Elder Dehydration – It’s More than Just Water

Most people know that dehydration is a lack of water in your body. However, water may not be enough to help you through a period of dehydration.

When people go to the hospital for dehydration, the hospital does more than just give people a big jug of water to drink.

Many times they will hook the person up to an IV. The IV isn’t just water. Usually it’s some kind of saline solution meaning it contains sodium. Sodium is an electrolyte that helps your body restore hydration much quicker than regular water.

So the next question is what is an electrolyte? We hear about electrolytes a lot and know it is part of hydration. I remember playing sports in high school and guzzling bottles of Gatorade with my buddies because it contained ‘electrolytes’. I never really knew what they were.

I also didn’t know how much sugar I was drinking with Gatorade (34 grams in a 20 ounce bottle).

Electrolytes are substances that have a natural positive or negative charge when absorbed in water. They help your body regulate chemical reactions and maintain the balance between fluid inside and outside your cells.

Sounds important for rehydration. Common electrolytes include sodium, potassium, chloride and calcium.

When you are trying to stay hydrated, you may want to put more than just water in your cup. This is especially true for seniors.

Many seniors take multiple medications. Some of those medications can act as diuretics resulting in excessive fluid loss.

Seniors also become ill more than the regular population. Diarrhea and vomiting helps to make them more dehydrated.

In addition, seniors just don’t have the feelings of hunger and thirst like we do when we’re younger. I’ve seen residents in my assisted living homes actually tell me they don’t like the taste of water.

The media has not helped the situation. Many of our residents grew up hearing that salt is really bad for you. Good health demands that you keep your salt intake very low. At least that’s what they were told.

So much for those electrolytes.

We also encourage our residents to eat a ketogenic or low-carb diet. Even going towards the carnivore diet.

The trouble is that when you run your body on glucose (high-carb) your body stores a whole bunch of water with the glucose as something called glycogen. As your body turns to burning ketones and fat, the body releases this water.

Along with that water go the electrolytes. Hey, the keto diet had to have some kind of downside.

The lack of electrolytes may lead to problems you hear about with the keto diet:

· Keto flu

· Constipation

· Fatigue

· Cramping

Potassium especially is an electrolyte that is needed to improve insulin sensitivity, which is the whole point of the keto diet. Potassium can also cause problems if you’re on high blood pressure medications. In that case you would want to drink electrolytes without potassium such as this recipe.

You can buy electrolytes Amazon, or you can make them. Vegetables also contain electrolytes which can be problematic if you’re on a carnivore diet.

So make sure your body or your elderly parent is getting their electrolytes in addition to their water. One way or another.