I'm so interested in this topic, for a weird reason.
Since I was a kid, I've thought I was "prone to migraines", and ascribed various triggers to them - sun exposure, heat, physical exertion, mental exertion, etc. I'd get a migraine sometimes after a long hike on a weekend - and also a long business meeting entirely indoors in an air-conditioned space.
Only when I was around 35, did I figure something out. All these situations lead to me getting dehydrated without any obvious accompanying feeling of thirst. Hiking all day will do it - walking around an outdoor shopping mall on a hot afternoon - or sitting in an all-day business meeting focused on the work at hand and forgetting to drink. And all these situations lead to a migraine - my only "migraine" trigger is simple dehydration, nothing more complicated.
The weird thing is, it took me a long time (decades) to put this together, because I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty, and I had no association between "feeling thirsty" and getting a migraine.
I get what I consider normally thirsty in other circumstances, but somehow there's a failure mode where my body doesn't warn me. So now I just remember to chug lots of water (and electrolytes) if I'm exerting myself even if I don't really feel thirsty, and I can systematically avoid triggering migraines.
Now that I understand it the association is quite clear and obvious in retrospect.
I just remember reading that adults start to lose their ability to sense thirst.
Wikipedia says 50:
In adults over the age of 50 years, the body's thirst sensation reduces and continues diminishing with age, putting this population at increased risk of dehydration.
Tangential: I remember when I was a kid, adults always told me to drink more. Apparently I never drank enough, but I don't think it's ever caused me any problems. As an adult, I started drinking a lot of water - I drink easily 4 liters a day. Not even sure why. And now I always tell my kid to hydrate...
> I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty
This is what I learned, but from others online. I also learned that sometimes our body/mind may mistake thirst for hunger and we may end up eating some food instead of just drinking water (this is generalizing things a bit). This made me a little more aware of what I think of as hunger signals and I started tracking water intake (other than from food) everyday.
BTW, a tiny nitpick: it’s “led”, not “lead”, when you talking about the past.
You might as well be my dream self writing a journal, because this describes my experience 1:1. It's kindof wild how long it took me to realize that I wasn't overheating at night due to the weather or the A/C being broken, but simply due to needing more water. That's one of my strongest signs as it turns out.
I don't know what "thirst" feels like at all! It's weird because I do feel hunger. If I forget to actually eat, my stomach kicks my brain and refuses to let me concentrate until I fix it. Hydration has no equivalent, and in retrospect, it's no wonder I was suffering headaches and nausea all through college on my diet of mostly soda. After I switched to water as my primary beverage things improved dramatically, but it's not perfect. I still have to watch the signs and pay attention, or I'll dehydrate myself by simply forgetting to drink.
> I don't know what "thirst" feels like at all! It's weird because I do feel hunger.
(I'm not an expert so take with a grain of salt)
This is it! Your hunger! It's actually thirst! When you're "hungry", try drinking a glass of water first. (Some people use this trick to lose weight, others, to stay hydrated...)
I'm probably misunderstanding the article or you, but as I understand it you are talking about different things.
The article talks about the proportions between water and sodium, while you are talking about just filling up the tank with both.
I too drink water with sodium (and a few other salts) to relieve oncoming migraines but this has to be something else than the article is talking about.
It took me to teenagehood and then finally around the same time did I link it togtether.
Glad to know I'm not the only one and I do wonder how I missed this obvious step. Lately I've been doing electrolytes/water cliche of pocari sweat/etc and it really helps focus, weight, energy, etc.
I used to work for an industrial company that had a lot of plants which, by the nature of the work they did, were often extremely hot - a lot of them had urine colour charts in the toilets to try and warn people about dehydration.
Same here - there are other feelings than a dry mouth or "feeling thirsty" that tell me I need more water. The slight beginning of a headache for example, or feeling a little bit dizzy, or many other things. I guess I could call these "feeling thirsty" since I now know when I feel these things that I probably need water and that's how I interpret them.
I can't relate more. I am also prone to ophthalmic migraines and have the same tendency to not be thirsty, to the amazement of the people I usually trek or live with. Only recently (35 and a kidney stone) did I gather that I might actually be in need of water even without feelings of thirst. I have never made a connection with migraines, and that might not be it for me but reading you makes me want to pay attention.
Maybe a related point is that hangovers, of which headaches are likely the most common symptom, are caused in a large part by dehydration as well as electrolyte imbalance.
A friend of mine always goes around parties and tells everyone to stay hydrated. It always feels completely out of place, and also it's saved me from many hangovers...
