health that the four types of water mentioned above should not be drunk upon waking up in the morning.