avalys 4 hours ago

I'm so interested in this topic, for a weird reason.

Since I was a kid, I've thought I was "prone to migraines", and ascribed various triggers to them - sun exposure, heat, physical exertion, mental exertion, etc. I'd get a migraine sometimes after a long hike on a weekend - and also a long business meeting entirely indoors in an air-conditioned space.

Only when I was around 35, did I figure something out. All these situations lead to me getting dehydrated without any obvious accompanying feeling of thirst. Hiking all day will do it - walking around an outdoor shopping mall on a hot afternoon - or sitting in an all-day business meeting focused on the work at hand and forgetting to drink. And all these situations lead to a migraine - my only "migraine" trigger is simple dehydration, nothing more complicated.

The weird thing is, it took me a long time (decades) to put this together, because I just figured that I couldn't be dehydrated if I wasn't thirsty, and I had no association between "feeling thirsty" and getting a migraine.

I get what I consider normally thirsty in other circumstances, but somehow there's a failure mode where my body doesn't warn me. So now I just remember to chug lots of water (and electrolytes) if I'm exerting myself even if I don't really feel thirsty, and I can systematically avoid triggering migraines.

Now that I understand it the association is quite clear and obvious in retrospect.

  • m463 3 hours ago

    I just remember reading that adults start to lose their ability to sense thirst.

    Wikipedia says 50:

    In adults over the age of 50 years, the body's thirst sensation reduces and continues diminishing with age, putting this population at increased risk of dehydration.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirst#Elderly

  • zeta0134 3 hours ago

    You might as well be my dream self writing a journal, because this describes my experience 1:1. It's kindof wild how long it took me to realize that I wasn't overheating at night due to the weather or the A/C being broken, but simply due to needing more water. That's one of my strongest signs as it turns out.

    I don't know what "thirst" feels like at all! It's weird because I do feel hunger. If I forget to actually eat, my stomach kicks my brain and refuses to let me concentrate until I fix it. Hydration has no equivalent, and in retrospect, it's no wonder I was suffering headaches and nausea all through college on my diet of mostly soda. After I switched to water as my primary beverage things improved dramatically, but it's not perfect. I still have to watch the signs and pay attention, or I'll dehydrate myself by simply forgetting to drink.

  • lithocarpus 2 hours ago

    Same here - there are other feelings than a dry mouth or "feeling thirsty" that tell me I need more water. The slight beginning of a headache for example, or feeling a little bit dizzy, or many other things. I guess I could call these "feeling thirsty" since I now know when I feel these things that I probably need water and that's how I interpret them.

  • olup 3 hours ago

    I can't relate more. I am also prone to ophthalmic migraines and have the same tendency to not be thirsty, to the amazement of the people I usually trek or live with. Only recently (35 and a kidney stone) did I gather that I might actually be in need of water even without feelings of thirst. I have never made a connection with migraines, and that might not be it for me but reading you makes me want to pay attention.

  • keeda 3 hours ago

    Maybe a related point is that hangovers, of which headaches are likely the most common symptom, are caused in a large part by dehydration as well as electrolyte imbalance.

  • dazzawazza 2 hours ago

    When I was in my 20s I realized I had lost the thirst signal. I never felt thirsty. I guessed this was because I lived a comfortable life and I had lost this signal in the noise of modern life.

    So I set about deliberately retraining myself. I stopped drinking everything but water (and beer, because life) I'd exercise (and sweat) and then drink water. I retrained my body/mind to savour the pleasantness of drinking water when dehydrated and after a year of conscious effort I more or less recovered the sense of "thirst" and would pre-emptively desire drinking water.

    We are pretty simple machines.

  • Snacklive 2 hours ago

    YES YES i get migraines and it's my body saying "Hey you need more water to function you know ?" usually i don't feel any thirst nor hunger, although, i do get hungry more often, but i can last a day without food before my head starts to hurt

rr808 4 hours ago

So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.

  • dataflow 3 hours ago

    > So dumb to see office workers sipping all day on their gallon water bottles, while outside the workers in the sun on the construction site taking the occasional sip.

    Dumb? People can't just drink their darn water as much as they please without getting judged now? What's your point?

  • NoPicklez 2 hours ago

    How is that dumb? It could be that the construction workers are in fact dehydrated if that's the case

    In my experience construction site workers have even larger jugs of water to drink.

pazimzadeh 4 hours ago

Tangentially related, I'm curious to know why it is that proteins are so much more filling than other macronutrients (within minutes)

  • lithocarpus 2 hours ago

    One theory is that the most important nutrient that we really need a certain amount of every day is protein, and thus the body wants us to keep eating until it thinks we've got enough protein. (And for the vegans, I'm not saying meat - even most green plants and mushrooms are about 1/3 protein by dry weight). In nature almost every food has some amount of protein. If you get meat, you don't need to eat that much for your body to have all the protein it needs. If you are eating cake, it will take an awful lot of cake to have an adequate amount of protein.

    In evolutionary past, if one had access to fresh fruit it might make sense to eat a lot of it right away since it won't keep, and the sugar in the fruit is easy for the body to store as fat and use later. In nature it's very rare to find a diet with very high fat and low protein but suppose you live by a macadamia tree, you may need to eat a lot of calories worth of macadamias to get enough protein. I have a feeling though that excess fat can go right through you in some cases like that - because there have been times where I was binging on peanut butter, like easily 16-24oz in a day often, like 2-3000 calories extra on top of my normal diet, and I didn't gain weight, I think a lot of it went through me undigested.

    These are just hypotheses I'm not claiming they are necessarily the reason, and definitely are not the only mechanism involved as it's extremely complex. But they make sense as a simple place to start.

JSR_FDED 6 hours ago

I have the opposite problem, after one glass of water I feel full and drinking any more makes me nauseous. It’s a struggle to get sufficient hydration during the day.

  • moi2388 2 hours ago

    First off, it doesn’t have to be plain water. Secondly, the two liters a day was two liters of moisture, not drinking two liters a day; food is included in this amount

  • move-on-by 4 hours ago

    What are your thoughts on cows milk? There are a number of studies suggesting it’s better at hydration than plain water regardless of skim vs. whole.

  • pazimzadeh 4 hours ago

    try carbonated water +/- lemon juice

  • noman-land 5 hours ago

    Don't drink the whole glass at once?

  • jiggawatts 4 hours ago

    Try adding a rehydrating powder mix, the same stuff they use for treating diarrhoea. It’s just salts, glucose, and citric acid. It is hugely more hydrating than plain water, with a much faster onset of feeling relief from intense thirst.

    Sports drinks are basically the same thing, but with excess sugars for “energy” (and weight gain).

  • WalterGR 5 hours ago

    How many ounces consumed over how many minutes?

dgan 2 hours ago

i can't stop eating the salt cristals before eating the lunch