I think I have the same problem. I'm ever dehydrated now, but if I am I can tell something is wrong because my head starts to feel fuzzy (don't even know if it's the right word).
I used to get really bad migraines and a neurologist gave me a prescription. The only time I used it I felt like absolute shit. Never took another one.
When I was in my 20s I realized I had lost the thirst signal. I never felt thirsty. I guessed this was because I lived a comfortable life and I had lost this signal in the noise of modern life.
So I set about deliberately retraining myself. I stopped drinking everything but water (and beer, because life) I'd exercise (and sweat) and then drink water. I retrained my body/mind to savour the pleasantness of drinking water when dehydrated and after a year of conscious effort I more or less recovered the sense of "thirst" and would pre-emptively desire drinking water.
YES YES i get migraines and it's my body saying "Hey you need more water to function you know ?" usually i don't feel any thirst nor hunger, although, i do get hungry more often, but i can last a day without food before my head starts to hurt
One theory is that the most important nutrient that we really need a certain amount of every day is protein, and thus the body wants us to keep eating until it thinks we've got enough protein. (And for the vegans, I'm not saying meat - even most green plants and mushrooms are about 1/3 protein by dry weight). In nature almost every food has some amount of protein. If you get meat, you don't need to eat that much for your body to have all the protein it needs. If you are eating cake, it will take an awful lot of cake to have an adequate amount of protein.
In evolutionary past, if one had access to fresh fruit it might make sense to eat a lot of it right away since it won't keep, and the sugar in the fruit is easy for the body to store as fat and use later. In nature it's very rare to find a diet with very high fat and low protein but suppose you live by a macadamia tree, you may need to eat a lot of calories worth of macadamias to get enough protein. I have a feeling though that excess fat can go right through you in some cases like that - because there have been times where I was binging on peanut butter, like easily 16-24oz in a day often, like 2-3000 calories extra on top of my normal diet, and I didn't gain weight, I think a lot of it went through me undigested.
These are just hypotheses I'm not claiming they are necessarily the reason, and definitely are not the only mechanism involved as it's extremely complex. But they make sense as a simple place to start.
I have the opposite problem, after one glass of water I feel full and drinking any more makes me nauseous. It’s a struggle to get sufficient hydration during the day.
First off, it doesn’t have to be plain water.
Secondly, the two liters a day was two liters of moisture, not drinking two liters a day; food is included in this amount
When my wife was ill a few years ago the doctor suggested Angel Delight[1] to help maintain fluids. Until then it hadn't occurred to me you're still effectively drinking half a pint of milk when you eat a bowl.
Try adding a rehydrating powder mix, the same stuff they use for treating diarrhoea. It’s just salts, glucose, and citric acid. It is hugely more hydrating than plain water, with a much faster onset of feeling relief from intense thirst.
Sports drinks are basically the same thing, but with excess sugars for “energy” (and weight gain).
So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.
In all offices I worked in, less than 10% had their own water bottle. The others barely drank 2 cups per day. They go to the toilet at most twice per workday.
> So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.
Dumb? People can't just drink their darn water as much as they please without getting judged now? What's your point?
It is still weird to see the health fad/moral panic/potomania in the US, about "drinking enough water". This is a borderline mania, that doesn't exist in other countries- including ones with hot climates.
No, you are not "chronically dehydrated". The rest of the world isn't, and you wouldn't be either if you drank "only" two liters a day instead of a full gallon.
This is one more symptom of that "freethinking" country that falls for every con.
not the OP but: it's fairly obvious that those office workers force themselves, so you can't say "as much as they please", otherwise they d stop 3 liters earlier. So yes, you will be judged.
I'm so interested in this topic, for a weird reason.
Since I was a kid, I've thought I was "prone to migraines", and ascribed various triggers to them - sun exposure, heat, physical exertion, mental exertion, etc. I'd get a migraine sometimes after a long hike on a weekend - and also a long business meeting entirely indoors in an air-conditioned space.
Only when I was around 35, did I figure something out. All these situations lead to me getting dehydrated without any obvious accompanying feeling of thirst. Hiking all day will do it - walking around an outdoor shopping mall on a hot afternoon - or sitting in an all-day business meeting focused on the work at hand and forgetting to drink. And all these situations lead to a migraine - my only "migraine" trigger is simple dehydration, nothing more complicated.
The weird thing is, it took me a long time (decades) to put this together, because I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty, and I had no association between "feeling thirsty" and getting a migraine.
