When you are dehydrated, why is it so hard to drink enough water?
In: Biology
Once you hit ‘dehydration’, takes your body a while to catch back up to a ‘hydrated’ state.
Mix Gatorade with Pedialyte in the summer months. I have to or I wont survive lol.
To add on to everyone, water in itself isn’t the all powerful when it comes to hydration. It’s sodium. The salt in the water is what causes the water bits to slow down in the digestion process, and allow water to be retained. Remember when you were in elementary school and someone in class said they’d just drink ocean water before they’d die of dehydration on an island? And the teacher said they’d die faster? Well, it’s just the opposite there. Instead of water slowly going in, it’s coming in fast with too much sodium for the kidneys to function correctly. So they just expell the water. In cases of dehydration with slow water consumption, your kidneys won’t do much because too much water will be too much on your digestive tract and you’ll eventually end up just bypassing everything through your stool if it’s not absorbed in the intestines fast enough
My whole life I’ve always made the mistake of drinking a lot of water in one sitting. That’s why I always wondered why my lips were chapped even though I knew I was drinking a ton of water. When you drink a lot at once, most of it doesn’t get absorbed by our cells, but just gets flushed out by our kidneys. So in order to stay well hydrated, I’ve learned that you have to take sips of water and usually best with a meal or maybe even an additive in water like lemon.
Once dehydrated it takes longer for the body to absorb the correct amount of water back into its system. Stick a very small glass of pickle juice ~3-4 oz.
or a Gatorade or a Pedialyte.
So water molecules are only so small. If you drink water, it fills up in your stomach and your body would end up peeing out most of it before it can actually process much of it. Think about putting water inside of a colander or strainer. It goes right through. Now put a towel in the colander and pour water in it and you’ll notice the water filters through slower. Water pushes out of your body much faster than it’s absorbed. One substitute would be to have an electrical ionic water filter break the molecules down so they are easier to absorb. The best option of course is to have an IV where saline is directly injected into the bloodstream which puts water into your system directly.
Recipes for homemade rehydration solutions:
>If commercially prepared ORS is not available, the following recipe may be used:
>In 1 L of water, add 2 level tablespoons of sugar or honey, a quarter teaspoon of table salt (NaCl), and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
>If baking soda is not available, use another quarter teaspoon of salt instead
>If available, add one-half cup of orange juice, coconut water, or a mashed ripe banana to the drink
https://www.medscape.com/answers/801012-76356/what-is-the-alternative-to-commercially-prepared-oral-rehydration-solution-ors-for-the-treatment-of-pediatric-dehydration
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