Drinking More Water Not Working? Here's Why

Why drinking more water isn't working: hydration and electrolytes explained

18th July 2026 Nutrition

If you've been told to drink more water and it didn't fix the tired, flat, foggy feeling you were chasing, you're not broken. The advice was just incomplete. Hydration isn't about how much water you drink. It's about how much your body can actually pull into the bloodstream and hold onto, and that's a sodium-driven process.

Research has consistently shown that even mild dehydration of 1-2% of body mass can impair endurance performance, increase cardiovascular strain, and drag down mood and concentration (Sawka et al., American College of Sports Medicine position stand, 2007; Ganio et al., British Journal of Nutrition, 2011). Plain water alone often doesn't do the job. Electrolytes do.

Key takeaways

Even mild dehydration of 1-2% body mass impairs performance, cognition and mood (Sawka et al., 2007; Ganio et al., 2011). That's the level a normal day can drift into.
Sodium drives fluid absorption. Water doesn't cross the gut wall on its own. Where sodium goes, water follows. That's why clinical rehydration solutions are built around electrolytes, not water.
Most hydration products miss the middle. Sports drinks are built for fuelling. "Wellness" electrolytes underdose sodium for taste. High-sodium formulas are built for edge cases. The everyday formula is what's missing.
Hydrate uses chelated mineral forms (magnesium bisglycinate, potassium citrate, calcium citrate) for better absorption than the cheap forms used in most powders.
275mg sodium per serving. Enough to drive absorption. Not so much that you can't drink it daily.

Why hydration isn't passive
The signs you're a bit dehydrated without knowing it
Why your hydration needs aren't fixed
Electrolytes: the part most people skip
Where most hydration products fall short
How Awesome Hydrate is built differently
Hydration and energy: the link nobody talks about
FAQ

1. Why hydration isn't passive

Most people think of hydration as something that just happens. You drink water, your body absorbs it, job done.

It isn't that simple. Fluid balance is tightly regulated, and water doesn't cross from your gut into your bloodstream on its own. It gets pulled across by osmotic gradients and active transport systems, and sodium is the main driver of that process. Where sodium goes, water follows.

Which is why drinking more water on its own often doesn't move hydration status the way you'd expect. Without enough electrolytes, particularly sodium, a chunk of what you drink doesn't get absorbed efficiently. It passes through. That's also why clinical rehydration solutions used in medicine are built around sodium and glucose ratios, not just water. The goal isn't intake. It's absorption.

2. The signs you're a bit dehydrated without knowing it

The classic dehydration story is the marathon runner cramping in the heat. That's the dramatic version. The everyday version is much quieter.

You're not thirsty. You're not falling over. But the session feels harder than it should. Your focus dips around 3pm. Your mood is a touch flat. Recovery from yesterday's training lingers longer than it used to.

Sawka et al.'s 2007 position stand for the American College of Sports Medicine summarised the research: dehydration in the region of 1-2% of body mass starts to impair endurance performance, increases cardiovascular strain at a given workload, and pulls down concentration and mood. Ganio et al.'s 2011 study in the British Journal of Nutrition found cognitive function and mood took measurable hits at this same mild level of dehydration.

That's the level a normal day can drift into. Especially if you train, drink caffeine, or sweat without thinking about it.

3. Why your hydration needs aren't fixed

Let's level with each other. Hydration advice on the internet is mostly written like everyone needs the same amount of water. Eight glasses, two litres, whatever the number is this week. The reality is that your needs change daily based on what you're doing.

Some inputs that push the bar up:

Training. Even moderate sessions can move 0.5-1.5L of fluid via sweat per hour.
Heat. Doesn't have to be the Sahara. A warm office in summer does it.
Caffeine. Mild diuretic effect. Not catastrophic, but worth knowing.
Alcohol. Significant diuretic effect. The hangover is partly a hydration story.
Low carb diets. Reduced glycogen means less water stored in muscle.
Poor sleep. Disrupted hormonal balance and mouth breathing both shift fluid status.

None of these individually is dramatic. Together, they shift your baseline by a litre or more some days. Most people don't adjust their intake to match. They drink the same amount they always do and assume hydration is sorted.

4. Electrolytes: the part most people skip

When people decide to take hydration seriously, they usually pick one of two routes. Drink more water and hope. Or grab a sports drink off the shelf, drink it pre-workout, and call it done.

Both routes miss the actual point.

The four electrolytes that matter for daily fluid regulation are sodium, potassium, magnesium and chloride. Each one does a slightly different job:

Sodium is the lead actor. It regulates plasma volume, drives fluid retention, and is the main electrolyte lost in sweat.
Potassium pairs with sodium to support cellular fluid balance and muscle function.
Magnesium contributes to neuromuscular control and energy metabolism (Gröber, Schmidt & Kisters, Nutrients 2015).
Chloride helps maintain osmotic balance and supports digestion.

Miss these, and hydration becomes inefficient. Hammer them too hard, and the drink becomes something you can't bring yourself to take every day. The trick is getting the dose right.

Baker's 2017 review in Sports Medicine on sweat rate and electrolyte loss highlighted the wide variation between individuals. Sweat sodium loss ranges from around 200mg to over 2,000mg per litre depending on the person. So daily intake needs to land in the middle for most people, not at either extreme.

