H2Know: What’s Really Happening When Your Body Is Dehydrated?

By Sally Tamarkin

You might also like:

34 Proven Ways Water Makes You Awesome

Unavoidable fact, or thoroughly debunked fiction? We should all be drinking eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day. It turns out that the old eight-by-eight rule originated from a misreading of a 1945 recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board and over the next five decades just kind of became accepted wisdom.

But the 64-ounces-in-a-day directive has been abandoned and replaced with the Board’s 2004 recommendation that we figure out how much to drink each day by “letting our thirst be [our] guide.” It turns out that between the water we get from beverages (yup, even caffeinated ones), water-rich fruits and vegetables, and our bodies’ super sophisticated mechanism for regulating water balance, maintaining hydration is fairly simple for most healthy adults Water, Hydration and Health, Popkin, B., D’Anci, K., Rosenberg, I. Annual Review of Nutrition, 2010 August; 68(8): 439–458.. Under certain circumstances (like when we get sick, work out extra hard, or exert ourselves in the heat) our bodies have a harder time keeping up with fluid loss and we can become dehydrated. But what exactly does that mean?

Our Bodies, Our Cells

The importance of water to our bodies can’t be overstated. After all, it makes up more than two thirds of our body weight and is responsible for a variety of functions, including digestion, blood flow, and body temperature regulation, as well as for overall cell health. Fortunately, the fact that we lose between roughly four to nine cups of water per day through breathing, sweating, peeing, and pooping isn’t a problem for most healthy adults because the systems that regulate hydration are so sensitive. According to CamelBak Hydration Advisor Doug Casa, PhD, evidence shows that the body will compensate for a loss of just one to two percent of the total amount of water in the body by triggering the sensation of thirst and the cue to drink Water as an essential nutrient: the physiological basis of hydration. Jéquier E, Constant F. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2010 Feb;64(2):115-23. Water, Hydration and Health, Popkin, B., D’Anci, K., Rosenberg, I. Annual Review of Nutrition, 2010 August; 68(8): 439–458.. These cues stay on track and properly-timed because our brains, kidneys, various glands, and hormones work in concert to monitor the amount of water that we’re taking in versus how much we’re losing How much water is lost during breathing? Zieliński J, Przybylski J. Pneumonologia I Alergologia Polski, 2012;80(4):339-42. Water, Hydration and …read more

Source:: Greatist