Experts Say Dehydration Danger Is Cut and Dried

You start the day with a strong cup of coffee, perk yourself up at midday with a soda or two, and relax in the evening with an after-dinner drink. Because of the drought, you don’t even ask for a glass of ice water with your meals. After all, you’re not very thirsty, so why waste water?

If those habits sound familiar, you could be suffering from a water shortage all your own. Fitness experts say it’s a deficit every bit as serious to your internal environment as the long dry spell that has depleted the state’s water reserves.

Athletes know it as dehydration, and those who train prudently make a point of trying to prevent it by drinking plenty of water in the days and hours leading up to a race or other event. Those who don’t may face serious consequences, according to Tustin Hospital Medical Center’s Dr. Alan Strizak, a sports medicine specialist who served as one of the medical advisers for the recent U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles. He cites as an example the tennis player who collapsed during the festival and had to leave the competition by ambulance.

Even the most sedate people among us may be chronically dehydrated, Strizak and other authorities say. That can lead to a broad range of health problems that include headaches, cramps, skin problems, weakness and body fat retention.

“Human beings, as opposed to animals, have lost the ability to trust their thirst,” Strizak says. “If a horse becomes dehydrated, it will go to the water trough and drink water until it replenishes its supply. But people will drink only until their mouths feel moist. That can lead to not only immediate but progressive dehydration.

“We need to force ourselves to drink more that we think we need. As long as you have normal kidney function, you can’t drink too much water.”

David Morrow, a private fitness trainer at the Sports Club/Irvine and veteran endurance athlete, says: “A lot of people are going through their whole lives dehydrated. I run into so many people who want to lose weight and don’t know why they can’t. One of the major reasons is that if you’re not fully hydrated, it’s physically impossible to burn fat.

“When you’re dehydrated, your blood literally thickens, and that puts a tremendous stress on your heart,” Morrow says. “Your resting heart rate is higher, your blood pressure goes up and your circulation can be reduced.”

Drinking coffee, tea, sodas or other beverages containing caffeine only makes the problem worse, he says, because caffeine is a diuretic. “For every cup of coffee you drink, you void two cups,” he says. “And alcohol also dries you out.”

The average person needs at least 64 ounces of water a day, and even more under hot, dry conditions or during exercise. Strizak and Morrow say that should be plain water. “Anything you put in the water for taste only slows down its absorption,” Strizak says.

If you can’t tolerate the taste of water alone, a slice of lemon or lime in the glass can be a good compromise, says dietitian Carol Semelroth of St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton. Semelroth recommends supplementing that water with fruit juices, nonfat milk and soups--cold soup if it’s a hot summer day.

“But as far as we’re concerned, water is the beverage of choice,” she says.

Water is especially important to people who are trying to lose weight, for several reasons besides helping to burn body fat. It has no calories and functions as an appetite suppressant, Morrow points out. Strizak agrees, and adds that “the more water you drink, the easier it will be for your kidneys to cleanse the blood.”

Water also helps keep the skin looking its best, which is why models may drink as much as two gallons a day, Morrow says.

“Water is important for proper digestion all the way down, from saliva to the gastric acid in your stomach to your intestines as well. A lot of people who don’t have good digestion because of dehydration suffer from constipation, headaches and chronic abdominal cramping,” he says.

For those who are trying to become healthier by quitting smoking, water may also play an important role, according to the New York University Medical Center. The center’s smoking cessation program recommends sipping ice water as a positive oral activity to substitute for smoking.

The colder the water, the faster it is absorbed by the body, Strizak says. And he says the longstanding assumption that cold water can be hazardous because it is a shock to the body is just a myth.

“There’s no danger with cold water,” he says, although for long endurance events, cool water may have an advantage over ice-cold water because the body uses it more slowly. For marathons, triathlons and other events that can severely deplete the body’s resources, both Strizak and Morrow recommend using a diluted solution of carbohydrates to keep blood sugar levels up.

“It has to be diluted, about 3%,” Morrow says. “A couple of years ago at the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, the officials accidentally mixed a 15% solution, and about 400 participants either dropped out or continued with severe cramping and vomiting.”

Morrow says the signs of chronic dehydration are easy to spot if you know how. “I can just look at a person and tell if they’re hydrated or not,” he says. “When they’re dehydrated, their skin is pallid and dry, the whites of their eyes are red, and even their speech is affected because their mouth is dry.”

In recent years, athletes have learned what office workers have known for a long time: caffeine improves performance. “If you have the equivalent of three cups of coffee in you during aerobic exercise, you can perform better and metabolize fat faster. Caffeine has become the new running aid of the ‘90s. But it causes a problem because of the dangers of dehydration.”

The only way to compensate for the diuretic effect of caffeine or alcohol is to drink even more water along with it, say the experts.

At St. Jude, Semelroth says, cardiac patients aren’t allowed any caffeine because of the stress it places on their heart and circulatory system. Patients in the chemical-dependency unit don’t get any, either.

Caffeine can also produce a yo-yo effect, Morrow says. “A lot of people, especially busy business people, try to replace complex carbohydrates with that chemical. It picks them up for a while, but a couple of hours later they’re lower than when they drank the first cup of coffee. They go up and down all day.”