Dehydration Is Not Only Making You Sick - It's Making You Fat, Too

Oct 24, 2018 by apost team

Feeling like your body is trying to tell you something through how it looks, feels, and behaves, but you’re not quite sure what? It may be dehydration that’s making you sickly and overweight.

When “dehydration” is mentioned, most people think of an athlete who’s overdone a workout, someone wandering through the wilderness lost, or a person with a virus hovering over a toilet. In reality, dehydration is something that can affect us all on a daily basis.

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Our diets are often largely to blame. The average person consumes plenty of fluids daily, but the problem is that most of these liquids are counterproductive to hydration. Sodas, juices, coffees, and teas are loaded with sugars, caffeine, salt, syrups, and preservatives. These elements not only don’t provide hydration, but they can actually be dehydrating you by pulling precious water away from cells to help metabolize and excrete them.

There’s also dehydrating foods, such as sugary foods that pull water away from the body to metabolize them. Jillian Micheals has an excellent list of common foods that dehydrate the body.

When you’re dehydrated, your organs can’t operate as efficiently and effectively. Neurons are uncoordinated and don’t fire as rapidly and accurately. Your cells don’t operate and divide as they should. Digestion becomes sluggish and constipation, bloating, and gassing follows. Even sleep is impacted by dehydration. Let’s take a closer look at how dehydration may be making your entire body sickly:

You’re likely fatigued, stressed, and lethargic if you’re dehydrated. Did you know your brain is 75% water? Without water, enzymatic activities slow to cause mental and physical tiredness and fatigue. WebMD explains the vicious cycle of how stress can cause dehydration and dehydration can cause stress.

When fully hydrated, your blood is about 92% water. Dehydrated blood is thicker and is thus harder for the heart to pump, which can cause hypertension. Dehydration also spurs cholesterol production to counteract water loss in your cells.

As a countermeasure to dehydration, your airways begin to restrict to prevent water loss. This can cause asthmatic and allergy responses, especially in those with existing respiratory diseases. Dehydration also spurs histamine production to go into overdrive.

Without enough water to filter through the bladders and kidneys, acid waste and toxins are left to multiply and stagnate. This can create infections, inflammation, and discomfort or pain.

Your stomach needs water and calcium, magnesium, and other alkaline minerals to function properly. From ulcers and acid reflux to gastritis, dehydration in the gut can cause a number of painful and inflammatory stomach issues.

Your colon requires a significant amount of water to transport waste out of the body. Constipation, blockages, gas, and bloating occur when this waste moves too slowly or not at all. Chronic constipation sets you up for all sorts of secondary problems, including hemorrhoids, anal fissures, and rectal prolapse.

Like your kidneys, your skin actually eliminates toxins from your body, too. It’s unable to do this job effectively without water, however, which leaves you more prone to infections. Dehydration also increases the likelihood of psoriasis, dermatitis, and premature aging of skin cells.

Your skeletal system is about one-fourth water. The padding for your joints, called cartilage, is mainly composed of water. When it’s dehydrated, it becomes weakened and unable to properly cushion your joints to prevent friction and pain.

In total, your body is three-fourths, or 75%, water, which means that your body’s cells rely upon water as their primary source of energy. Your cells get thirsty and send signals to your brain if they don’t have an adequate supply of water. Many people confuse these thirst signals with hunger signals and eat or drink other fluids instead of drinking water.

Meanwhile, your cells still aren’t satisfied and send the signals again, which then causes you to eat or drink another soda. This continues until you finally give your cells the water they need, and all you’ve done is loaded up on calories you didn’t even need or want.

Dehydration doesn’t just age your skin. It also causes your organs to struggle and age faster than they otherwise would being properly hydrated.

Research has shown some interesting facts concerning the weight benefits of choosing water, including:

• Drinking 16 ounces of water with each meal will help you control portions and calorie consumption.

• Drinking your water cold verses iced or room temp can speed up your metabolism and help burn calories.

• With the average can of soda having 35 grams of sugar and 140 or more calories, increasing water intake by just 1.5 liters per day burns almost 18,000 extra calories per year.

Water intoxication occurs when you drink so much water that your sodium falls to dangerous levels and your kidneys cannot keep up to excrete the water. However, this is rare and mainly occurs when you drink excessive amounts of water within a small amount of time.

Keep in mind that there’s no universal standard on how much water to drink since you must consider a number of factors like your age, climate, weight, activity level and so forth. Drink when you feel thirsty, and choose water as that hydration source. 

Did you find this dehydration article hydrating? If so, put the info to use and pass it along to friends and family who may not be getting adequate hydration.

Our content is created to the best of our knowledge, yet it is of general nature and cannot in any way substitute an individual consultation with your doctor. Your health is important to us!