DRINK WATER WHEN YOUR BODY NEEDS

” HEALTH IS WEALTH”

Kalpataru Blog

Drink Water When Your Body Needs

Dr. Sushil Rudra

There is a saying that water is life. Indeed, we can’t live without water and air. Especially, in India, Summer prevails for a long time. So we need water almost throughout the year except in December and January. These two months is winter except in hill areas. As Summer here is longer so the body needs water more. Hence, I think it will be good to discuss on how much water do we need in Summer? The title of this post is ” Drink Water When Your Body Needs”.

Dehydration occurs when the water content of the body is too low. This is easily fixed by increasing fluid intake. 

Symptoms of dehydration

Symptoms of dehydration include:

• thirst
• headaches
• lethargy
• mood changes and slow responses
• dry nasal passages
• dry or cracked lips
• dark-coloured urine
• weakness
• tiredness
• confusion and hallucinations.

If dehydration is not corrected by fluid intake, eventually urination stops, the kidneys fail, and the body can’t remove toxic waste products. In extreme cases, dehydration may result in death. 

Causes of dehydration

There are several factors that can cause dehydration including: 

• Not drinking enough water.
• Increased sweating due to hot weather, humidity, exercise or fever.
• Insufficient signalling mechanisms in the elderly – sometimes, older adults do not feel thirsty even though they may be dehydrated.
• Increased output of urine due to a hormone deficiency, diabetes, kidney disease or medications.
• Diarrhoea or vomiting.
• Recovering from burns.

Pregnant or breastfeeding women

Happens If You Don’t Drink Enough Water

Whatever you do, make sure you get in those six to eight glasses, otherwise dehydration could cause a whole host of problems. Here are a few side effects:

1. Persistent headaches. One of the first things you might notice when you’re dehydrated is a throbbing headache. The good news? If dehydration is the cause, it should go away shortly after you drink a large glass of water.
2. Sluggish bowel function. “There are water receptors in the colon, and they pull water from the body to make the stools softer,” says Dr. Moghaddam. “If you don’t get enough water, hard stools and constipation could be common side effects, along with abdominal pain and cramps.”
3. Dull skin. Dehydration shows up on your face in the form of dry, ashy skin that seems less radiant, plump and elastic.
4. Fatigue. If you’re not replenishing your fluid intake, your energy levels could plummet and you could experience fatigue and brain fog. So the next time you reach for another cup of coffee, see if it’s water that you need instead.
5. Weight gain. “Sometimes people mistake thirst for hunger and they eat more, but really they just need to drink more,” says Dr. Moghaddam. “Sometimes if you have a glass of water, the hunger cues will go away.”
6. Dry mouth. If you’re not getting enough water, you can have dry mucous membranes—i.e., a lack of saliva. This can make it difficult to talk, swallow, and even breathe. Luckily, this can easily be solved by drinking water.

Can You Drink Too Much Water?

The old ‘eight glasses a day’ rule isn’t based on science, and experts say some of us may be overdoing it

It’s 10:30 in the morning, and I’m already peeing for the fourth time today.

I peed when I woke up at 6:30 a.m. Then I drank a glass of water, had my habitual three cups of coffee, and peed a couple more times over the next few hours. Now I’m peeing again.

My urine is clear. (It’s almost always clear.) If I drink another glass or two of water between now and lunchtime, and then five more glasses this afternoon and evening, I’ll have hit the eight-glasses-per-day target that everyone seems to think is the key to health and hydration. I’ll probably pee a dozen more times today.Read more:How To Avoid Depression?/https://kalpatarurudra.org

Until recently, I thought I was doing everything right. Water, as the saying goes, is the essence of life. You need it or you die. And if there’s one thing nutrition experts seem to agree on, it’s that dehydration is bad and drinking lots of water is good.

But then I read this 2019 study in the journal Nutrients, which discusses the potential risks of overhydration. Its authors argue that drinking too much water is not only wasteful, but that over time it could lead to bladder distention, kidney dysfunction, or other problems.

It cites case reports of otherwise healthy people who drank so much water that they developed swollen kidneys or ruptured urinary tracts.

The research on longevity and mortality is oddly silent on the subject of water consumption, and experts have called the search for a universal daily water requirement “elusive.”

