Dehydration: Symptoms, Causes & Treatments
Most of us go about our day dehydrated and don't even know it, because we simply don't recognise the signs. Chronic dehydration symptoms can develop gradually over weeks or months, making them easy to dismiss as normal tiredness, moodiness or general discomfort. Dehydration is not a situation the body takes lightly, its consequences can be immediate and severe.
Water is an important structural component of our body: your skin, cartilage, tissues and organs all depend on it. Our body comprises about 75% water. The brain is 91% water, blood is 90%, muscles are 75%, kidneys are 82% and bones are 22% water. The functions of our glands and organs will eventually deteriorate if they are not adequately and consistently nourished with water.
A 2019 study found that even mild, habitual under-hydration is associated with increased risk of urinary tract infections, kidney stones and impaired cognitive performance. Among elderly Australians, a general lack of understanding of hydration needs is one of the leading causes of increased morbidity and mortality rates. It's vital to understand proper hydration and how to watch for the symptoms of dehydration in adults and children.
What is Dehydration?
Dehydration is the physiological condition where the body loses fluids at a faster speed than can be replaced. Naturally, this occurs on a gradual scale, starting with mild signs and spreading to more severe dehydration symptoms if left unaddressed.
Fluid loss doesn’t exclusively mean water loss. The fluids in your body are a mix of electrolytes, salts and other essential minerals needed to perform at optimum levels. All these components exist in the water surrounding every single one of your cells. When you're dehydrated, you've lost water and also these vital components. That's why the same minerals and electrolytes in water are required for proper rehydration.
Early Symptoms of Dehydration: How to Tell if You’re Dehydrated?
Symptoms of the body’s deterioration begin to appear when you lose as little as 2% of your total water volume. In a healthy adult, this can show up as fatigue and general discomfort. In an elderly person, a 5% water loss causes body chemistry to become abnormal, with visible symptoms of aging, such as wrinkles, lethargy and even disorientation. Continuous water loss over time will speed up aging and increase the risks of disease.
When your body isn't sufficiently hydrated, your cells draw water from the bloodstream, forcing your heart to work harder. At the same time, the kidneys cannot purify blood effectively. When this happens, some of the kidney's workload passes to the liver and other organs, placing them under stress. These are common body not absorbing water symptoms that people often overlook. You may also develop minor health conditions such as constipation, dry and itchy skin, acne, nosebleeds, urinary tract infections, coughs, sneezing, sinus pressure and headaches.
When assessing whether you're dehydrated, look for these common signs:
- Difficulty focusing, light-headedness & dizziness
- Yawning and persistent drowsiness
- Craving sugar, sweets and caffeine
- Erratic and moody behaviour
- Aches & pains unrelated to injury or infection, especially headaches
- Sneezing
- Trouble with basic mental tasks
- Urine is dark with a strong smell (morning time aside)
If you notice several of these symptoms persisting day after day, it may point to chronic rather than acute dehydration. Our guide on how to tell if you're properly hydrated can help you assess your daily habits.
Signs of Severe Dehydration & Chronic Dehydration
Should water loss continue without treatment, a range of severe dehydration symptoms can present themselves. As the body reaches this stage, the condition becomes life-threatening, potentially causing damage to your kidneys, brain and heart. Treatment will need to be more aggressive, typically in a clinical setting with specialised management techniques.
If dehydration becomes a recurring condition, your body lapses into something known as ‘chronic dehydration’. This is where the body tries to operate on a reduced amount of water rather than waiting for a replenished supply, prioritising only essential functions. Over time, this ongoing deficit places compounding strain on organ systems. The Australian Government's Nutrient Reference Values recommend adult women consume approximately 2.1 litres and adult men approximately 2.6 litres of fluids daily to maintain baseline hydration.
The signs of severe dehydration and chronic dehydration can include those above, plus:
- Constipation
- Fainting
- Ongoing, unexplained fatigue
- Dry, flaky skin
- Muscle weakness
- Persistent dehydration headaches
- Brain fog and poor concentration
- Joint stiffness or pain
If you experience these symptoms regularly, speak to a health professional. Chronic dehydration can mimic or worsen other conditions, and a proper assessment is always worthwhile.
What Causes Dehydration?
