10 Signs You’re Not Drinking Enough Water

Hello Health Champions. What is the number one  symptom of dehydration? What's the number one sign  

that you might want to drink some water? Well,  it is called a dry mouth. Often also called a  

sticky mouth. A dry sticky sensation in your  mouth. We also know this sensation as thirst,  

and believe it or not just like our four-legged  furry friends, humans have a way of detecting, of  

regulating how much fluid we need to take in  through the amount of thirst. So in this video  

I'm going to talk about signs and symptoms  of dehydration but we're also going to talk  

about both sides of the coin here, because I find  the debate about how much water to drink is very,  

very one-sided. It's always about drink more water.  Drink more water. Drink more water. So we're going  

to talk a little bit more about that. We're going  to talk about how much do we really need and we're  

going to also talk about what kind of water we  need. So I don't recommend that you follow this  

example cool water or toilet water is probably not  the best and between the two I would say that the  

dog has a little bit of a heads up because even  though there's tons of chlorine and chemicals in  

both there's probably even more chemicals in the  pool water so i'll have some better examples for  

you. Let's talk about this eight glasses of water  per day or one gallon of water per day business.  

Is dehydration a bad thing? Absolutely. Are there times  when we need to drink a whole lot of water? You bet,  

but that does not mean that more is always better.  It does not mean that we should always be pounding  

down glass after glass or bottle after bottle  of water. So one of the things that we've heard  

for example is that the body is mostly water. Like  we're water-based creatures and therefore more is  

always better. It doesn't work like that. Let's  talk about this. First of all, there's no pure  

water in the body. There is a whole lot of water  in the body but it's only there because it's  

being held in place by particles. Particles create  something called osmotic pull or osmotic pressure  

and it's the particles that keep the water from  leaking out of the body. So the first thing we  

want to understand is how the kidney operates  the kidney excretes fluids we filter the blood  

through the kidneys and it filters out enormous  amounts of fluid but it reabsorbs most of it. So  

for example, the kidney excretes about 180 liters  that's 360 bottles of water every day but once  

that water it reabsorbs 179 liters virtually all  more than 99 of that water is reabsorbed. So what  

does that mean it means if you drink one liter of  water in a day your kidney is going to filter 180  

and then reabsorb 179 so you pee out the one  liter and you're going to sweat some so these  

examples are not exact but I want to get you  the idea. If you drink 3 liters of water then  

your body is going to excrete 180 or maybe 182  and it's going to reabsorb everything except  

about a few liters so no matter how much or how  little you drink it is minuscule in comparison to  

the volume that goes through the kidneys anyway.  With water we have to understand the particle  

that creates the osmotic pull is called sodium.  The by far the most abundant mineral electrolyte  

particle in the extracellular fluid is called  sodium. So every day you excrete 100 teaspoons. The  

water that you filter out that you flush through  the kidneys contain 100 teaspoons of sodium  

so if you convert that to salt that's a whole lot  more that's probably more like 100 tablespoons  

and but then you reabsorb 99. So again it's  not just about how much water you drink  

or how much salt you eat it's the combination and  what your kidney does with it based on what else  

is going on in the body. And the number one  result of drinking a gallon of water a day  

is that you pee a lot and for some of you you  might have noticed this happens at night so it  

interrupts your sleep and it makes you go to  the bathroom and you might have a hard time  

going back to sleep so this would be one more  reason not to drink too much. Now this video is  

mostly about dehydration but we do want to cover  both sides so we get some perspective on this. 

The second thing to look at is your urine output.  How much are you peeing? Is there a very small  

volume? Are you going very infrequently or is the  urine getting dark? So if it is more like dark  

yellow or brown that's a big problem. That means  that you are dehydrated or if you only go once or  

twice a day and it's dark then that's a problem.  So the darker it is the more dehydrated you are  

the lighter it is the more over hydrated you are  so a strong yellow is probably still too much  

a pale yellow is where we want to be for  normal and then as we get more and more pale  

it indicates that we're actually over hydrated  there is nothing beneficial about having urine  

that looks like water it's often described as a  straw color the ideal or optimum color so it's a  

light yellow but it is not completely colorless.  Number three is hypotension that means  

low blood pressure and if it's associated  with dehydration then it's because your  

fluid volume your blood volume is too low and  that could be because you don't have enough water  

or because you don't have enough salt to hold  the water in place and one thing that you can  

