Keep your mind healthy by staying hydrated.
Caltech scientists have now mapped the circuit of neurons within the brain that regulates thirst. One of the pathways allows the measure of the sodium content of the blood, which indicates the level of hydration. There’s also a circuit that is involved in acute satiety of thirst.
“When you are dehydrated, you may gulp down water for several seconds and you feel satisfied. However, at that point your blood is not rehydrated yet: it usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes,” says one of the researchers, Yuki Oka.
Listening to your body when it comes to thirst is really important. Often what people think is hunger is actually thirst. A good test when it comes to knowing if you are dehydrated or not is the urine test. Your urine should be fairly clear, if it’s dark yellow it could be a sign you need to drink more water.
We know how important it is to stay hydrated, particularly in the warmer months and new research from the Georgia Institute of Technology has also shown that dehydration can also affect cognition, coordination and make it harder to solve problems.
The researchers have been concerned that dehydration could raise the risk of an accident, particularly in scenarios that combine heavy sweating and dangerous machinery or military hardware. “There’s already a lot of quantitative documentation that if you lose 2 per cent in water it affects physical abilities like muscle endurance or sports tasks and your ability to regulate your body temperature,” says Mindy Millard-Stafford, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Science. “We wanted to see if that was similar for cognitive function.”
Their research found that the simplest reaction time tasks were least impacted, even as dehydration got worse, but tasks that require attention were quite impacted.
Want to stay more hydrated this summer? Click here to trick yourself into drinking more water.
