It’s an annoying concept, but it’s sometimes the reality of the situation: you can drink glass upon glass of water and still feel thirsty. How come? If the answer isn’t drinking more water, them how do you stop feeling thirsty? The answer isn’t always so simple. In fact, there are many different reasons why you might not be able to satisfy your thirst, no matter how hard you try. Read here to get the input of our bottled water delivery experts.
Is It a Sickness?
Sometimes, it is. Diabetes, diarrhea, cancer, liver disorders, and a variety of digestive system ailments can all make you feel like you’re not consuming enough water. This is because all of these disorders cause your body to shed water and electrolytes at an increased rate. For instance, if you’ve been vomiting or having high, persistent amounts of diarrhea, you could end up dehydrated to a point where you find yourself guzzling water. This is because both of these conditions involve expelling large amounts of fluid from the body at once.
One rare but on-the-nose example of this would be diabetes insipidus. In this rare variety of diabetes, your blood glucose levels remain stable, but your kidneys cannot properly concentrate urine. This leads to excessive urination—up to 20 quarts per day, where the average individual only makes between 1-3 quarts! With numbers like that, you’re bound to remain thirsty until getting treatment.
Conditions Not Involving Excess Water Loss
Sometimes, you don’t need to lose a lot of water in order to feel thirsty. Heart disease, for example, can cause blood pressure in the body to drop, causing feelings of thirst. There’s also psychogenic polydipsia. Though polydipsia usually occurs in tandem with a condition that lowers your fluid levels, it can also occur when stressed. This will make you feel extreme thirst for no particular reason.
Whether you feel like you have a condition that causes excess water loss or not, if your insatiable thirst persists, you may need to visit a healthcare professional.
Is It the Environment?
This is also a very real possibility! Those who live in dry climates or at high altitudes will need to work harder to keep their electrolyte levels in check and will need to drink more water in general. This is because these climates can cause more water loss than more moderate climates, even if the person in question isn’t out in the open air exerting themselves. Always keep your environment in mind when considering how to regulate your daily water intake.
Is It My Habits?
This is honestly the most likely reason for your insatiable thirst. Things such as your diet, activity levels, and hydration habits all play a part in how thirsty you’ll feel at all times.
Diet
Your kidneys are responsible for maintaining the balance of fluids in your body. Under normal circumstances, they would concentrate waste products and excess minerals into your urine and pass it safely. However, if you eat too many high-sodium foods, your blood will become saturated with sodium, triggering your cells to excrete more water. In response, your kidneys will excrete this excess sodium and water in your urine more frequently, causing dehydration. This is especially a problem in Americans, and it’s also why drinking saltwater is ill-advised.
If you’re feeling thirsty all the time and you eat a lot of fast food, this may need to be the primary suspect. Fast foods are notoriously high in sodium which, though tasty, will dry your body out as fast as they’re served.
Activity Levels
If you partake in frequent, high-intensity workouts, your body will naturally lose more fluid and electrolytes than normal. This seems obvious enough, but many people forget the “electrolytes” part and try to rehydrate with water alone, which doesn’t always have the required electrolytes if it’s low-quality. This is why many sports drinks contain high levels of electrolytes and make sure to advertise as much on their packaging.
It’s extremely important that you keep this in mind if you partake in outdoor sports, especially during the warmer seasons. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are more likely to affect you if you don’t keep up proper hydration, the latter of which being an emergency situation requiring immediate hospitalization.
Electrolytes
As stated before, electrolytes are just as important as water when it comes to maintaining proper hydration, and you will feel persistently thirsty without them. Electrolytes are a small list of minerals that regulate the body’s ambient energy and electricity levels, which is essential for basic life function. The major electrolytes include sodium, potassium, and chloride, with others being magnesium, calcium, phosphate, and bicarbonates. These can come from food or drink, so it’s important to keep them in mind when balancing your diet.
Dehydration
Though this is the end result of all the previous factors combined, it can also be its own factor. Simply not keeping up with your water intake as you should—regardless of health, environment, activity, or diet—can lead to dehydration. Ironically, dehydration can lead to further dehydration. A persistent thirst, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, reduced urination, and stomach pain are all signs of dehydration. Dehydration can also affect your blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels.
How to Prevent Feeling Thirsty After Drinking Water
Fortunately, with the exception of severe illness, most of these scenarios are very preventable. Keep track of your water intake throughout the day, especially if you live in an environment where the body loses water more quickly. There are actually tracking apps to make sure you’re drinking enough water. If you suspect your diet is to blame, consider changing it to account for that. If you suspect your electrolytes are low, you could buy a sports drink, or you could consider buying high-quality spring water from us here at Lipsey. Our mountain spring water is rich with the minerals your body needs to survive, and it comes straight out of the Blue Ridge Mountains like that with no need for additives. If you’re interested in the difference that quality water can make in your hydration habits, we offer bottled water delivery services across metro Atlanta, so keep us in mind the next time you just can’t sate that thirst!