AquAid – Encouraging Access to Drinking Water in Schools

AquAid – Encouraging Access to Drinking Water in Schools

Recently, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, spoke of his wish to have all London primary schools become ‘water only’ zones.

The reasoning behind this stems from a report that found that nearly 40 percent of children in London between ages 10 and 11 are obese. Mayor Khan said, “Making water freely available and introducing measures like ‘water-only’ in schools are some of the simple things we can do to not only tackle childhood obesity, but also improve behaviour and learning.”

AquAid has always promoted and encouraged proper hydration habits for every individual; however, a large portion of our focus has always been and continues to be ensuring the provision of large capacity water coolers, designed specifically for the school environment, to schools throughout the UK. Our water coolers can either be Mains-Fed for large schools where the water consumption is high or, Bottle-Fed for schools where there are no water mains close to a particular area.

This is because, at AquAid, we understand that remaining properly hydrated helps to improve attention, short-term memory, and well-being. The fact is, a hydrated child is a much happier child and to this end, we have always encouraged our school customers to be able to provide readily available drinking water for both the children and school faculties.

Further to that, our water coolers are all equipped with anti-bacterial taps to ensure safe drinking water, and various drainage options to reduce overflow and spillage wherever possible. Moreover, to help create and instil better hydration habits, we also offer free refillable drinking water bottles and free school posters to help keep water top of mind during the school day.

Why H2O Hydration Maintenance is vital during Winter

Why H2O Hydration Maintenance is vital during Winter

As we pile on the layers, wrap up warmly, turn up the heat and miss the usual thirst signals, it’s understandable that we may believe that we need to drink less water than we would when it’s warmer.

The exact opposite is true though.

Expelling water vapour means you’re dehydrating. Although we aren’t sweating as much, our bodies lose moisture in other ways – a clear indication is the water vapour we puff out from our nose and mouth when we’re outside in the cold.

Exercise as much as you do when it’s warmer. If you’re experiencing mid-afternoon slump or need a serious shot of caffeine post lunch to stave off feeling fatigue, you are most likely already dehydrated. We function more slowly when dehydrated, to avoid this, maintain regular hydration habits: at the very least ensuring that you’re drinking water throughout the day. As when it’s warmer, treat the water cooler at your premises as your new best friend, visit often and replenish your water. By keeping moving and active, you’re helping your body function better.

Keeping winter hydrated helps your body’s immune system. Another factor of dehydration is the weakening of our immune system barriers: the mucous membranes in our lungs and sinus passages can dry out, thereby reducing their resistance to infections. By keeping ourselves properly hydrated, we can better ensure that the barriers used to protect our bodies from colds and flu remains intact and functioning properly.

Stave off winter weight gain. The temptation to hibernate is (understandably) strong during dark days and cold nights. Sadly, we’re not bears and we don’t get to sleep through winter living off the fat we’ve accumulated through the summer months. Ignore the instinct to reach for the comfort food – at the very least, drink a glass of water before your next meal.  Our brain often mistakes thirst for hunger, which means that after drinking water, not only will that hunger trigger be satisfied, but you will also be a little better hydrated.

When the temperatures plummet, it is not as difficult to maintain hydration levels as one would think – in fact, with AquAid, your options to up your water intake increase quite a bit. We offer a range of high quality hot and cold water coolers; hot water dispensers; hot water boilers and Instant Taps: tailor-made to suit all your hydration requirements – whatever the weather.

Drinking Water and your Brain Power

Drinking Water and your Brain Power

During some recent research I was quite amazed and impressed with the extensive scope of our brain function. What was even more surprising was how something as simple as increasing our water consumption has a radical and almost instantaneous positive effect on brain...
AquAid Water Coolers: A few tips on how to maintain hydration in winter

AquAid Water Coolers: A few tips on how to maintain hydration in winter

You may have read a recent blog around how becoming dehydrated when it’s colder is more common than we think.

In order to prevent winter dehydration, our first suggestion was to install a hot and cold water cooler or water boiler from AquAid.

Here we follow up with a few helpful tips to make sure you are hydration happy during the colder months:

Kickstart your day with warm lemon water. The benefits are enormous, boosting both your hydration and health levels. If lemon makes you sour, jeuj up your warm water with ginger and a dollop of honey.

Increase your hot drink intake. You don’t need to be bound to drinking only water (although it is a great base) when it’s chilly. There are loads of warm or hot drinks that will not only keep you warm but that also count towards your being hydrated. Think veggie soup etc.

Take the chill off. When it’s cold, our bodies do what they can to preserve our core heat. This includes withdrawing blood from our extremities. With less blood circulating, our kidneys expel more water, which again, can lead to dehydration.  To avoid excessive urination, keep active instead of becoming sedentary. The less active you are, the easier it is to become cold.

Watch your breath! When the temperature lowers, you lose more fluid as you breathe. Those puffs of breath are water vapour you’re exhaling. Water being expelled with each exhalation.  If you breath is constantly fogging up your glasses or your surrounds, it’s highly likely you need to quench your thirst, post haste, before you become dehydrated. So use your breath as a reminder that you need to keep up your water intake.

However you choose to keep warm these colder months, remember to keep up with drinking water: hydration is equally as important irrespective of the temperatures outside.

How to properly hydrate during hibernation

How to properly hydrate during hibernation

Summertime in the UK is a warm and hopefully fond memory, but it’s now time for us to face the incoming chill – and by chill, we’re not referring to the refreshing drinking water dispensed from your AquAid water cooler (more on this later).

From ancient times, humans are wired to seek warmth when the temperatures drop – blame it on our rather thin body cover i.e. skin, unlike that of many of our fellow mammals who cleverly grow thick coats when it’s cold.

It’s therefore no surprise that we easily tend to eschew maintaining our warmer weather hydration habits, as our natural instinct is to associate drinking water more with keeping cool than with keeping adequately hydrated.

This is a mistake though as a survey conducted by the RNLI shows that a staggering 89% of Britons are inadequately hydrated.

It isn’t hard to dehydrate when it’s cold: we tend not to exert ourselves as much in our day-to-day activities (unless we’re exercising) so it’s easy to miss the usual indicators of dehydration. We also may not realise that there are other indicators of water loss that don’t occur when it’s warm.

As we’re wearing more clothing, we’re heavier. This means that our bodies work harder (this can be by as much as between 10% and up to 40%) producing sweat. We often don’t realise we’re sweating as this is absorbed by the additional clothing.

Exhaling water. Another indicator of water loss we may miss is in in the vapour we see when we exhale. That vapour being expelled is yet more water we’re losing.

We tend to urinate more often.  Although the mechanism isn’t fully understood, it’s believed that blood is drawn from the extremities when we’re cold. This means reduced blood circulation, consequently our kidneys excrete more water.

But how to combat cold weather dehydration? It’s simpler and easier than one might think. If cool water doesn’t appeal, you can always increase your liquid intake by drinking hot drinks.

The first step is to install a hot and cold water cooler or water boiler from AquAid. This will set you up in an instant, and you’ll be able to maintain your daily water consumption, whatever the weather.