I get what I consider normally thirsty in other circumstances, but somehow there's a failure mode where my body doesn't warn me. So now I just remember to chug lots of water (and electrolytes) if I'm exerting myself even if I don't really feel thirsty, and I can systematically avoid triggering migraines.
Now that I understand it the association is quite clear and obvious in retrospect.
I just remember reading that adults start to lose their ability to sense thirst.
Wikipedia says 50:
In adults over the age of 50 years, the body's thirst sensation reduces and continues diminishing with age, putting this population at increased risk of dehydration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirst#Elderly
Tangential: I remember when I was a kid, adults always told me to drink more. Apparently I never drank enough, but I don't think it's ever caused me any problems. As an adult, I started drinking a lot of water - I drink easily 4 liters a day. Not even sure why. And now I always tell my kid to hydrate...
1 reply →
> I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty
This is what I learned, but from others online. I also learned that sometimes our body/mind may mistake thirst for hunger and we may end up eating some food instead of just drinking water (this is generalizing things a bit). This made me a little more aware of what I think of as hunger signals and I started tracking water intake (other than from food) everyday.
BTW, a tiny nitpick: it’s “led”, not “lead”, when you talking about the past.
You might as well be my dream self writing a journal, because this describes my experience 1:1. It's kindof wild how long it took me to realize that I wasn't overheating at night due to the weather or the A/C being broken, but simply due to needing more water. That's one of my strongest signs as it turns out.
I don't know what "thirst" feels like at all! It's weird because I do feel hunger. If I forget to actually eat, my stomach kicks my brain and refuses to let me concentrate until I fix it. Hydration has no equivalent, and in retrospect, it's no wonder I was suffering headaches and nausea all through college on my diet of mostly soda. After I switched to water as my primary beverage things improved dramatically, but it's not perfect. I still have to watch the signs and pay attention, or I'll dehydrate myself by simply forgetting to drink.
> I don't know what "thirst" feels like at all! It's weird because I do feel hunger.
(I'm not an expert so take with a grain of salt)
This is it! Your hunger! It's actually thirst! When you're "hungry", try drinking a glass of water first. (Some people use this trick to lose weight, others, to stay hydrated...)
I'm probably misunderstanding the article or you, but as I understand it you are talking about different things.
The article talks about the proportions between water and sodium, while you are talking about just filling up the tank with both.
I too drink water with sodium (and a few other salts) to relieve oncoming migraines but this has to be something else than the article is talking about.
It took me to teenagehood and then finally around the same time did I link it togtether.
Glad to know I'm not the only one and I do wonder how I missed this obvious step. Lately I've been doing electrolytes/water cliche of pocari sweat/etc and it really helps focus, weight, energy, etc.
I used to work for an industrial company that had a lot of plants which, by the nature of the work they did, were often extremely hot - a lot of them had urine colour charts in the toilets to try and warn people about dehydration.
Same here - there are other feelings than a dry mouth or "feeling thirsty" that tell me I need more water. The slight beginning of a headache for example, or feeling a little bit dizzy, or many other things. I guess I could call these "feeling thirsty" since I now know when I feel these things that I probably need water and that's how I interpret them.
I can't relate more. I am also prone to ophthalmic migraines and have the same tendency to not be thirsty, to the amazement of the people I usually trek or live with. Only recently (35 and a kidney stone) did I gather that I might actually be in need of water even without feelings of thirst. I have never made a connection with migraines, and that might not be it for me but reading you makes me want to pay attention.
> I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty
When did you last pee and what color?
Maybe a related point is that hangovers, of which headaches are likely the most common symptom, are caused in a large part by dehydration as well as electrolyte imbalance.
A friend of mine always goes around parties and tells everyone to stay hydrated. It always feels completely out of place, and also it's saved me from many hangovers...
I think I have the same problem. I'm ever dehydrated now, but if I am I can tell something is wrong because my head starts to feel fuzzy (don't even know if it's the right word).
I used to get really bad migraines and a neurologist gave me a prescription. The only time I used it I felt like absolute shit. Never took another one.
Now I always have my 700ml flask with me.
When I was in my 20s I realized I had lost the thirst signal. I never felt thirsty. I guessed this was because I lived a comfortable life and I had lost this signal in the noise of modern life.
So I set about deliberately retraining myself. I stopped drinking everything but water (and beer, because life) I'd exercise (and sweat) and then drink water. I retrained my body/mind to savour the pleasantness of drinking water when dehydrated and after a year of conscious effort I more or less recovered the sense of "thirst" and would pre-emptively desire drinking water.
We are pretty simple machines.
