Dehydration: Symptoms, stages, and causes
in Health ·
Check this out:
http://www.ehealthstar.com/dehydration
It’s a quick rundown on dehydration, with links tucked into the text if you want to dive deeper into specific aspects of it.
Essentially, dehydration is just what happens when your body isn't getting enough water.
Common culprits include not drinking enough, sweating through a workout or a heatwave, diarrhea, kidney issues, diabetes, or even certain diuretic medications.
The stages look something like this:
- Mild dehydration (1-3% loss of body weight): you'll notice a dry mouth, thirsty feelings, and yellow urine.
- Moderate dehydration (4-6% loss of body weight): things escalate to more intense thirst, dry mouth, darker urine, and less frequent trips to the bathroom.
- Severe dehydration (>6% loss of body weight): this is where it gets serious, involving headaches, fatigue, and potentially stopping urination altogether.
For mild to moderate cases, sticking to water usually does the trick; however, severe cases typically require an IV drip to replenish fluids.
A person can generally survive without water—and food, for that matter—for anywhere from three to eight days. If you go a full day without drinking anything and aren't getting much moisture from food, you'll likely hit that mild dehydration stage, where losing about one to three liters of body mass occurs. In those instances, you can usually fix the problem just by hydrating properly; there's no need for an IV.
http://www.ehealthstar.com/dehydration
It’s a quick rundown on dehydration, with links tucked into the text if you want to dive deeper into specific aspects of it.
Essentially, dehydration is just what happens when your body isn't getting enough water.
Common culprits include not drinking enough, sweating through a workout or a heatwave, diarrhea, kidney issues, diabetes, or even certain diuretic medications.
The stages look something like this:
- Mild dehydration (1-3% loss of body weight): you'll notice a dry mouth, thirsty feelings, and yellow urine.
- Moderate dehydration (4-6% loss of body weight): things escalate to more intense thirst, dry mouth, darker urine, and less frequent trips to the bathroom.
- Severe dehydration (>6% loss of body weight): this is where it gets serious, involving headaches, fatigue, and potentially stopping urination altogether.
For mild to moderate cases, sticking to water usually does the trick; however, severe cases typically require an IV drip to replenish fluids.
A person can generally survive without water—and food, for that matter—for anywhere from three to eight days. If you go a full day without drinking anything and aren't getting much moisture from food, you'll likely hit that mild dehydration stage, where losing about one to three liters of body mass occurs. In those instances, you can usually fix the problem just by hydrating properly; there's no need for an IV.