start playing with or if you're very experienced  with checking a pulse then you can look for a weak  

or shallow pulse. So what does that look like?  Well, normally when you check a pulse then  

you put your fingers on wherever you're going to  check the pulse and you should feel a bounding  

pulse. It should feel like the pulse comes up  and pushes a little bit like it gets into a wave  

before it disappears. That's called a full or a  bounding pulse. If you have a weak, shallow pulse  

then it might feel like most of the time it's  sort of quiet and then only for a short blip  

does the pulse come up to meet your fingers. That  would be a sign of low blood volume which again  

could be either low water or low salt. So when  you're trying to hydrate remember that it's not  

just about the water. We have this fear. We have  this love of water and we have this fear of salt  

so that can create some imbalances. And as a result  of number three we also have number four which  

is light-headedness. If you don't have enough  blood volume for the heart to pump it all the  

way up to your head then you can get a sense of  lightheadedness as well. It's really important  

to understand some of the causes the way that we  lose more water so we know what to look out for.  

So for example if we're sweating a lot if we are  exercising or working hard outdoors in the heat  

like here in georgia it is 90 to 95 degrees  every day fahrenheit that's about 35 degrees  

celsius and it's humid on top of that so if  you're out for a whole day working you could  

be drinking 8 or 10 or 12 bottles of water  and still not have to pee any more than usual.  

You just barely with all that water you're still  barely keeping up with all the fluid losses.  

Another way you're sweating a lot is with a fever  so really important to keep up with the drinking.  

If you are having diarrhea or vomiting if you  have like a stomach bug then you can lose a lot  

of fluids but also lose a lot of minerals. When  you sweat you lose primarily salt but if you have  

vomiting or diarrhea then you can lose other  minerals including potassium. So all of those  

are reasons that you can get dehydrated and  you can lose minerals, but you could also be  

lacking salt and minerals to start with if you  have an extremely low salt diet that makes it  

difficult for the body to retain enough sodium  sometimes and then you can be dehydrated because  

there's nothing to hold that water in. There  are medications called diuretics and they go in  

and interfere they affect the kidney's ability or  tendency to reabsorb water and salt so therefore  

they're called diuretics because they push they  flush water out and then of course you lose  

minerals along with that. If your adrenal glands  are underperforming the extreme version of that  

is called addison's which is basically complete  adrenal failure. The adrenals normally make  

mineral hormones mineralocorticoids that  help the kidneys regulate and retain  

minerals but if the adrenals are underperforming  then we're also going to flush out more minerals  

than usual. So with weak adrenals there's  two ways that we can create a problem one is  

because we're losing salt so the fluid volume  goes down. The second way is that there's also less  

vasoconstriction so we have less fluid volume  now there's an increased need for the body to  

vasoconstrict to get the blood up to the head  to avoid that dizziness and lightheadedness  

but if the adrenals are weak now we have  less ability to constrict to cause that  

vasoconstriction so it's like a double whammy to  create that lightheadedness. Number five is called  

skin turgor that has to do with the elasticity of  the skin and you can do something called a pinch  

test skin pinch and then you measure the bounce  back time so it's very simple you grab your skin  

you pull you let go and you see how quickly or how  long it takes to return to flat. Now the thing to  

keep in mind is the two factors that affect this  and one is hydration the more dehydrated you are  

the longer it takes the skin to return to flat  but also age so some people call this a hydration  

test and some people call it an age test. You  could check your biological age so I'm not  

going to vouch for these numbers. I don't know how  accurate they are but I did find them consistently  

in a handful ,several different places online. So  if your bounce back time is one to two seconds  

then your biological age is supposedly less than  30. If it's three to four seconds you're 30 to 44  

if it's five to nine seconds it's 45 to 50 years  old and if it's 10 to 15 seconds then you should  

be 60 or older. And I don't know why there are  missing ages here but you get the general idea  

and if it takes even longer like  half a minute then you're 70 or older.  

