Why Water May Not Be Enough

So I was reviewing blood work with a patient yesterday and his blood work showed that he was severely dehydrated. He was perplexed because he drinks on average about three to four liters of water every single day but he also does things like dry sauna, steam showers, high intensity interval training, cycling, and boxing.

He's sweating a lot and we know that when we sweat, we don't just sweat out water, we sweat out electrolytes, we can sweat out minerals, and we can certainly sweat out toxins. So when I see patients who are severely dehydrated but drinking a lot of water, we know that the water is not being taken up into their cells because your cells are what carry all of the nutrients and electrolytes.

Sodium is most abundantly found intracellularly. So when you're drinking water and drinking water and drinking water, it's just going through your system and it's not actually being absorbed into your cells causing chronic dehydration even though you're drinking large amounts of water.