Does your mouth, throat, or nose feel dry and scratchy when you get up in the morning? Do you feel tired only hours after waking up in the morning? Do pains and aches start to kick in around in the early afternoon? By 3 PM, are you so tired that you can hardly keep your eyes open without a critical cup of coffee? Well, you may be dehydrated.
While many of us may experience these symptoms every day, we often dismiss them as being a part of “early morning state” and never really get to the bottom of why the “dryness” and “frequent aches and pains” emerge and fatigue sets in.
According to the Mayo Clinic, dehydration occurs when you use or lose more fluid than you take in, resulting in a net loss of water and other essential minerals that your body needs to function correctly.
If fluids and minerals such as potassium and sodium are not replaced adequately – your body will become chronically dehydrated and lead to more complicated illnesses.
Hydration is essential for our body’s immune system to function correctly because the fluid plays a vital role in both repairing our cells, fighting infections, and flushing out toxins from our bodies. Patients with autoimmune diseases and disorders like Sjogren’s, Pots Syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, often experience severe symptoms of dehydration.
We often struggle to connect common symptoms to hydration or maintaining a proper balance of electrolytes. Here are some basic, but not so “obvious” signs that you might be dehydrated.
Bad Breath May Be A Sign that You Are Dehydrated
If you have persistent bad breath, it may be the first sign that your body needs more water. Your mouth is the first place where absorption takes place in the body. But a lack of hydration reduces the production of saliva in the mouth. Saliva has antibacterial properties, and a lack of hydration promotes bacterial growth, which results in smelly breath.
Dry Eyes, Dry Nose, and Dry Mouth
While feeling thirsty is a natural signal that our body needs more hydration, what many of us don’t realize is that a scratchy throat, dry mouth, dry nose, and dry eyes are also signals that our bodies are not getting proper hydration. If you get up in the morning with these symptoms, you need to make sure you are adequately hydrating the night before in the morning and throughout the day.
Frequent Headaches
If you have ever had a hangover headache, then know to chase that glass of red wine with lots of water. The reason why we get frequent headaches after drinking is that alcohol has ethanol, a diuretic that causes the body to lose water. When you are dehydrated, a loss of fluid in the brain tissues causes the brain to shrink and move away from the skull, triggering a reaction in the pain receptors located in the meninges. So if you are experiencing frequent headaches throughout the day, the cause may be a lack of proper hydration.
Muscle Cramps and Spasms
Contrary to widespread belief, dehydration does not directly cause muscle cramping. Instead, intense exercise causes an imbalance of minerals such as sodium and potassium, which helps our muscles contract. Proper hydration or using oral hydration solution helps to balance these ions, resulting in reduced muscle spasms and cramps.
Persistent Fatigue
Fatigue is perhaps the most overlooked symptom of dehydration. We feel weak and tired when we are dehydrated because our blood flow/ blood pressure drops due to a lack of water and oxygen in the blood, causing the body to shut down blood supply to ‘non-vital’ organs. The result is sluggishness, and our human body operates at a much slower pace.
Understanding How To Hydrate Properly
It’s important to know that proper hydration isn’t just about drinking more water, it’s about balancing electrolytes. Because our cells need vital minerals like potassium and sodium to be absorbed quickly and effectively, drinking water alone is not the best or most optimal way to properly balance electrolytes.
While there are many electrolyte enriched options available that claim to restore minerals like potassium and sodium, many are full of sugar, which slows down the body’s ability to absorb minerals contained in them. Unlike Hydrus, these drinks also have to be digested before they can start working.
Hydrus has been formulated with a patented nanosome technology that uses the science of hydration to help the body absorb water and minerals faster than other hydration drinks and works without the need for any digestion. Its molecular structure is designed to start absorption the moment it touches your mouth.