Table of Contents
How To Rehydrate Your Body With Simple At-Home Ways!
One needs to know how to rehydrate after heavy activities that cause intense sweating like workouts, hot yoga classes, and sauna sessions. Rehydration is also very important and highly recommended to prevent the damaging effects of dehydration.
Drinking enough after is not as easy as it seems. We get caught up on something or other throughout the day due to which we forget drinking water or sometimes we are just too tired to fetch bottles. Whether you are going out, exercising, or simply laying on your couch, you must know how to rehydrate.
If you are not drinking enough after to maintain optimal hydration you may face health concerns. Even a loss of body water nearly 1 to 2% can lead to having a serious effect on your cognitive abilities. Eventually, you may end up dealing with dizziness, fatigue, dry mouth, and other symptoms of dehydration.
If you find yourself thirsty, you probably must know how to rehydrate fast before the symptoms get a hold on your body.
Before starting with how to rehydrate you must know what is dehydration and some symptoms that can help you understand you need to rehydrate.
Dehydration
Loss of water or the presence of low body fluids leads to dehydration. Mild dehydration may turn into severe dehydration if not taken care of during extreme temperatures.
Symptoms of dehydration are as follows:
- Trouble communication and concentrating
- Irritatibilyt and disorientation
- Not sweating enough even after intense workouts
- not urinating or yellow urine
- poor skin elasticity or skin turgor
- trouble keeping down fluids.
A research study reported that people who were dehydrated mildly were able to rehydrate and reach their normal hydration level after 45 minutes by drinking 500 to 600 mL of water or a combination of carbohydrate-rich solutions and salts.
Urine color is also considered to be a common indicator of dehydration. Generally, the pale your urine is, the mere hydrated you are. That being said, hydration alone does not derne urine color as other factors like diet, medications, etc are also involved.
Below are some of the ways using which you can learn how to rehydrate and restore your lost electrolytes.
How to rehydrate
To quickly treat dehydration in severe cases, intravenous therapy is used but it cannot be taken as an everyday solution fr treating dehydration. The solution to treat dehydration is also not just drinking a lot of water all at once as drinking too much water at once may lead to flushing out fibers and essential electrolytes from the body leading to a condition known as Hyponatremia.
Here are some ways using which you will know how to hydrate:
1. Oral Rehydration Solution or ORS
As already said above, water alone cannot be an effective way to learn how to rehydrate. Physioclogiests report that glucose helps to increase the body’s ability to absorb sodium and water. This is called the “sodium-glucose transport system”. Previously, salt sugar solutions were used successfully to treat cholera in patients. From that point, this solution turned in modern times to form the ORS solution. This helps deal with fluid loss to treat conditions related to water loss.
Many health organization like UNICEF, WHO and American academy of pediatrics suggests using ORS as a successful treatment of dehydration.
ORS solutions are water-based and contain many electrolytes like potassium, sodium, chloride, and even sugar in the form of dextrose. Commercial solutions also have ingredients like zinc and probiotics.
An effective solution of ORS contains:
- Sodium- is needed to help the body absorb nutrients.
- Glucose- It helps the body to absorb sodium and providing energy to the body.
- Electrolytes- some electrolytes like chloride and potassium have many benefits to offer like maintaining the ideal fluid balance in the body and alleviating it when needed.
Getting ORS from local shops may be slightly expensive for many people if needed for the long term. Fortunately, you can prepare your own rehydration solution using these ingredients:
- 1-liter water
- 6 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and stir until sugar and salt have completely mixed. You may use some flavors for taste purposes if needed.
In addition to this, ORS that is hypotonic may help speed up the rehydration process because they contain a low concentration of electrolytes which allows the fluids and salts to be absorbed more quickly in your bloodstream. Overall this may result in fast recovery from dehydration.
2. Tea and Coffee
Coffee and tea both contain a stimulant called caffeine which is transiently dehydrating when consumed in excess amounts because it acts as a diuretic. However, if you drink tea and coffee both in moderate amounts it can act as a hydrating drink and serve as an alternative to energize your body.
Caffeine is a dehydrating agent only when you consume it in high doses which are 250 to 300 mg. This is equal to 2 to 3 cups of coffee or five to eight cups of tea per day.
