9 Weird Things Dehydration Does to Your Body

Many have told us of the crucial importance of water intake. We roll our eyes when we’re reminded of how many glasses we should drink each day, brushing it off as though it’s only a “recommendation” and that we get by fine drinking less. We need water when we get thirsty, that’s what our body tells us, so until then we’re happy to get by without it.

If that’s your line of thinking, you wouldn’t be the only one, but just how aware are we of what’s going on on the inside when we do or don’t drink enough water? Nobodies arguing that it’s important — essential — to our health, but do we really give it the credit it deserves? An article up at Huffington Post has put together a few things that might happen when your hydration dips below where it should be:

You can stop sweating.
For people like me, it’s pretty dang obvious. One minute, little rivulets will be trickling down the sides of my nose; the next, the flow has slowed and there’s a film of dried sweat across my cheeks, despite the fact that I’m still running. Not good, Lightfoot says. “This is the body trying to regulate; we don’t have enough fluid to both sweat and pump blood to the muscles, so it starts selectively shutting down some processes. When your body is trying to provide adequate blood flow to your muscles and provide enough fluid to sweat to remove some of the heat, sweating will lose.”

When I think of being unfit, I think of an inordinate amount of sweat when trying to workout, but it turns out that simply not sweating is not a good sign of being fit. Alas, I’ll need to put in more work, and more water too. Check out the full post for the other 8 things your body will do when it’s dehydrated.