Dehydration

Dehydration

SCI/241

According to Medicinenet.com (2011), water makes up 75% of the human body’s weight.

The water content in your body is extremely important. It not only flushes out waste from the body but, it equalizes concentration of solutes within your cells, lubricates your eyes, joints, and mouth. Water also participates in chemical reactions within the body. It is a solvent and helps to aid in the dissolving of necessary nutrients such as: glucose, amino acids, minerals, and many more. People running a fever may be suffering from lack of water in the body. Water helps to regulate body temperature. It does this by making us sweat. When you produce sweat, it is your body releasing heat and cooling down the body temperature. Without this water in the body, we suffer from something called dehydration.

Dehydration is an excessive loss of water resulting in depletion of body fluids (Nutrition: Everyday Choices, 2006). This occurs when the amount of water leaving the body is greater than the amount of water that is being brought in. Early symptoms of this condition can be any of the follow: thirst, headache and tiredness, loss of appetite, dry eyes or mouth, and darkened color of urine. Dehydration is a serious issue and can be life threatening. Even a small change to the water levels can be deadly. Without water in your body, a person can live for only a few days. Further symptoms of severe dehydration consist of nausea, inability to concentrate, or disorientation or confusion.

We are always losing water. When we breath we release humid air containing water, when we urinate we rid of some of our water supply, and when we sweat we lose water to cool the body’s temperature. Water is a critical element in the body and proper hydration is necessary for the body’s functions. Most of the water in our body is found in what our text refers to as “intracellular space”, or our cells. The rest is found in extracellular...