The human body constantly needs water. It loses water through the lungs when breathes. It loses water with the daily urination, sweat and stool.

The human body requires at least one liter of water daily. The quantity depends on the activity, age, environment and other factors. The most active people need two or even three liters every day. Fluid consumption is necessary for proper metabolism in the body.

The color of urine is a good indicator of the body’s need in water satisfaction. The body consuming enough water produces almost colorless urine if not taking into account coloring components of the food. In dehydrated body the urine is bright yellow. In the state of severe dehydration the human body produces orange urine.

Water takes part in all processes in the body: synthesis and degradation of all substances, producing and utilizing energy, functioning of cells, tissues and organs including neural and humoral regulation of the body’s activity. Water is the medium for all chemical reactions due to the unique properties of its dipole molecule. It is not just liquid. No cell, no organ can work properly without water enough.

Lack of water makes the body to supply more important organs (the brain for example) for the account of other organs. The brain contains 85% of the water, even up to 92% according to some sources, and loss of even 1% of the water leads to irreversible consequences. So it is vitally important for the body to keep the brain hydrated on account of skin and muscles. Therefore it is not surprise that dehydrated skin is in poor condition and muscles do not work as they could. Dehydration initially reduces cellular fluid (66%), followed by extracellular (26%), and then the water is extracted from the bloodstream (8%).

If the body suffers from dehydration regularly it tries to store up water resulting in edema. Extra water in the body may cause different disorders. It needs extra body resources to manage it and increases the body weight.

Alcohol and spicy food cannot injure normal skin, but they can influence the reddened or the broken blood vessels on the cheeks and around nose, which become more explicit for a while. Anything capable of capillary dilatation and skin reddening can injure them, including huge temperature swings.

Apart from the sun bathing abuse, one of our skin hazards is dehydration.

Despite the natural covering, the moisture evaporates very fast when the air humidity is low – when the weather is hot or cold, especially when it is windy, and in the buildings with central heating. If the moisture is not compensated, our skin gets rough and dry. It can chap, thus opening the inner layers for bacteria, and as a result, get inflamed.

It may sound ironic, but the skin gets dehydrated when under water. It happens because the moisture in the skin passes through the protective epidermis membrane aiming to merge with the water surrounding the body. The more mineral substances and salts are dissolved in water, the more moisture the skin loses.

Thus, hard water is the most dehydrating. The best way to prevent our skin from drying up is to use moisturizer all the year round, as often as possible. Moreover, one should use not only face creams, but also creams for all the areas of the skin which contact with the outdoor environment.

Hands deserve the most thorough care, as they not only get weather-beaten, but also stay in water for a long time, when we are doing housework. We should also keep in mind that our neck, as well as face, is often exposed to external influence. It is also necessary to grease feet with a moisturizer from time to time.

Of course, no moisturizer can compensate for the moisture loss for a long time, because it can only penetrate into external epidermis layers. Besides this, the small amount of moist that gets into the skin, evaporates very soon. But a good moisturizer fulfills a more important task: it slows down the dehydration process like sebum and thus prevents from moisture loss. And if the evaporation is reduced, the skin compensates itself for the lack of moist from the inside.

To normalize the ions concentration, the body in response lets more water to excrete through the kidney. That’s why drinking more and more water does not help the specific thirst that always follows the alcohol drinking sessions. The victim just drinks and travels to the toilet for several hours.

At the same time oxidation of each alcohol molecule by the liver needs few molecules of water. So the water is taken to the liver from other parts of the body. It causes even more dehydration. Sense of dry mucous membranes and severe thirst indirectly point to the second degree of dehydration, in which the body loses up to 5% of its weight.

Dehydration causes the weakness, exaggerated feeling of hunger, and disorders in functions of muscles, brain and blood circulation system. For the human with average weight of 70 kilograms lack of fluid up to 3 liters, can significantly affect all the vital functions.

Medical drugs can also increase fluid loss. As the body receives water through the intestine any disorders in the intestinal absorption (after surgery, for example) lead to dehydration.

Water is part of cells, intercellular substance, tissue fluid and lymph. Water composes about 65%, or 2/3 of the adult mammals’ and birds’ body weight, and serves as a various substances solvent.

Animals deprived of water die in a very short term. A well-nourished dog can bear starvation for up to 100 days, provided that it is supplied with water. But without water it dies in 10 days. Only 10% water loss causes hard pathological changes, and 15-20% water loss implies death.

An organism gets water when drinking and eating, and this water is absorbed unchanged in the bowels. Water duty varies depending on the food composition, the dog’s physiological state, external environment conditions, etc. For example, when the dog is fed with dry feed, apt to high exercise stress, or if the weather is hot, the water duty is greater.

The organism’s water duty is regulated by thirst. The water that gets into organism must fully compensate for the constant water losses with urine, sweat, excrements, exhaled air, as the amount of water excreted from the organism is always a little higher than that consumed with food or drink.

If the organism is short of water…

When the organism starts consuming less water, or when the water loss is great (e.g., with vomiting, liquid stool, excessive urination (polyuria)), the organism gets dehydrated. All the chemical transformations take place only in water solutions. So, this state is dangerous, as it causes blood clotting and metabolic disease. Externally, it is characterized by general weakness, skin flexibility loss, visible mucous tunics dryness (tunica mucosa of mouth, nose, and conjunctiva), sunken eyes. As dehydration is progressing, a state of shock appears (hypovolemic shock), and if the fluid in not compensated in time, the result is death.

Do not mix up dehydration with hemorrhage. These two notions are quite different, as when dehydrated, the organism loses only water and electrolytes, and when the hemorrhage takes place, it also loses the blood cells (erythrocytes) and plasma proteins necessary for normal life of any animal.

There are several degrees of dehydration, but at home, it is hard to define the degree of dehydration for a dog owner.

The following dehydration symptoms should alert you:

• the early symptoms of dogs dehydration are sluggishness, bad mood, depression
• your pet’s appetite loss and anorexia and (or) refusal from drink for one, maximum two days
• repeated vomiting or liquid stool for several hours, maximum one day, and fever and excessive urination.

These symptoms are typical of a number of diseases, that is why if your pet has at least one of them, you should consult a doctor as soon as possible.

Before you get to the pet hospital, you can try feeding on water by force, with a spoon or a syringe and try feeding, but only in case if the animal is not vomiting. If it is, the animal should not take food, because this provokes new bokes and aggravates the situation.

The human body has many signals of its need in water, including the development of various pathologies, such as asthma and allergies. Among other signs are chronic pain in the stomach and the colon, rheumatoid joint pains, pains in the back and legs, headaches, colitis, and the most terrifying sign, pain in the heart. Dehydration is especially harmful to the immune system cells, its disorder causes the so-called immune diseases. They are all chronic ones: bronchitis, asthma, infertility, lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer disease, cancer. They are complex and involve failures of many biological functions due to lack of water.

Dehydrated body needs the water but it can refill it successfully only if there is enough salt in the body. Salt keeps the water in the body and normalizes the composition of the blood and intercellular fluid. When there is not salt enough, the water is removed from the body to keep salt concentration constant. After the cells receive enough water they are not dehydrated any more, so the disorders caused by the dehydration can gradually disappear.