Water!

May 9th, 2015| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

You can be drunk when you haven’t drunk!

In recent article in Physiology & Behavior, titled “Mild Hypohydration Increases the Frequency of Driver Errors during a Prolonged, Monotonous Driving Task,” researchers from Loughborough University in Leicestershire, showed that even mildly dehydrated drivers make more than twice as many mistakes as those adequately hydrated. And the number of mistakes was equivalent those who were driving after consuming alcohol.

In other words, the levels of dehydrated-driver errors were similar to those found in drivers with a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, the limit in most states in the US (also the limit in the UK). I.e., you can be drunk if you haven’t drunk.

Said Professor Ron Maughan, Emeritus Professor of Sport and Exercise Nutrition, who led the study:

We all deplore drink driving, but we don’t usually think about the effects of other things that affect our driving skills, and one of those is not drinking and dehydration.”

Employing a driving simulator, they put volunteers through a battery of tests while hydrated and while dehydrated. The tests included a two-hour continuous monotonous drive on a “road” with curves and bends and hard shoulders and rumble strips, and all that. On hydration days the drivers were supplied 200 ml of fluid every hour; on dehydration days, only 25 ml/hour.

Then the researchers assessed lane drifting, speed of breaking, and other parameters under conditions of hydration and of dehydration. Big increase in errors in the latter: 47 “incidents” when the drivers were hydrated. The number jumped to 101 when they were not.

And since about 65–70% of all accidents occur due to driver errors, this is a sobering (ahem!) finding. Dehydration, the authors of the study continue, can produce negative mood changes, reduction of concentration and alertness, diminish short-term memory, cause fatigue and headaches, all of which contribute to the dangerous potential for driver error.

So here’s another reason to be hydrated. So you won’t be driving drunk.

But there’s another kind of hydration that’s even more important.

One of the more fascinating encounters of Jesus in John’s Gospel is his meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well in John 4. Asking her for a drink of water, he initiates a conversation with her, in which he tantalizingly declared that he had something to give her.

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’
you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. …
Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst;
but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
John 4:10, 14

Living water—not the kind that would make one thirsty in a few hours. This water would last forever (“springing up to eternal life”). Living water—far superior to the water of Jacob’s well. No more Jacob’s well; now it’s Jesus’ well.

This was abundant life Jesus was offering to the woman—life with all its needs met to the fullest, forever. He slakes thirst forever, He sustains life forever, He satisfies life forever.

So the woman left her water pot, and went into the city and said to the men,
“Come, see …—this is not the Christ, is it?”
John 4:29

The Samaritan woman had come to draw water, but at the end of the story, she abandoned her water pot and went to tell everyone about Jesus.

Yes, of course, drink water so you won’t be drunk. But make sure you partake of the eternal supply that Jesus alone provides.