So I challenge you to have some fun with this  and let me know in the comments below how  

your chronological age agrees with your biological  age because I have a feeling that health champions  

will do pretty well relative to this scale. So  if we check mine for example, we pull on the skin  

and we let go, and it takes one maybe two seconds  to return to normal. So I should be under 30  

which I am getting close to twice that age at this  point so let me know in the comments below. And  

remember that if the results are not what you want  then it is never too late to start taking care of  

your health and getting younger and that's what  all the videos on my channel are about. Number six  

is kidney stones and if you're ever unfortunate  enough to get one then you'll probably look like  

this guy some people describe it as being stabbed  in the back with a knife or an ice pick and often  

as the worst back pain they've ever had. So kidney  stones are small crystals they're sharp pointy  

crystals that work their way from the kidney and  out and they have to pass through very thin and  

sensitive tubes and they irritate and inflame  the tissue on the way out very excruciating  

there are many factors that contribute to this  such as oxalates in food things like spinach so  

if you are have a tendency for kidney stones  then you might want to watch these. There are  

medications that can cause it. There are mineral  imbalances so again adrenal stress adrenals  

regulate minerals weak adrenals often cause  mineral imbalances and if you eat too much sugar  

like you knew sugar was going to show up on this  list also right but what they have in common is  

that even though these things cause and aggravate  it dehydration is a really bad thing because when  

you're dehydrated your urine is more concentrated  so there's more of all of these per unit volume  

and they have a higher tendency to form crystals.  So that would be one more reason to make sure  

you're hydrated but let's cover some more causes  because you can lose water many different ways  

and interestingly enough one way that you can  get dehydrated is to drink too much water or  

drink the wrong kind of water because if you  drink water without minerals now you're leeching  

minerals. Sodium follows the water the  body is going to do its best to reabsorb  

all the sodium from the kidney but when you really  just pour on the water it becomes difficult for  

the kidney to keep up and get that very high  percentage of reabsorption now if you're drinking  

distilled water if you're adding water to the body  with absolutely no minerals then that has an even  

higher tendency to flush out those minerals and  the same thing holds true with reverse osmosis  

water which there are machines you can buy to  filter to clean your water called reverse osmosis  

and they do a really good job of cleaning your  water but they also leave virtually no minerals  

in the water. And almost all of the bottled water  that is called purified municipal sources is  

reverse osmosis water. So they're convenient and  they're good to drink sometimes if you're doing  

a cleanse then it's nice to have really pure water  to really dissolve things out of the body but you  

don't want to do that long term short term is okay  if you do it long term you want to make sure that  

you supplement regularly with some minerals  and you get enough salt to hold that water.  

So therefore the best waters to drink long term  are going to be spring water or filtered water so  

tap water is fine as long as you have good  filtration like an activated carbon filter  

on there because that's going to remove a lot of  impurities like chlorine but it's going to leave  

the minerals in there. Another huge and very common  reason for dehydration is drinking alcohol and I'm  

sure that those of you who drink have noticed that  you tend to get very very thirsty the day after  

and the reason is that the alcohol numbs certain  areas of the brain so it inhibits something called  

ADH - antidiuretic hormone so this is a hormone  that improves the kidneys ability to reabsorb  

water and salt but if the alcohol turns it off  then you're going to lose extra water not just  

the fluid that you're drinking with the alcohol.  It's going to push additional fluid out and  

with it it's going to take salt as well. So  that is why they serve the margarita with  

salt on the rim. So not that I encourage drinking  but if you have a margarita make sure that  

you get it with the salt on the rim. Number  seven is constipation and the place where you  

get constipated is called the large intestine that  is the the colon and the large intestine the colon  

its job is to reabsorb the water so most of your  bacteria live in the large intestine and the bulk  

that you're passing through is from the large  intestine so it consists of fiber and water  

so if you don't have enough fiber  then the volume tends to be small  

but if you don't have enough water then the volume  also tends to be small and it gets hard because  

without fiber and water then there is less bulk  and it's going to move much slower through the  

large intestine and if it moves slowly then the  large intestine is going to get a lot of time to  

absorb more and more and more water so it gets  harder and harder and gets more and more stuck  

so it's not the only solution but the first  thing to look for with constipation is  

that you're getting enough fluid. It's  really important that we understand also how  

low carb high fat starts affecting fluid balance  very popular right now is low carb high fat also  

known as keto and when we do that when we drop  the carbohydrates then we're going to start  

using up the stored carbohydrates and the way  that the body stores carbohydrate is called  

glycogen and these glycogens have an osmotic pull  these molecules just like all the other particles  

they will tend to bind water they keep water to  them so as we start burning through that glycogen  

there's nothing to hold the water and you're  going to flush it out for every gram of glycogen  

that you burn you will lose several grams of water  so if you burn through a pound of glycogen or two  

