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Are you paying attention to your thirst?

I’m always amused when I visit the Bar D and the Wranglers sing the lyrics of the old Bob Nolan song “Cool Water.” It never fails as they harmonize about the barren waste and their dry throats, evoking thoughts of unquenchable thirst, that countless audience members have the urge to get up and visit the drinking fountain.

Maybe it’s my own experience of summer heat reminding me of the health effects of dehydration. Why is it that so many of us struggle with the simple task of answering our thirst in a healthy way?

About two-thirds of our body is made up of water. Our kidneys filter the blood stream at a rate of about 200 liters per day, with only about 1 percent to 2 percent of the fluid lost in the form of urine. Yet the so-called “insensible” fluid losses from our lungs and skin contribute to our total water loss.

We live in a hot, dry climate. How many realize that you can lose 1 to 2 liters of water an hour in the form of sweat when performing physical activity in the heat of a summer day? That means you need to drink that amount during such activities just to stay in balance.

Yet just going about your daily routine without adequate fluid intake can cause problems. To be sure, severe dehydration resulting from extreme conditions or medical illness can produce life-threatening consequences. But I’d like to address the basic level of dehydration that seems so commonplace.

Even a 1 percent to 2 percent reduction in hydration status can produce adverse symptoms. Most commonly, these include headache, tiredness or even positional dizziness – such as feeling lightheaded when standing from a crouched position.

Imagine if you could get rid of your “blahs” by simply paying attention to your daily water intake?

So many factors in our routine lives contribute to dehydration. Perhaps you are too busy to pay attention to your thirst. Certain drinks can actually promote dehydration, including caffeinated beverages and alcohol. Physical activity, while it confers many health benefits, increases water loss both through sweat and increased breathing rate.

I think, for many people, a strong case can be made for paying some attention to hydration status. In general, if you are fluid-balanced and otherwise healthy, your body produces about 2 liters of urine daily. While I wouldn’t expect anyone to measure their urine output, I would expect you to notice if you hadn’t made a pit stop in several hours. Also, you might observe that when properly hydrated, urine tends to be dilute rather than dark.

Some folks find it best to set a water consumption goal. I recently had to adopt this method when my busy lifestyle and poor fluid consumption contributed to a kidney stone.

Of course, our bodies are well-designed to maintain hydration through the thirst mechanism. The case can be made that if you are healthy and you simply pay attention to your thirst, you will not get dehydrated. The question is whether you are paying attention to your thirst.

Dr. Matthew A. Clark is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and pediatrics practicing at the Ute Mountain Ute Health Center in Towaoc.



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