In a study conducted, 50 people who’d rank coffee regularly drank 4 cups containing 1.8 mg caffeine per pound of their body weight. No significant differences were observed between water and coffee regarding their ability to rehydrate the body.
If you do not enjoy plain beverages, you can also add unsweetened almond milk to the coffee or some herbs or spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemongrass in your tea.
3. Skin and low-fat milk
other than supplying a lot of nutrients, milk also has some excellent hydrating properties. It naturally has high electrolyte concentration which is useful for balancing water content in your body and painting optimum water levels.
As per researchers, skim and low-fat milk help rehydrate similar to popular sports drinks after workouts while providing protein and important nutrients.
Milk has high-quality protein making it an ideal beverage post-exercise or for kick-starting the rebuilding process or muscle repair.
Just know that drinking milk daily after intense workouts may cause discomforts like boating. Also, it is not a good option for people who are not tolerant to certain milk proteins like lactose.
If you are experiencing vomiting or diarrhea, then also consuming low-fat milk is not a good option as it triggers these conditions and makes them worse.
4. Fruits and veggies
Some fruits and vegetables can be of great usage for rehydrating your body. If you wish to learn how to rehydrate just memorize the names of these fruits. Fruits ad vegetables comprise 80 to 99% water which makes them a perfect snack for rehydration.
To compare frits and veggies the processed food items like crackers, cookies, cereals, chips, etc, you must know that these only have 1 to 9% water which is extremely low compared to fruits.
Some fruits and vegetables that have the highest after content include the following:
- Spinach
- melon
- oranges
- berries
- carrots
- grapes
- cabbage
- lettuce
You can stock on a variety of these fresh vegetables and fruits. Just keep cubed watermelon pieces in your fridge for convenient access anytime. Not only fresh but frozen counterparts of these are also equally nutritious or more in few cases.
It takes days or even weeks before these fruits make their way onto the table for you. Till t the time fresh fruits reach you, there may be some nutrient loss due to oxidation. On the other hand, frozen vegetables are fruits that are frozen after harvesting shortly which makes them retain most nutrients without undergoing oxidation.
A study showed that frozen blueberries and green beans had more vitamin C compared to their fresh counterparts. You can also make a nutrient pack smoothie out of these fruits and vegetables. It will be delicious and hydrating without a doubt. Just blend all your favorite ingredients with greek yogurt or milk.
5. Water
Here comes the most expected and common drink to rehydrate your body. You cannot know how to rehydrate without using water as the main source. It is no surprise that drinking water is the cheapest and most common way to stay hydrated.
Unlike many beverages, after do not have calories, do add sugars or their ingredients, which makes water an ideal drink throughout the day especially when you are looking for ways on how to rehydrate like after a long session of workout.
It is worth mentioning that many factors including genetics can lead to sodium loss after sweating in most people. If you are getting frequent muscle cramps after working out or your eyes stings after sweat reached them you may be a “salty sweater”.
If any of these applies, make sure you look for more ways on how to rehydrate because you are not only losing water but also sodium. The lost sodium can be easily achieved by a good diet so you do not have to worry about that. However, if you have to go for long workouts or intense ones, you must have some extra drinks in between having sodium with water.
6. Speed up gastric emptying to improve water absorption.
When you drink water or hydrate, fluid passes through your gut into the small intestine before they are completely absorbed in the bloodstream. This is known as gastric emptying. Your body rehydrates fast when you allow these fluids to absorb fast into the cells using small adjustments to how to rehydrate.
These adjustments include adjusting the volume. If small sips of water are not helping you rehydrate you can consume a large volume at a time to rehydrate. According to some studies people consuming 20 ounces of water at one time are more hydrated compared to those that consumed only 13 ounces at a time in small sips. Consuming more helps water move faster and get absorbed after which speeds up gastric emptying.
Also, try to drink low-carb juices and drink as they move faster through the body as compared to those drinks that are rich in carbs.
The Bottom Line
Dehydration is caused when the body loses a lot of fluids. Drinking water simply is the best way to rehydrate for most people but you may consider other options as well like coffee, tea, fruits, milk, and oral rehydration solutions.
If you are highly concerned about your hydration status or these ways cannot help you with how to rehydrate, you must chestnut your healthcare provider for guidance.
These were some ways using which you can learn how to rehydrate your body after fluid loss.
