One of the most difficult things to get through to people who have some understanding that water is important, and yet understand they probably don’t drink enough of it, is REALLY how important that is.

“Oh yes, but I drink coffee, and tea, and hot chocolate and enough other soft drinks to make up my eight glasses a day…”

Most of the body’s water is found within and surrounding the the cells. If the surrounding fluid bathes the cells contantly in waste material the individual cell membranes will not work efficiently and this will lead to cellular damage or cell death. At the very foundation level, the source of many diseases, including premature ageing.

Long term dehydration can lead to several effects:

Reduction in lymph circulation (swollen joints, lower legs)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrom: Your muscles begin to get tired, you may have leg cramps or feel faint.

Localised Pain including Low back pain, Migraine headache, Joint pain, and Angina [chest pain]: A complication of dehydration is joint pain. The cartilage in your body, including your joints, is composed mainly of water. As cartilage surfaces glide over one another, exposed cells begin  to wear and require replacement. New cartilage is has to be produced  to replace the damaged cells. Due to the lack of blood vessels in cartilage, water is the requirement to diffuse the nutrients for required for maintenance and repair. Dehydration not only increases abrasive damage, but delays its repair, resulting in joint pain.

Years of chronic dehydration cannot be simply reversed overnight by drinking a few more glasses of water. Your urine should be clear or lightly coloured, if it’s darker than that it’s an indication your kidneys are working too hard to concentrate the urine. Many people are chronically dehydrated and never notice until a condition alerts them, such as chronic back pain and sciatica resulting from dehydrated discs.

An injured disc,compressed in the spine from 75% of your weight might actually lose more fluid than it can absorb overnight. This leads to disc dehydration. A dehydrated disc can herniate, bulge, and even become diseased, if it is not able to receive all the nutrients it needs to maintain a thick and healthy membrane.

The problem with trying to rehydrate is that the body being so accustomed to a lack of water diverts sudden water intake and holds it in fluid retention in the fatty tissues. The body has a means of protecting important circulatory systems first by allowing fluid to those parts of the body in certain priority. It can take a two weeks  for the body to fully hydrate, to a level where nutrients can return to the starved parts of the body before even repair can take place.

Certain drinks and foods act as a diuretic also, which stimulate the urge to urinate. Alcohol, coca cola, caffiene, some fruit juices, all have a dehydrating effect on the body. That is, they stimulate the body to remove fluids faster than they are replenished by actually replacing your eight glasses a day with fluids other than pure water.

The long term affect of intaking diuretic fluids is nerve damage to the badder lining, stimulating the need for relief when it is often not the case. Unfortunately this is the scenario that many people use to interpret their requirement for drinking pure water is less than the recommended 8 glasses a day, as they have decided it only makes them want to pee more.

If you want to shock yourself, visit this site with full medical citations on the effects of  Dehydration.

Tags: affects of dehydration, allergies, Chronic Back Pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, degenerative disc disease, Dehydrated Dics, dehydrated skin, dry skin, effects of dehydration, joint problems, Natural Remedies, preventative medicine, Sciatica, skin disease, skin inflamations, tired muscles, water

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