5. Where most hydration products fall short

If you scan the market, hydration products mostly sit at the extremes.

High-sugar sports drinks like Lucozade Sport are built for fuelling during prolonged endurance exercise. They do that job. They're not built for daily hydration in a normal person who isn't running a marathon.

At the other end, many "wellness" electrolyte products keep sodium deliberately low to improve taste. The result is something that feels like hydration (you're drinking water with a flavour) but doesn't really shift absorption in the way the research supports.

And then there's the high-sodium camp, formulas like LMNT. These work in extreme conditions, hot climates, very high sweat losses, long endurance days. For most people on a normal Wednesday, they're too much. The dose is built for the edge case, not the average.

What's missing is the middle. A product built around how most people actually train, work, and sweat day to day.

6. How Awesome Hydrate is built differently

That's the gap we built Hydrate to fill. Not for ultra-endurance, not for sedentary office life, but for the bulk of people in between: training a few times a week, working hard, occasionally sweating heavily, wanting hydration that quietly works in the background.

Per serving (1.5 scoops, 9g):

Electrolyte	Amount	Form used
Sodium	275mg	Sodium chloride + sodium citrate
Chloride	325mg	From sodium chloride
Potassium	150mg	Potassium citrate
Magnesium	95mg	Magnesium bisglycinate (chelated)
Calcium	20mg	Calcium citrate

The forms matter as much as the doses. Magnesium bisglycinate absorbs significantly better than magnesium oxide, which is what most cheap electrolyte powders use. Same goes for the citrate forms of potassium and calcium. We're not paying for cheap minerals and hoping the label number does the persuading.

It comes in at 18kcal and 4g of carbs per serving (mostly dextrose), which is deliberate. A small amount of glucose actively supports sodium absorption via the sodium-glucose cotransporter (SGLT1). It's the same principle clinical rehydration solutions use. Not enough to fuel you. Enough to help the hydration work properly.

£16 for 30 servings, so about 53p per day at full dose. Take it pre-training, mid-training, post-training, or just on a hot day when you can feel the demand is higher than usual.

Shop Awesome Hydrate

7. Hydration and energy: the link nobody talks about

Here's the thing about hydration that makes it easy to ignore: the effects are subtle. There's no caffeine hit. No pre-workout buzz. No obvious moment where you feel hydration kicking in.

But hydration status underpins most of the systems people are trying to optimise. Physical performance. Cognitive sharpness. Perceived energy levels. When it's slightly off, everything feels slightly harder. When it's corrected, things don't feel amplified. They just return to where they should have been.

Which is part of why hydration is the most undervalued lever in nutrition. The win doesn't feel like a win. It feels like baseline.

FAQ

How much water do I actually need per day?

There's no universal number, which is why the standard "eight glasses" advice misses for so many people. A commonly cited individualised range is around 25-30ml per kilogram of body weight, which for an 80kg person works out at roughly 2-2.4 litres of total fluid (including food). On training days, add 500-1000ml per hour of exercise depending on intensity and sweat rate. The exact number matters less than paying attention to demand.

Can I just use sea salt in water instead?

You can, and lots of people do. The honest answer is it covers sodium but misses potassium, magnesium and the supporting electrolytes that work alongside sodium for full fluid regulation. If you want a one-ingredient solution, salt in water is a real option. If you want a balanced electrolyte stack with magnesium for muscle function and potassium for cellular fluid balance, you're rebuilding what a proper electrolyte product already does.

Does coffee count toward my water intake?

Mostly yes. The diuretic effect of caffeine is mild at normal intakes. A 2014 PLOS ONE study found moderate coffee intake (around 4 cups per day) provided similar hydration to plain water in regular coffee drinkers. The exception is if you're an occasional drinker hitting a high dose. Then the diuretic effect is more noticeable. For daily coffee drinkers, count your coffee but lean on water and electrolytes for the bulk of your fluid.

Will Hydrate help my hangover?

Probably, yes. Alcohol is a significant diuretic and a major part of a hangover is the dehydration and electrolyte depletion. Hydrate gives you sodium, potassium and magnesium back in the forms your body can use, plus enough fluid volume to start undoing the damage. Take it the night before bed (with water) and again in the morning. Not a magic cure, but a meaningful one.

Can I take Hydrate every day, or is it just for training?

Daily is fine. Up to 2 servings per day per the label. The formulation is built for everyday use, not occasional rescue. People who train, drink coffee, sleep poorly, or work in heated/air-conditioned offices benefit most from daily use. If you're sedentary, sleeping well and drinking mostly water already, you probably don't need it every day.

Why not just buy a high-sodium product like LMNT?

If you train in heat, sweat heavily, or do long endurance work, the higher sodium products have a real use. For most people on a normal day, that dose is more than the body needs and starts to feel like work to drink. The 275mg of sodium in Hydrate sits in the everyday-use range. The thinking on our side: better to take the right dose every day than the maximum dose three times a week.

What to do with this

Hydration isn't a glamour topic. It's one of those things that quietly multiplies everything else when it's right and quietly drags everything down when it isn't. If you've been told to drink more water and it didn't seem to do much, the missing ingredient is probably electrolytes. Try a properly dosed electrolyte product for two weeks and pay attention. If nothing changes, hydration wasn't your limiter. If something shifts, you've found a free win.