You're So Waterful
Just like peanuts are the main ingredient in peanut butter, water is the main ingredient in the fluids in your body systems. Fluids travel through your body, carrying nutrients and waste to and from all your cells and organs. Your heart, your eyes, your intestines, and even your big toe need water-based fluids to survive.
So what are some of the watery fluids that flow through you day and night? In your
circulatory system, water is the main ingredient in blood. Water is also in
lymph (say: limf), a fluid that is carried by your
lymphatic (say: lim-
fah-tik) system, which is sort of like a second circulatory system.
Water is also the basis of the juices in your
digestive system, so you can digest food properly. And it's the main ingredient in urine (pee), helping you get rid of liquid waste. Don't forget perspiration (also called sweat
This is water that comes through the skin, as part of your body's temperature-regulating system.
Water Keeps Things Lubricated
If you've ever heard a squeaky door or wheel, you know the sound of something that needs to be
lubricated (say:
loo-bruh-kayt-ed). Lubricating means making it easier for something to move by keeping the parts from rubbing together. In the case of a squeaky object, people usually put a little oil on the rubbing parts so they move more easily. But in the case of your body, it isn't anything in a hardware store that does the job: It's water!
Water is in charge when it comes to keeping things moving freely because it's a big part of the fluid that lubricates the body's joints. Joints are the places where bones meet, like your knees or your elbows. Try straightening out your leg or bending your fingers - it's easy when you have water helping out!
Water is also the biggest part of
mucus (say:
myoo-kus), the slimy substance that's in your eyes, nose, throat, and many other parts of your body that you can't see, like your stomach. Sometimes when you have a cold and your nose is running everywhere, you might wish you never even
heard of mucus. But the truth is, you need it to keep things lubricated and running right in your body.
The same goes for
saliva (say: suh-
lye-vuh), which is also known as spit. It is made mostly of water, and it keep things lubricated in your mouth and down into your digestive system.
Water Makes Things Move
As you digest food, the food moves through your
intestines. At the end of the trip, the stuff your body doesn't need gets ready to leave your body as waste, which is called a bowel movement. And if you guessed that water is the ingredient that moves everything along, you're right! Imagine you have a tube stuffed with pieces of bread and you're trying to use your fingers to push the bread through to the other end of the tube.
Now imagine that same tube, with those same pieces of bread - only this time the bread is a little wet. Do you think it would be easier to push the bread to the end, now that there's water there? Water helps your intestines do their job more efficiently by keeping things moist.
Now what if you had more and more bread, but hardly any water in the tube? Well, if you've ever had
constipation, that's sort of what this is like. Constipation means you're not moving your bowels enough, and your bowel movements are hard and dry - they can't get through the tube in your body that's your large intestine. That's why water can help prevent constipation, by adding more liquid and keeping things moving on through.
'GOOOO' 
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