then you can lose five six seven pounds of water  because of that. Now this is a temporary effect  

because over time as your body gets used to  this assuming you're doing this as a lifestyle  

then your body can even start rebuilding  some glycogen stores especially  

if you exercise in a way that uses glycogen your  body adapts and learns how to figure out to create  

balance with this. A second way that you lose  water is that when your blood sugar goes down  

your insulin goes down and insulin has a  tendency to promote sodium retention right  

insulin makes the kidneys better at keeping  the sodium and the water in which is a bad  

thing if you have high blood pressure if you're  diabetic you tend to have high blood pressure  

but if you're becoming a low carb if you're doing  a low carb lifestyle then your insulin goes down.  

Now this does not mean that you need to drink more  water all the time because if this is a lifestyle  

then your body learns to find a new set point  and a new balance. You probably have to eat a  

little bit more salt because you don't have as  much insulin to promote that sodium retention.  

And then we need to talk about fasting it is very  similar but it's still quite different because low  

carb keto you could do as a lifestyle you could  do that year in and year out it just means you eat  

lots of things that are good healthy foods but  don't have carbs but fasting you can't do year in  

and year out it's a self-limiting process even  though you could push it for a few months that's  

not really recommended or what most people do  you're going to do it for a few days at a time  

and during this time you will use up your glycogen  there is no way that you can adapt over time to  

not use up the glycogen so therefore you will lose  electrolytes all the same things that happen here  

temporarily will definitely happen when you fast  so here it becomes very important to drink plenty  

of fluids because you lose plenty of fluids  both with the glycogen and the electrolytes  

so drink probably at least a gallon and make sure  that you get at least one to two teaspoons of salt  

that's the number one mineral but it's also a good  idea to supplement with some potassium magnesium  

and calcium. Number eight is muscle cramps and  even though people often think about cramps as  

being because of dehydration it is more about the  minerals that you lose through the dehydration  

like if it's hot and you're sweating you're losing  water and minerals and the minerals are what  

regulates that muscle function more than anything.  The number one people talk about is magnesium  

but there are several others like potassium and  calcium sodium and chloride that are also very  

important and the easiest ones to get and the  most important probably is sodium chloride which  

is basically regular table salt. Now if you get  the pink salt or a good sea salt then you're going  

to get a lot of trace minerals a lot of micro  nutrient minerals along with that. Sign number nine  

is a lack of energy so if you're feeling like  this guy then that could be dehydration now  

when you start really losing energy we're  talking relatively extreme fluid loss but  

if you have extreme fatigue and weakness it  could certainly decrease athletic performance so  

if you lose five percent of your body weight  which is quite a bit that's like you've lost a  

gallon of fluids if you're weighing 150 pounds so  again that's not easy to do but if you're working  

outside if you're in a competition where it's hot  then if you don't drink a lot you could quickly  

lose that much fluid and now you have a 30 or more  percent drop in performance in energy output as a  

result and while that is quite significant where  it really comes into play is with high intensity  

interval training any form of high intensity  exercise something that you couldn't keep  

up for an hour something that you would  normally get very tired in a few minutes  

such as weight lifting because now only half as  much of a fluid loss will result in a 45% drop  

in performance so basically what this means is  that the activities you can maintain long term  

they're based on oxygen that's where your  mitochondria can metabolize fat and turn that  

into energy those we can sustain relatively well  even when we're losing some fluids but when we  

come to high intensity now we depend on breaking  down glucose and glycogen we're shifting from  

oxygen to glycolysis and now those effects are  visible very very quickly this is basically the  

difference between aerobic and intense anaerobic  exercise the anaerobic we can't keep up nearly as  

well and sign and symptom number 10 is a rapid  heartbeat and don't jump to conclusions because  

there's many different things don't think that  just because you have this you're dehydrated  

but in extreme cases of dehydration you  could get a rapid heartbeat and this would  

often be associated with rapid breathing and why  is this because at this point you have lost so  

much fluids that your blood volume is way down  you've probably lost fluid and minerals your  

blood volume is way down and it's not enough for  the heart to be able to normally pump the blood  

around to provide oxygen for energy so now your  body is in a crisis situation and it increases  

the heartbeat to try to circulate that blood and  it increases the breathing to try to oxygenate  

that blood so that would be an extreme case. If you  enjoyed this video, you'll love that one. And if you  

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