To function at its best, your body needs to be properly hydrated. Dehydration is a frequent cause of hospital admissions, and although many people don’t take it seriously, it can have severe consequences on the body.

It’s important to learn more about dehydration, how it can affect your entire system, and why IV therapy services can provide a convenient and effective solution to keeping your body hydrated.

How Dehydration Affects Heart Health

When you are dehydrated, your heart has to work harder to pump blood through your body because dehydration decreases the total volume of blood.

Less volume also means a higher sodium content will make blood thicker, which doesn’t allow it to flow as freely as you need it to. To keep blood moving, your heart rate spikes. At the same time, your blood pressure levels drop, putting you at risk of fainting.

If you already have a heart condition, including arrhythmias, dehydration can make them worse. It is even more important to stay hydrated if you take heart medications since these tend to lower your blood pressure. Dehydration on top of this effect can lead to dangerous dips in pressure.

Dehydration and Your Immune System

If you’re dehydrated, you don’t have as much lymph fluid to get rid of toxins and transport white blood cells to the various parts of the body. With less lymph fluid to transport pathogens to the lymph nodes for filtering, you are at a higher risk of developing infections and other health issues.

Your immune system also depends on mucous membranes. You can find these in your:

• Mouth
• Nose
• Skin
• GI tract

These membranes are the first responders to pathogens and irritants that try to get into the body. If you’re dehydrated, you have less of the mucous membranes you need. 

How Dehydration Affects Your Kidneys

Water helps you get rid of toxins in your blood through urine. When you’re dehydrated, your urine contains a more concentrated amount of minerals and waste, which can lead to the creation of crystals that affect kidney function.

Not getting enough water can clog your kidneys with myoglobin, or muscle proteins, which are toxic for those organs and can lead to kidney failure.

Your urine is very good at telling you whether you are dehydrated. You want your urine to be straw-colored or lighter — darker hues point to dehydration.

Your Metabolism and Dehydration

Your metabolism will also slow down if you are dehydrated.

Metabolism occurs at a cellular level, and your cells must be hydrated to work at their best. So if you’re not getting enough water, your metabolic rates slow down. Appropriate cell hydration levels, for example, prompt cells to restore blood glucose transport, allowing for the generation of energy.

When cells shrink because of dehydration, your body signals your various systems to slow down metabolic processes.

Effects of Dehydration on the Brain

If you’re dehydrated, your brain cells shrink in mass and size, leading to mental fog. This means that dehydration affects short-term memory and concentration. Your ability to store information and access it later can also be severely impacted.

Dehydration can also lead to body coordination issues because it affects your hand-eye motor abilities and reaction times.

All of these effects are worsened by another issue that can arise if you are dehydrated — sleeping problems. You may have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep because dehydration affects melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep.

This occurs because your body has trouble making the amino acids that produce melatonin when dehydrated.

Getting Back to Proper Hydration Levels With IV Hydration

If you worry about your hydration levels, you may think that just drinking a few glasses of water can help. It can — but it can take a while for you to start feeling the beneficial effects of that water.

When you drink water, it has to work its way through the digestive system, which takes time that you may not want to wait for if you’re already feeling the effects of dehydration.

Fortunately, IV therapy can effectively hydrate you within minutes. This is because IV drip therapy gets all of the nutrients you need into your veins — bypassing your digestive system — to help you start feeling better sooner.

At Vital Flow Infusions in Sioux Falls, SD, we offer convenient mobile IV therapy options from registered nurses who come directly to you when you need a boost. Contact us today to learn more about our IV therapy options or to book an appointment.