Water smart

There is something cosmic about water. This planet is 70 per cent and your body just happens to also be 70 per cent water; the nature of matter, divine plan, or cosmic coincidence? However you pour it, water has magical allure for humanity. Wars have been fought over water and now, as supplies of water may be drying up into an arid future, Water Wars may be fought again on many fronts. Society can’t function without water and neither can you. Your basic biochemical processes rely on your watery inner sea to take place and your brain is highly dependent on your state of hydration (think back to your last hangover to verify that last point). Exactly how reliant your brain is upon water has been highlighted in a new study showing that simply taking a bottle of water into an exam can give your results a boost.

For the study the researchers used university students doing exams. They made note of whether the students took a drink with them into the exam and whether that drink was water or not. They then examined exam results to see if there was a correlation between drinking in exams, or drinking water in exams.

The analysis also involved taking into account the student’s coursework marks to rule out the possibility that smarter students might tend to take water into an exam.

The results showed that people who took water, but not other drinks, into the exam tended to do better and this did not correlate with students course marks outside the exam situation.

This is not really surprising since many studies have shown that memory and concentration are both adversely affected by dehydration.

Interestingly, the researchers made the observation that they did not take note of whether students actually drank the water during the exam and so it might be possible that the influence of the water came by simply having the water there. See, even scientists think water is magical.