YES YES i get migraines and it's my body saying "Hey you need more water to function you know ?" usually i don't feel any thirst nor hunger, although, i do get hungry more often, but i can last a day without food before my head starts to hurt
I am piloting a super sophisticated mech that is a literal home (primordial soup) for other tiny specs that cooperate together.
And more and more I ask this question. Why? There is only recursive answer, to copy itself, so the copy could continue piloting.
It is poetic and really weird.
Tangentially related, I'm curious to know why it is that proteins are so much more filling than other macronutrients (within minutes)
One theory is that the most important nutrient that we really need a certain amount of every day is protein, and thus the body wants us to keep eating until it thinks we've got enough protein. (And for the vegans, I'm not saying meat - even most green plants and mushrooms are about 1/3 protein by dry weight). In nature almost every food has some amount of protein. If you get meat, you don't need to eat that much for your body to have all the protein it needs. If you are eating cake, it will take an awful lot of cake to have an adequate amount of protein.
In evolutionary past, if one had access to fresh fruit it might make sense to eat a lot of it right away since it won't keep, and the sugar in the fruit is easy for the body to store as fat and use later. In nature it's very rare to find a diet with very high fat and low protein but suppose you live by a macadamia tree, you may need to eat a lot of calories worth of macadamias to get enough protein. I have a feeling though that excess fat can go right through you in some cases like that - because there have been times where I was binging on peanut butter, like easily 16-24oz in a day often, like 2-3000 calories extra on top of my normal diet, and I didn't gain weight, I think a lot of it went through me undigested.
These are just hypotheses I'm not claiming they are necessarily the reason, and definitely are not the only mechanism involved as it's extremely complex. But they make sense as a simple place to start.
I have the opposite problem, after one glass of water I feel full and drinking any more makes me nauseous. It’s a struggle to get sufficient hydration during the day.
First off, it doesn’t have to be plain water. Secondly, the two liters a day was two liters of moisture, not drinking two liters a day; food is included in this amount
> food is included in this amount
When my wife was ill a few years ago the doctor suggested Angel Delight[1] to help maintain fluids. Until then it hadn't occurred to me you're still effectively drinking half a pint of milk when you eat a bowl.
[1] It's an instant dessert / mousse that you mix up with milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Delight
What are your thoughts on cows milk? There are a number of studies suggesting it’s better at hydration than plain water regardless of skim vs. whole.
Don't drink the whole glass at once?
try carbonated water +/- lemon juice
A good choice if you have a carbonating machine; just take care of your teeth afterwards, especially if you add lemon juice.
Try adding a rehydrating powder mix, the same stuff they use for treating diarrhoea. It’s just salts, glucose, and citric acid. It is hugely more hydrating than plain water, with a much faster onset of feeling relief from intense thirst.
Sports drinks are basically the same thing, but with excess sugars for “energy” (and weight gain).
[dead]
How many ounces consumed over how many minutes?
i can't stop eating the salt cristals before eating the lunch
∑ Quanta Thirst
[dead]
So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.
In all offices I worked in, less than 10% had their own water bottle. The others barely drank 2 cups per day. They go to the toilet at most twice per workday.
Baffling.
I see blue collar workers carrying big hydroflasks all the time, I'm guessing they drink even more water.
> So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.
Dumb? People can't just drink their darn water as much as they please without getting judged now? What's your point?
I think it is more a comment about the insane size some of those beverage containers grew to over the years.
Some of them do indeed look like you could take a bath in them.
Then again, maybe their colleagues are using those as stealth biceps curl weights and are actually secret gym rats trapped at a desk.
It is still weird to see the health fad/moral panic/potomania in the US, about "drinking enough water". This is a borderline mania, that doesn't exist in other countries- including ones with hot climates.
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a60249105/how-much-water-t...
https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/do-americans-drink-mo...
https://www.delicious.com.au/drinks/article/why-we-so-obsess...
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/waterlogged-america-d...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/08/drinking-...
https://archive.ph/Y0W7e
No, you are not "chronically dehydrated". The rest of the world isn't, and you wouldn't be either if you drank "only" two liters a day instead of a full gallon.
This is one more symptom of that "freethinking" country that falls for every con.
1 reply →
not the OP but: it's fairly obvious that those office workers force themselves, so you can't say "as much as they please", otherwise they d stop 3 liters earlier. So yes, you will be judged.
It looks pretty dumb.
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How is that dumb? It could be that the construction workers are in fact dehydrated if that's the case
In my experience construction site workers have even larger jugs of water to drink.