Today’s smartphone can play many roles in your life—mobile payment device, gaming gadget, personal trainer, and it can even act as a calling device (imagine that). But could your smartphone soon help quench your thirst as well?

Technology product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants, www.cambridgeconsultants.com, based in England, announced the development of the i-dration water bottle. Working in synch with a smartphone, this water bottle is designed to help athletes maintain optimum levels of hydration by alerting the user when it is time to take a drink of water during an activity.

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A couple of years back Dr. Timothy Hollingshead experienced firsthand the hydration benefits of coconut water while traveling down a tributary of the Amazon River in a dugout canoe.

The former podiatric surgeon was searching remote areas of Brazil for acai fruit sources to be used in a drink produced by his St. George-based company, Dr. Tim’s Juices. Although he had served a mission for his church in Brazil many years earlier, Hollingshead discovered that he was trying to stay hydrated in the equatorial climate.

Some Brazilians traveling with Hollingshead inspired him to try some coconut water they had with them. He claims the positive results were speedy.

Immediately I felt better, he says. My thirst was gone. I stopped sweating. I got my focus back.

It was then he realized that he could do something commercially with coconut juice.

Upon returning to the U.S., Hollingshead began researching coconut juice, which is present in young coconuts. It isn’t the same substance as coconut milk, which is culled from the fruit of more mature coconuts.

During his research, Hollingshead revealed that coconut juice had been employed as a temporary intravenous drip during World War II because the juice contains lots of the same characteristics as blood plasma. The IV stem would run from the coconut itself through tubes to a needle in the arm of an infantryman. (more…)

With the New Year quickly approaching, people are going to start making and implementing their grand 2010 New Year’s Resolutions. Ultimately a lot of people will choose to “be healthier”, which is a great resolution but people tend to fall off the “healthy” wagon (hence why so many make new commitments each year to it). But being healthy can be super easy if you make your number one health goal to DRINK LOTS OF WATER!

Water is an understated, underrated, underappreciated necessary nutrient because hydration is so important to the functionality of the human body. Water helps with digestion, removes toxins (get rid of the toxic pumpkin pie sitting in your gut), cushions joints (as you start your new workout routine), controls body temperature and most importantly helps with mental performance (like, duh).

It’s been estimated that up to 80% of the U.S. adult population goes through their normal day in at least a mildly dehydrated state. And, if one reports for work, school or life dehydrated, the odds of that circumstance improving during the day aren’t very good. In addition, dehydration can be masked in hunger pains so when a person feels hungry it could just be the body screaming for water. So hydrate, hydrate, hydrate with tap water and reusable water bottles – your body, mind and landfills will thank you!