Contents:
- Medical Video: How Long Can a Person Survive Without Water?
- How long can the body survive without water?
- So, what happens to the body if you don't drink water at all?
- The importance of meeting your daily fluid intake
Medical Video: How Long Can a Person Survive Without Water?
Nearly 70 percent of the human body consists of water. Water plays an important role to support all bodily functions in order to continue to work optimally. This is why humans really need water to survive. Have ever beenYou imagine how long the body can survive without water intake? You may be able to survive a few weeks without food, but what if you don't drink water at all? Find out the answers in this article.
How long can the body survive without water?
Normal people generally only survive for 100 hours, aka about three to four days, if they don't drink water at all.But in the real world, dehydration can occur much faster than the theory.
Basically, how long you can survive without water can be influenced by various factors. For example, age, health conditions of the body, weather, and physical activity of a person.
Quoted from the Live Science page, a biologist from George Washington University named Randal K. Packer said that in hot weather, normal adults can lose 1-2 liters of sweat in one hour if he does not drink at all.
When you do physical activity or exercise hard on a very hot day, you can experience severe dehydration and die within hours without drinking water at all.
So, what happens to the body if you don't drink water at all?
When you start feeling thirsty, you have actually experienced mild dehydration. This condition generally presents two distinctive signs, namely dry mouth and dark yellow urine accompanied by a strong pungent odor. This is the body's way of trying to save more fluids.
As soon as the body's water content drops below the normal level, a series of other dehydration symptoms will accompany it. Starting from thirst, dry skin (does not bounce back after being pinched), fatigue, limp body, dizziness, dizziness, confusion, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat, to rapid and shallow breathing.
According to the 2009 National Health Service guidelines in the UK, severe dehydration occurs when the body loses about 10 percent of the weight of water from the total body weight. When water levels drop dramatically in the body, the fluid is diverted to fill vital organs with blood. This causes the cells in the entire body to shrink.
The kidneys usually become organs that first fail to work among other organs. A day to two days does not drink water at all, the frequency of your urination will decrease and even stop altogether. Because, the kidneys stop cleaning the waste because the blood supply is shrinking. As brain cells are drained from their water supply, the brain can swell and the blood vessels in the skull can explode.
At this stage, you begin to lose consciousness and decrease the severity of brain function. You will also have difficulty swallowing, suffer muscle spasms, and are more likely to experience nausea.
After that, the other organs will follow after failing to work. Your body temperature will increase dramatically and bluish colors will appear on the skin. The next day, your vital organs and brain cannot function anymore.
The importance of meeting your daily fluid intake
As mentioned above, if you stop drinking water at all for days, your body will experience dangerous effects. It can even cause death.
This is because dehydration can affect many parts of your body. Some of them, such as causing excessive fatigue, decreased blood pressure, digestive disorders, skin moisture, mood problems, to have an impact on cognitive function. That is why, it is important for you to pay attention to your fluid intake.
But you have to understand that there are different water needs of each person, depending on the age and activities carried out.
So, you don't need to force 8 glasses of water per day as many experts recommend when your body feels sufficiently hydrated. And you don't need to hold back if you still feel thirsty even though you have been drinking 8 glasses of water all day.
Most importantly, drink it every time you feel thirsty, so that your water needs can always be fulfilled properly.