Having understood the signs and symptoms, it's equally important to understand the dehydration causes behind them. In simple terms, dehydration is caused by a loss and a lack of essential fluids. This can be brought about through several events:
- Severe and prolonged bouts of vomiting or diarrhoea causing fluid loss
- Not replacing fluids lost daily through sweat and urination
- Using fluids that do not rehydrate the body adequately
- Using fluids and foods that actively dehydrate the body
The last two causes are the most common, and the most misunderstood.
You'd think some automatic biological impulse would kick in saying: thirsty, thirsty! And it does. It's called the thirst mechanism, but for most modern people it's not working properly. The thirst mechanism can lose sensitivity over time due to the ageing process, but one of the primary causes for its failure is that people try to satisfy their thirst with other beverages or food. We hear the message from our brain alerting us to thirst, but instead of reaching for water, we reach for tea, coffee, juice, soft drinks, milk or food.
For those who do reach for water, it's often water that is incapable of hydrating at a cellular level.
Quenching Thirst with Other Beverages
Beverages like juice, milk, tea, coffee and soft drinks are liquid elements that require the body to put in energy and effort to digest them. Once digested, waste products are created, and this can dehydrate tissue cells further while adding to their acid load. The kidneys then have much more work to do to support the system.
Caffeine drinks and soft drinks are also diuretics, which creates further dehydration. Far from addressing the problem, drinking these beverages often increases it. The initial thirst mechanism sent the right message, but our response is most often to reach for a processed product rather than Mother Nature's natural spring water. We mistake the thirst mechanism for hunger or reach for other beverages, neither of which solves the problem.
Not a single one of these liquid foods can replace water. Nothing else does what water does in the body. If the average adult loses 2.5 litres of water per day, that amount needs to be replaced. More active individuals can need three litres or more for optimum health. These other beverages don't hydrate. They add to dehydration, placing an already strained system under more pressure.
Consider the consequences for children and younger adults who are repeatedly exposed to highly processed, caffeinated, high-sugar drinks. The impact can be seen most noticeably in their behaviour and moods, which can become erratic, depressive and, in some cases, aggressive. Our guide on dehydration effects on children covers this in more detail.
Quenching Thirst with the Wrong Water
zazen Water is underpinned by one important understanding: not all water is the same.
Many people complain about feeling bloated when they drink tap water or bottled water. Regardless of the amount they consume in a day, they still feel thirsty. Some report drinking three litres per day and still feeling parched. These are classic body not absorbing water symptoms. The water they're choosing simply cannot be used by the body effectively, so it sits in the stomach while the body tries to process it.
For water to effectively hydrate your body it must be:
- Filtered and cleaned of contaminants, bad bacteria and chemicals, so your body is not the filter
- Mineral and electrolyte-rich, with a balanced mineral profile
- Mildly alkaline (your blood sits at a pH of about 7.4, which is slightly alkaline)
- Naturally energised
- Structured into smaller water clusters for absorption
Neither tap water, bottled water, standard filtered water, nor overly alkaline water achieves this balance. The zazen Alkaline Water System is designed to produce perfectly balanced water that can be received and absorbed at a cellular level, meeting the modern body's hydration requirements. You can learn more about how the zazen system works and why each stage matters.
How to Treat and Prevent Chronic Dehydration
The best approach to preventing dehydration is getting ahead of the curve. Follow simple strategies like keeping a reusable water bottle on hand to top up your fluid levels, choosing fresh water instead of sugary beverages, and actively reducing your intake of dehydrating substances. This is especially important when you're ill and experiencing vomiting or diarrhoea, exposed to hotter environments, or exercising.
Building consistent hydration habits is what separates someone who occasionally feels thirsty from someone dealing with chronic dehydration symptoms long term. Our staying hydrated tips are a practical starting point.
If you need to actively rehydrate, it's important to consume water filled with the minerals and electrolytes your body has lost, including sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium and phosphate.
There is a range of potential benefits from consuming alkaline water that mimics Mother Nature's own process. With the zazen Alkaline Water System, you can take advantage of a 10-stage water filtration process. It begins with eliminating pollutants, chemicals and contaminants from the water supply, then reintroduces natural alkaline minerals and electrolytes. The result is a delicious-tasting, balanced, mineralised water designed for cellular hydration.
Replacing your system's filtration components on schedule also ensures consistent water quality. Learn why timely part replacement matters for ongoing performance.
