Dehydration

HOW DO YOU GET DEHYDRATED?

Through activities of daily living, the average person loses about 3- 4 litres of fluid a day in sweat, urine, exhaled air and bowel movement. What is lost must be replaced by the fluid we drink and the food we eat.
We lose approximately 1-2 litres of water just from breathing. The evaporation of sweat from the skin accounts for 90% of our cooling ability.

Exercise, sweating, diarrhoea, temperature, or altitude can significantly increase the amount of water we lose each day. The most common cause of increased water loss is exercise and sweating. Even though we are all at risk of dehydration the people most vulnerable are infants, elderly adults, and athletes. They are either not able to adequately express their thirst sensation or able to detect it and do something in time.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE DEHYDRATED?

If you are thirsty, it means your cells are already dehydrated. A dry mouth should be regarded as the last outward sign of dehydration. That’s because thirst does not develop until body fluids are depleted well bellow levels required for optimal functioning.

Monitor your urine to make sure you are not dehydrated:
• A hydrated body produces clear, colourless urine.
• A somewhat dehydrated body produces yellow urine.
• A severely dehydrated body produces orange or dark-coloured urine.

The effects of even mild dehydration include decreased coordination, fatigue, dry skin, decreased urine output, dry mucous membranes in the mouth and nose, blood pressure changes and impairment of judgment. Stress, headache, back pain, allergies, asthma, high blood pressure and many degenerative health problems are the result of UCD (Unintentional Chronic Dehydration).

HOW MUCH WATER DO YOU NEED TO DRINK? WHEN TO DRINK?

Recommended Weight Litres Glasses
Water Intake Kilos Per Day Per Day
 
Av UK Female 65 2.0 8
Av UK Male 80 2.5 10
 
If you are physically very active or live in a hot climate you should drink more.
 
Drink one glass 30 minutes before each meal and one glass 2 hours after each meal. Based on three meals per day. Drink one or two glasses with the heaviest meals.

WHAT SHOULD WE DRINK? WHAT SHOULDN’T WE DRINK?

We are designed to drink pure, natural water.Avoiding carbonated /soft drinks to provide your fluid needs. The high sugar content and artificial flavors in soft drinks are harmful to your health. Tea, coffee, soft drinks contain water, but the diuretics contained in these caffeinated beverages flush water out of your body. Don’t count on them to replenish fluid loss. It is OK to drink them occasionally, but if you drink them constantly and don’t drink enough pure natural water, then you are severely compromising your long-term health. Natural pure water is the best choice. If you are committed to a healthy lifestyle and long-term health, make water a habit and a priority in your life.

CAN WE DRINK TOO MUCH WATER?

During intense exercise the kidneys cannot excrete excess water. The extra water moves into the cells, including brain cells. The result can be fatal. For that reason, athletes should estimate how much they should drink by weighing themselves before and after long training runs to see how much they lose, and thus how much water and salt they should replace.

The studies that found 13% of the runners tested drank too much water, resulting in abnormally low blood sodium levels. The low sodium levels made many of these people very sick, and close to the point of death. The importance lesson here is to balance your water intake with your sodium intake.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR TAP WATER IS SAFE TO DRINK?

All UK tap water is of high quality and very drinkable. The best source of specific information about the water quality in your area is your local water authority. To get facts and information about your tap water, contact your local water supplier here at . The Environmental Protection Agency and The Drinking Water Inspectorate (www.dwi.gov.uk/) are two useful sources of information.

WHAT ABOUT BOTTLED WATER?

The bottled water business itself makes no claims for the healthiness or safety of their product above what flows from the tap. But the industry does insist that they're encouraging people to drink more water rather than sugary soft drinks, thus helping the nations health and hydration.

But is buying bottled water becoming ‘morally unacceptable’ as producing and delivering a litre of bottled water emits hundreds of times as much greenhouse gas as a litre of tap water.

And then there’s the plastic, only one quarter of which is recycled or the glass that eats so much energy to make and re-use.

Between 1993 and 2007, the UK bottled water, grew from just 580 million litres to almost 2.2 billion litres and is now thought to have sales of just under £2 billion per year.

Average consumption in the UK is now 36 litres per person which contrasts sharply with Italy at 199 litres and US citizens averaging 104 litres.

WHAT ABOUT FILTERED WATER?

It is always wise to get a filter if you are not sure how safe your tap water is.

There are many water filter products on the market at many different prices. To shop for a good filter, you need to know what a filter factually reduces, or removes, and what it costs. Ideally, you want water that has been filtered via a reverse osmosis process that removes chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, chlorine, fluoride, bacteria, and viruses.
How do you choose a good filter? It is important you do your own research – ask your local health food store and do on-line research.

DRINKING TIPS FOR HEALTHY HYDRATION:

Start your morning’s right: Morning is when you are most full of toxin and dehydrated. Reach for a big glass of water first thing in the morning – even before coffee. This water in the morning really gets the blood flowing. Drink a glass of water when you get up and another when you go to bed.Take regular water break breaks.Avoid relying on soft drinks to provide your fluid need.Drink water before and after food; ideally drink a glass of water half an hour before you eat your meal and two hours after the meal. You can drink water with meals, and drink water anytime your body feels like it.

Use either bottled water or tap water, and carry it with you everywhere, to the gym, in your car, to your office. Start by adding water to your daily regiment, during the first week, and then incorporate more as needed. The point is not to wait until you’re thirsty to drink.

Keep water flowing before, during and after workout. Don’t forget to balance your water intake with sodium intake. Drink at least 1 litre of water for every 60 minutes of exercise. Drink more if it’s hot. During exercise, such as playing sport on a hot summer day, you can lose up to 2 litres per hour of fluid per hour. Water and a balance salt is your best bet to keep healthy and hydrated. During exercise, it is recommended to replenish fluid at least every 20 minutes.

THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON THE BODY:

Hangovers
We've all heard of the hangover but what is it? Symptoms include a pounding headache, feeling sick or depressed, general grouchiness and diarrhoea. Aside from the alcohol, drinks have small amounts of additives (congeners) give drinks their colour, flavour and smell.

Congeners affect everyone differently and may contribute to you feeling ill. The pounding headache is caused by Alcohol's toxicity can cause acids to accumulate in the stomach and intestines resulting in queasiness and nausea. The stomach lining becomes inflamed (gastritis) delaying digestion. Alcohol can inflame the oesophagus, the tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach, giving you heartburn.

When you drink, you take in large quantities of increased glucose. The Pancreas responds to this by producing more insulin, which removes the glucose. Once the process has started, the insulin carries on working removing glucose from the blood. Low blood glucose levels are responsible for the shakes, excess sweating, dizziness, blurred vision and tiredness.

Alcohol often affects bowel movements, in the normal course, the small and large intestines reabsorb salt and water, but alcohol interferes with this process often causing diarrhoea.

The only true cure for a hangover is time, however there are some things you can do to lessen your discomfort. Drink plenty of water, nourish your body with food, toast and fruit at breakfast. Consume food with some sugar, alcohol has broken down the liver's sugar stores, these need replaced. Get plenty of rest and sleep.

Dehydration
Alcohol is diuretic. This means it encourages the body to lose more water than it takes on by halting the production of the body's anti-diuretic hormone, resulting in you needing to go to the toilet excessively and so speeding up the loss of fluid from your body, leading to dehydration.

Alcohol also attacks our stores of vitamins and minerals, which need to be in the correct balance for the body to function normally. Dehydration caused by drinking can affect the balance by draining potassium from the body, resulting in thirst, muscle cramps, dizziness and faintness.