Hello Hydration

This month's health hack: hydration apps

Hello friends,

Gen Xers and Elder Millennials like to remind youngsters that we didn't carry water bottles and Stanley cups everywhere. We drank from the hose all summer, and we turned out just fine. It’s our “uphill both ways” moment—and it’s the truth.

In the 80s and 90s kids didn’t bring water to school. We made it through the day with a juice box at lunch (or Squeezeit if we bugged our moms enough) and a few tepid sips from the drinking fountain. We certainly didn’t pay any attention to “hydration”.

Even when Gatorade increased in popularity after it was purchased by Quaker Oats Co. in 1983, it was pretty much reserved for serious sporting activities. I certainly survived mid-summer band camp days on nothing more than vibes, and maybe an ice cold Fruitopia from the vending machine after.

How it started:

When I was diagnosed in 2018 with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), it was considered a rare disease. Most doctors were not really familiar with its diagnosis or treatment. Once I finally found one who was, he told me that several lifestyle changes could be helpful, including increasing salt and water intake. He suggested salt pills and trying to drink at least a gallon of water a day.

Let me tell you, I struggled with this, and still do. Not only do I not really like water, but I rarely feel thirsty. Add that to the common POTS symptoms of difficulty swallowing and nausea, and I quickly learned that the only way to get enough water in was to trick myself into hydrating constantly. Previously, this has involved flavoring my water, using water bottles with straws, taking a sip every time I pick up the bottle to move it, etc. It works, for the most part. But August is hot, and I should technically be drinking even MORE water.

So this month, I decided to give hydration a digital makeover.

How it’s going:

I started out simply by creating alarms in the Clock settings on my phone. This has worked for me for other things like taking medication, so I figured I’d set one for the morning, one for noon, and one for the evening. This worked…sort of. For several days, every time the timer rang, I would pick up my water bottle and drink. Which is technically a success. But 3 gulps a day didn’t make any real impact on my total water consumption. I can’t chug (see symptoms above), and re-setting things to have my alarm go off more often (like every hour) would get old really fast. I was sure I’d just start to silence and ignore them.

I decided to try gamification. I had read about apps that make building habits fun. I tried two of these apps that are specifically for tracking hydration: Plant Nanny and Waterllama. I was not willing to spend money this time around, so I used the free options for both.

Long story short, I deleted them within days. Plant Nanny looked fun; the more you drink the more your plant grows and the more species of plants you unlock. My inner child was hoping for a Tamagotchi experience. Unfortunately, in the free version you can do next to nothing without encountering a popup for in-app purchases. I couldn’t even really get a feel for the app without paying. So I moved on.

Waterllama was cute. You can have the app help calculate a goal for you, and then it splits that goal up and sends notifications throughout the day to remind you to drink water. Unfortunately, I need to drink a lot of water, so the notifications came fast and furious. As expected, I began ignoring them at inconvenient moments, and then I ignored more of them, and soon I just shut them off. Farewell sweet llama.

For me, it turns out physical reminders like having my water bottle on hand at all times and making drinking water easier and more pleasant with functional bottles and a variety of electrolyte flavors are the key to keeping me hydrated throughout the day. The digital nudges were just too easy to ignore, and the rewards of cute characters were not engaging enough to motivate me. Of course, your mileage may vary. Paying a few bucks for a better app experience or having your phone play a fun alarm jingle may be just the thing to get you drinking. WATER, that is.

Go ahead and comment with any tips you have for getting in more water on the daily. If you do I’ll send you a special peek at next month’s stitch-in-progress.

Happy Hydrating!