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Mild dehydration is defined as a 1.5 percent loss in normal water volume in the body. And two recent studies with men and women find that, beyond affecting your body, mild dehydration can impact your mood.
Researchers evaluated 51 healthy men and women three times in three months. All the subjects walked on a treadmill to induce dehydration. The researchers then tested the subjects' alertness, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory, reasoning and mood level.
They found that dehydration in men caused difficulty in memory and alertness. In women dehydration caused little reduction in cognitive ability, but did cause significant fatigue, tension and anxiety. Such changes in mood occurred regardless if the subject was exercising or at rest.
The results of the study with male participants were published in the British Journal of Nutrition and the women's results were in the Journal of Nutrition, an American publication.
So you don't need to be performing in a triathlon. Even if you're deskbound--and especially if you're a woman--your body and your brain might need a shot of H2O.
--Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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7 Comments
Add CommentI find the headline and the emphasis in the last paragraph baffling. The content indicates that men suffered memory & alertness - why are these somehow less important than a woman's mood? Or conversely, why is a woman's mood a more important thing to highlight than a man's loss of memory and alertness?
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook for things you buy anyway, like yogurt or cheese, and see if there are coupons for those things. You should have a store loyalty card if your store offers one, like safeway or sample things before you buy best place would be to check is "Get Official Samples"
@hornblower Why the emphasis? Headlines get readers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCovering a story thoroughly but concisely, making connections to past and current stories, and filtering out irrelevant details is how one makes those readers loyal.
This story is based on a university press release:
http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2012/02/even-mild-dehydration-can-alter-mood/
It's not clear from Nicholson's article, but the two studies were actually similar enough to make comparisons (otherwise the results would only speak to people in general and say nothing about men as compared to women).
The difference seems to be that healthy women suffer less cognitive impairment from room-temperature dehydration than men, but report more discomfort.
Note that these studies were done on healthy individuals who exercise regularly. One has to wonder about the applicability to the general population, considering widespread overweight and obese status, sedentary behavior, and regular exposure to a potent diuretic (caffeine).
"Mild dehydration affects mood in healthy young women" by Lawrence E Armstrong, Matthew S Ganio, et al.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22190027
"Mild dehydration impairs cognitive performance and mood of men" by Matthew S Ganio, Lawrence E Armstrong, et al.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21736786
My point is about the choice to emphasise women's mood versus men's cognitive abilities. It's misogynist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could be wrong, but suspect that Nicholson, a woman herself, was aiming more for 'provocative' than 'misogynist'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am more inclined to think that Nicholson is implying that women may not notice that they are dehydrated, since they do not loose cognitive abilities that are key indicators. A mood change could be interpreted as "my coworkers suck" or "it's now raining" and not always as an internal problem. Maybe she could have been more clear on this, but I doubt very much it has anything to do with either misogyny, sexism, or even meta-data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you don't like water or just don't drink much water, you may be dehydrated.
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