Comment by avalys
11 hours ago
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.
A quick note for people responding, you might have a mild form of vascular dysregulation or flammer's syndrome. It can manifest as migraines and a decreased sensation of thirst, as well as other symptoms like cold extremities.
Afaik it's pretty harmless in general but it is associated with certain vision issues (normal tension glaucoma). Glaucoma is irreversible but has many treatment options especially if caught early. But you MUST go in for a (fast, cheap, painless) screening to catch it, it's really hard to detect unless there are issues otherwise. Please consider this if you really are showing a lot of these symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammer_syndrome
I used to have warm and sweaty hands. Since I picked up bouldering I realised everyone is using chalk but I don’t sweat in my hands at all. My hands felt colder, and I don’t feel thirsty that if I don’t drink enough water it triggers my headache. Took me quite some time to associate the headache with dehydration. Thanks for the reply. I will try to get myself a check up
I grew up in a hot climate spending a lot of time outdoors, and I was educated about staying hydrated from a young age.
Still, like you, when I get symptoms of dehydration, I don't feel any intuitive connection with the need to drink, and I often don't feel any urge to drink at all. I have to remind myself to drink even though I don't want to.
It's weird. You'd think something so essential for life would have a better regulator.
Notice peeing. That’s my hack. It can be used as a dehydration monitor, not just frequency and volume but color especially is informative.
I had a similar moment of enlightenment when I found out that depressive feelings can be caused by a lack of sleep.
This 1000x. Anytime I get depressed my first response now is I need more sleep. Not to say that this is the answer for everyone, but yeah, I've noticed the same thing.
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
It's a big problem for the elderlies, it snowballs into serious issues. Don't feel thirst -> be dehydrated -> UTI -> hospital.
And having to be stay at a hospital for a length of time for any reason is very much Not Good for an elderly person. Other illnesses, muscle atrophy, disorientation, loneliness, cognitive decline...
If my mum wasn't English she would have shrivelled and died of dehydration many years ago. There's a lot of water in 15 daily cups of tea.
I'm 56 now and I'd agree. I bike in the summer for exercise and I drink while on the go as needed. I always got a headache after exercising. A regular headache not a migraine (never had one).
My discovery was Pedialyte it's meant for children but it's like the adult version or Gatorade. I drink it before I exercise and also drink as needed. I feel normal no headaches not dehydrated.
edit: I also have hypothyroidism so my hypothalamus must also be crap at regulating my thirst maybe?
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 remember the same. As I approach 50, I do notice that I feel much more tired and mentally foggy when I fail to remember my daily water bottles. I've had to develop specific routines that help me remember to fill/drink my water bottle which goes pretty much everywhere with me. For being such a necessity, it sure is an oddly hard thing to remember to do.
I think adults tell kid-me to drink more water was a way of trying to get me to just develop a habit with it, since they understood the seemingly paradoxical struggle of keeping hydrated at their age.
> As an adult, I started drinking a lot of water - I drink easily 4 liters a day. Not even sure why.
Excessive thirst and urination is a potential symptom of diabetes, might want to get that checked out.
In activities prone to heatstroke, the advice is similar. Even for people with normal thirst detection capabilities, by the time that you realize you're thirsty it's likely too late. You need to be proactive about drinking enough water.
> 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 also discovered that dehydration was a migraine trigger for me. I tend not to get big headaches now but get quite intense visual aura / disturbance.
Interestingly I also discovered that electrolyte supplements were also migraine triggers for me.
Leading me to think that electrolyte imbalance was the actually trigger. Caused by too little water increasing the concentration or added salts increasing it.
I tend not to feel thirst very strongly and think I do often confuse it with hunger.
I pay loose attention to urine colour as a gauge and make sure I drink plenty, kinda robotically when playing sports / walking in heat etc.
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'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.
Nvm, sitting with it for a bit I realise that when I drink salty water and it relieves my migraine my body needs either salts or water and by giving it both it takes what it needs and gets rid of the other.
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 just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty
When did you last pee and what color?
15 years ago, blue.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
[dead]