“Urine is a waste product that helps your body balance its levels of sodium and other electrolytes,” says Tamara Hew-Butler, Ph.D., first author of that study and an associate professor of exercise physiology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

If you’re peeing all the time and your pee is clear, she says, that’s an indication that you’re drinking more water than your body can use, and so you’re forcing it to dump fluids in order to maintain homeostasis.

While that’s unlikely to be a problem in the short-term, keeping that up for years or decades could lead to some of the urinary tract problems outlined in her study.

The more I dug through the research, the more it seemed like she had a point.

Just how much H2O do you need to drink each day for optimal health? The research on hydration is surprisingly inconsistent.

There’s the long-standing recommendation — sometimes called the eight-by-eight rule — to drink eight, eight-ounce glasses of water each day. But experts have not found solid scientific evidence to support this advice.

“Saying everyone needs eight glasses of water to be healthy is like saying everyone needs to eat a 2,000-calorie diet,” Hew-Butler says.

Again he says : “I weigh 90 pounds and I spend most of my day sitting inside, but I work with football players who weigh 300 pounds and are exercising all day. Our hydration needs are completely different.”

She says the average person needs to replace roughly two liters (or eight cups) of lost fluid each day. But almost anything you drink or eat is going to contain water, which will offset that daily loss.

“Coffee, tea, soup, fruits, vegetables — all of that counts,” she says. (Some work has found that people get an average of 20% of their daily fluids from food alone.)

After collecting samples from more than 300 college athletes, she and her colleagues found that up to 55% were dehydrated based on their pee, but none were dehydrated according to their blood samples.

Major health organizations also differ widely in their views on fluid requirements.

The European Food Safety Authority advises women and men to consume two litters and 2.5 litters per day, respectively. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine recommends 2.7 litters for women and 3.5 for men — or roughly 35–40% more than their European counterparts. (And again, both organisations say that all foods and beverages — not just water — count towards these daily totals.)

It seems like the eight-glasses-a-day maxim has persisted in part because nothing compelling has come along to take its place. The research on longevity and mortality is oddly silent on the subject of water consumption, and experts have called the search for a universal daily water requirement “elusive.”

Part of the difficulty in assessing human hydration needs has to do with how dehydration is measured.

Another of Hew-Butler’s studies found that urine-based hydration analyses — the most common type employed in research — often don’t align with more accurate blood-based measurements.

After collecting samples from more than 300 college athletes, she and her colleagues found that up to 55% were dehydrated based on their pee, but none were dehydrated according to their blood samples.

There’s been some well-publicized research showing that even mild dehydration can cause fatigue, headaches, moodiness, or cognitive impairments. But I was surprised to find criticisms of this work.

A review in the journal Nutrients argued that these sorts of dehydration studies have produced inconsistent results and that they often ask people to exercise in hot environments, which could induce fatigue or other symptoms for reasons that have nothing to do with dehydration.

(It’s found that a lot of dehydration studies have been led by researchers affiliated with kinley or other companies that sell bottled water.)

Meanwhile, research in the journal Nutrition Reviews has concluded that overhydration “may not be as benign as is usually assumed.”

DEHYDRATION AND SENIOR:

There is no doubt that dehydration is dangerous. Our thirst reflexes tend to decline as we age, and dehydration is a common and serious health problem among the elderly — one that can worsen a number of age-related medical conditions.

There’s also no question that drinking water is generally good for you, and that swigging it in place of sugar-sweetened beverages can reduce your risk for metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

But if, like me, you assumed there’s no downside to drinking lots of water — that going to the bathroom 15 times a day is a sign of proper hydration — the research to date doesn’t endorse this view.

Therefore, it’s possible that by flooding my digestive plumbing with unneeded H20, I may be asking for a swollen bladder, worn-out kidneys, or other urinary tract issues.

Finally, there’s the environmental cost of excessive water consumption.

Water is a precious resource. Energy is needed to purify it so that it’s potable. Many of us prefer our water bottled, and all that plastic adds up; the World goes through 200 billion plastic water bottles a year. “If you’re worried about climate change, why would you drink more water than you need?” Hew-Butler asks.

She recommends drinking water when you feel thirsty. “Listen to your body,” she says. “It will tell you if you’re drinking too little.” If you notice your urine is dark yellow, that’s also a good indicator that you need a drink.

Water is good for you. But like anything else, you may be able to get too much of a good thing.

Sources: Healthline,

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